Still, it is all but accepted in France that the security services – DGRI (the equivalent of MI5) and DOSE (MI6) – quietly operate with a ruthlessness unknown in countries where greater public scrutiny is the rule. Back during the Bush presidency, the provisions of the Patriot Act were loudly decried in France, even though its main practices were already in use here. Indeed these practices were only given a formal legal basis after the Charlie Hebdo killings last January with a law which allows immediate personal data-hacking, listening in, and even re-forms a corps of agents specialised in breaking into suspects’ houses or cars – all “in the interests of France’s National Defence, foreign policy interests, major economic or scientific interests”.) Provisions are made for an independent authority supposed to control such practices, but only after the fact.