In the seven years since September 11 2001, western public opinion has been happily married to programmes of surveillance and domestic intelligence-gathering. Outrage in France this week over a new police database is evidence of a seven-year itch. When the interior ministry merged two of its intelligence agencies in June, it announced the setting up of Edvige, a database of “individuals, groups, organisations and entities ... that might endanger public order”. Edvige would cover three classes: dangerous individuals (as young as 13), candidates for sensitive jobs (such as those requiring security clearances) and virtually all public figures (those who have “sought, held or are holding a political, labour or economic office or who play a significant institutional, economic, social or religious role”).

Edvige would organise data on the religious, political and philosophical beliefs, ethnic background, sex lives and health of an estimated 1m-2m people. It would contain information about their families and relationships. That is more information than French people were comfortable with giving up. Opposition gathered quietly over the summer – quietly enough that President Nicolas Sarkozy seems to have been taken by surprise. Dozens of associations and unions and 140,000 petition-signers now demand that Edvige be scrapped or modified, and a day of mobilisation has been planned for October 16 in case it is not. Some of Mr Sarkozy’s own ministers have aired misgivings. By midweek, Edvige had few supporters anywhere in French politics. Mr Sarkozy called for “consultations” and hinted he would revisit parts of the package. It is a defeat for Mr Sarkozy. But it is only a partial victory for civil liberties.