"I think we have good intelligence services, and intelligence services are a necessity in any society," Bono said. "But we are not dealing with intelligence here."

Human Rights Watch recently cited Ganczarski's case in a report critical of France's counter-terrorism laws.

The group warned that France's expansive use of the law was stretching the legal system to the breaking point by undermining the rights of suspects, using information allegedly obtained by torture in questionable countries and rounding up innocent men.

Shapiro said, however, that the very openness of Ganzarski's upcoming trial was one example of the strength of the system.

"A not-guilty verdict, as much as a guilty verdict, can be a success by showing that the system is not a rubber stamp," he said.

Experts such as Shapiro and James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the U.S. probably wouldn't embrace France's tougher domestic-intelligence system.

"There's a limit to what we can do on domestic intelligence," Lewis said.

To contain terrorist threats, France relies on a broad racketeering-style law that allows police to imprison people who are loosely affiliated with suspects. That, critics say, casts too wide a net.

Human Rights Watch said that suspects in France had been arrested and jailed, often for years, because they were part of a hiking group with a suspected terrorist or because they went to the same pizzeria in the low-income Paris suburbs famous for making pizzas with meat specially prepared for Muslim devotees.

"It is true that French secret services have been one of the most efficient, but the price is high," said William Bourdon, a veteran human-rights attorney in Paris. "What is the price of efficiency if you simultaneously contribute to worsening the feeling of persecution and stigmatization that provides arguments for Salafists in little clandestine mosques north of Paris, who use this bitterness to recruit new people?"

Bruguiere contended that French successes in combating terrorism haven't come at the expense of human rights.

"I think the United States understands, seven years after Sept. 11, that the systems implemented by President Bush are no longer acceptable," he said. "So the next administration understands that the French system is very efficient. And there is no gap between legality and efficiency. You can be very efficient in the framework of the law."