The parliament in France voted last week to penalise smartphone manufacturers which refuse to cooperate with terrorism investigations.
The controversial amendment stipulates that a private company which fails to hand over encrypted data to an investigating authority would face up to five years in jail and a €350,000 fine.
Telecoms operating companies would be subjected to lesser penalties but could still receive up to two years in prison.
The amendment was quickly tacked onto a penal reform bill that was in its first reading in parliament. The amendment must still pass through a lengthy parliamentary process to become law.
Parliamentarians approved the amendment despite opposition to it from the French government.
The move reflects the legal battle taking place in the US between the FBI and one of the world’s largest companies, Apple which has refused to decrypt one of its mobile phones which had been owned by a terrorist killer of 14 people in California.
Apple claims it would set a dangerous precedent to help the government break into the encrypted iPhone. A weaker operating system, it says, could be exploited by hackers and foreign governments.
The FBI has argued that by introducing encryption which can lock data is essentially creating “warrant-proof zones” for criminals and others that will cripple law enforcement and jeopardise public safety.
