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It is about a particular case that one can rephrase the general questions. If the case is hot, it is even more important to return to the general questions, which are always colder (more boring, too). Thus, Cambridge Analytica is a case of which everyone speaks a lot … It is at the same time particular and very burning. So we talk about it a lot, and with vehemence, and in a way often definitive, as well in attack as in defense. For the prosecution, there are many advocacies, gathered for example in the Guardian's files. For the defense, we find less. But one can read for example the article that has been published in early April 2018: Why (almost) everything reported about the Cambridge Analytica Facebook 'hacking' controversy is wrong. The number of comments, and their more or less inflamed nature, in any case always definitive, does not mean anything in itself. The regulators took the floor a little later, both in a more concrete way, the "group of 29" (bringing together all the European Regulators personal data) establishing the 11 April 2018 a working group on this subject and publishing April 10, 2018 new guidelines on the place that must be made to "consent". But for the moment, if we loof at the media, it looks like a trial, because everyone claims to be entirely right and pretends that the other is entirely wrong. Trial to break the truth and virtue, say the accusers. Trial in witchcraft, says Facebook. And it's always up to us. Because all this is probably due to the fact that we are no longer spectators: we are placed in the judge's position. The financial market was the first judge. It has already condemned. Without really trying to find out. This is because the public good of the financial markets is Trust, it is enough that one can even suspect the wife of Caesar, and so it is not really matter of truth of the facts and goof application of Rule of Law. For the public opinion that we are, this is something else, because we could wait to know more. And we should, since we seek to remain a little attached to the "truth " of the facts and respect for the Rule of Law. However, this case is complex and is above all a matter of judicial analysis which will come and which we cannot lead ourselves, both in terms of the facts-which are complex-as well as the rules of law to be applied which are equally so. What turns us into a court, an ordinary sociological phenomenon, is a new legal mechanism: the "whistleblower". By nature, it gives the bonus to the Attack This logic of the legal mechanism of the whistleblower, a movement of fact to throw facts as one throws a buoy outside but one could also say stones on the firm that the insider denounces, logic today encouraged and protected by the Law, allows a person who knows something, most often because he participated, to let everyone know, without a filter. To denounce it. For the public good.. The successive texts on the whistleblower are nrms of a Compliance Law¹Frison-Roche, M.-A., Compliance Law, 2016. which seek, in particular in French Law, to ensure a balance between this "monumental goal"²On this notion, Frison-Roche, M.-A., From Regulation Law to Compliance Law, 2017. which is the respect of the truth, the fight against corruption, the protection of human beings, etc., and the risks to be endured by the company thus denounced. The case is exemplary of this, since Facebook is  "denounced" only in second place, behind Cambridge Analytica, but the notoriety and power of the first makes that it is hit first. French law in the so-called "Sapin 2 Act " of 2016 has ensured to protect the company denounced, but British and American Law are more violent, probably because they encourage more the private enforcement. Temporality is therefore favorable to the attack. The time of the defense is always slower. It is usually the people in situations of weakness who suffer it: slowness of justice, justice outside courthouses, etc. With Compliance mechanisms, it is probably the very powerful who will live this. It is not a matter of rejoicing: the misfortune of some (here the difficulty of a company hasty  "judged") does not console in any way the misfortune of others (the difficulty of ordinary beings accused or having only the right to protect themselves to reach concretely a judge and really get a judgment executed, even as they are in their right). But if we go to general questions, since on the facts of this case we don't have the means to appreciate them, nor on the rules which apply to them, we cannot apply them in an adequate way until a court will have exercised its office? However, the general perspectives highlighted by this singular case are two orders: Probationary order (I) and Accountability order (II).     Read below.          

The sale of Alstom to General Electric is an economic, political and legal affair. Intervened in 2014, in France it is today rather told "for the prosecution". Those who participated are now on the defensive; in April 2018, it is in the field of "probity" that they defend themselves, terminology which is that of the Compliance Law, vocabulary chosen by the French legal system ("Sapin 2" Act of 9 December 2016)¹Frison-Roche, M.-A., From the Regulation Law to the Compliance Law, 2017. .  Compliance has therefore appeared as a kind of aggression and it is in this way that many French observers are presenting it. In the Alstom case, Compliance is at its worst : as a means of pressure used the U.S. to obtain, in the conditions most convenient for them, the sale of control of the strategic Alstom company.   In this case where it is sometimes difficult to discern the true from the false, the fact of the advocacy, the concern for the truth of the political discourse a posteriori, it is certain that the action of the States interfered with the pretensions of the companies and that it is through a sale of a business in which it was also necessary to take into consideration interests of a different nature from economic and financial interests, not only the general interest but the particular interest which is the interest of a Nation : here the interest of France. That the United States wanted to reach their own interest on one hand,  and on the other hand that the other State needs and wants to preserve it – through the legal mechanisms such as the merger control, this is not to blame per se. Indeed, on the one hand the activity in question, namely the manufacture and sale of turbine for nuclear power plants are crucial activities and directly concern the States and on the other hand a State, here the French State French is legitimate to worry about some companies²Sur cette question, Frison-Roche, M.-A., The "Crucial Companies" and their Regulation, 2014.. It can be considered that if it did not, if the French Government in 2014 did not care to defend the energy sector (general interest) and the interest of France (interest of the country) , only worrying about the economic and financial dimension of the operation, then that is to blame. This is supported by the criticisms made today. This is denied by the people who were negotiating for the company and for the French State at the time. It is indeed this double dimension of national interest and general interest that we find in the French Decree of May 14, 2014  relating to foreign investments subject to prior authorization, the Décret du 14 mai 2014 relatif aux investissements étrangers soumis à autorisation préalable , called "Montebourg", text adopted then and which is legally legitimate because it gives the State the power to defend its own interests. -   But let's look at this case in the perspective of the Compliance Law, and first of all on the side of American Law. Can we blame the Americans for using the prospect of sanctions of the French company Alstom to encourage the shareholder of the latter, namely the French State to hand over control of the company to General Electric, buyer suitable for US public authorities? It is not legitimate to do so because the American Compliance Law gives US public authorities the legal power to prosecute and punish foreign companies when there is evidence to suggest that they are likely to be liable for corruption³Breen, E., FCPA. La France face au droit américain de la lutte anti-corruption, 2017.. One can certainly rant about the fact that this extraterritorial power of legal action is not only objectionable in itself but in fact is used more against European companies than against Chinese companies, and that in the case it was used (and strongly) against a company whose US wanted a transfer of technology and control⁴Voir à ce propos les observations pertinentes d'Antoine Garapon : Frison-Roche, M.-A., In the inaugural conference on "Europe of Compliance", Antoine Garapon highlights strengths and weaknesses of Europe , 3 mars 2018. . But the French company had given the baton to be beaten: if corruption had not been likely occurred, then the US authorities could not have deployed the force of this legal weapon. Admittedly, everyone replies: "be realistic, everyone corrupts, it's the real norm of the world!" Well, if it is so, it is right to change this sort of law of the world. To replace it with another principle: the principle of Probity.   Because it allows to move to the second perspective of the Compliance Law, on the side of French and European law. Indeed, if it went wrong, if the negotiations were unbalanced because the United States took advantage of the otherwise applicable Law and held Alstom accountable for corruption, including by imprisonment, this which has had the effect, no doubt, of weakening the interlocutor in the negotiations, is also due to the fact that Europe does not demand accountability from companies which, no doubt, commit acts of the same type.  The solution is not in the United States' stop of their behavior, because it is not clear why they would do it and in the name of what they would be asked to no longer apply a lawful and applicable legal requirement against corruption. The extraterritorial scope of their legal system will not diminish: if the criterion of a use of their currency was losing its force, for example by the use of a currency other than the dollar, the use of a means of digital communication would suffice to produce the legal attachment giving them competence. And who does not send emails by Gmail? does not used a data by Outlook? does not transfer a photo by Apple? A first solution could be in the cessation by the French and European companies of behaviors that make them amenable to such legal mechanisms. If that were not possible in fact, because it would be accepted that corruption is the real norm of the world (but then it would be a little less to proclaim the glory of business ethics and other Corporate Social Responsibility or to at the very least, not be surprised if one finds that some people are singing false⁵On this core question of credibility in Compliance Law, see Frison-Roche, M.-A., Compliance and Trust, 2017. , and even if this is indeed possible and because it is necessary by the Law to tend to this, because the breaches of probity do not neither economically nor ethically desirable, Europe needs to have the same legal capacity to hold any company accountable in this Compliance area. When the Alstom case unfolded, French Law did not allow it. But since French Law has evolved. By the so-called French "Sapin 2 Act" and precisely in reaction to this power that the United States derives from their legal systeme, France has adopted a legal mechanism which, thanks notably to the Agence Française Anticorruption -AFA (French Anti-Corruption Agency), is more offensive than its American model⁶For a demonstration in this sense, v. Duchaine, Ch., Les causes et les objectifs d'une Europe de la Compliance, Pour une europe de la Compliance, Journal of Regulation & Compliance, 12 April 2018. .  What the Alstom case showed is this: for the moment, Europe is destitute, we must de jure and de facto construct the Europe of Compliance. -