The UN Committee for Human Rights (UNCHR) has censured French authorities for adoption of  a controversial surveillance law that grants intelligence agencies sweeping new powers to spy on citizens.

“The bill grants overly broad powers for very intrusive surveillance on the basis of vast and badly defined objectives without prior authorization of a judge and without adequate and independent controls,” said the UNCHR in a Friday statement.

The development came after France’s Constitutional Council, the nation’s highest authority on constitutional matters, approved the bill in June, allowing French spy agencies to tap phones and emails  and hack computers without authorization from a judge.

The country’s socialist government justified the legislation in the wake of the ISIL-linked terrorist attacks in the capital Paris last January that killed 17 people.

French President Francois Hollande took the unusual step of referring the bill to the Constitutional Council in a bid to ensure that it would not be challenged as illegitimate.

The UNCHR called on Paris to “guarantee that any interference in private life must conform to principles of legality, proportionality, and necessity.”

While the bill was dismissed by other critics and human rights groups as the French “Big Brother” Act, Prime Minister Manuel Valls (pictured below) described it as “a security framework against terrorism that respects liberties.”

The legislation also grants France’s intelligence services the right to eavesdrop on the digital and mobile phone communications of anyone linked to a “terrorist” inquiry and even install secret cameras and recording devices in private homes without a judicial order.

The bill was further slammed as “wicked” by the country’s non-profit association La Quadrature du Net, which advocates rights and privacy of internet users, in a statement titled “Shame on France.”  

“By validating almost all surveillance measures provided in the surveillance law adopted on June 25, the French constitutional council legalizes mass surveillance and endorses a historical decline in fundamental rights,” said the group.

Meanwhile, the UK-based Privacy International (PI) said the French legislation legitimized hacking, which it described as “an extremely intrusive form of surveillance.”

 “Its use by any state authorities, particularly intelligence agencies, must be highly regulated to protect against abuses of power. Yet the bill makes no provision for judicial authorization or oversight of hacking powers,” PI emphasized.