This article is a sensationalist piece with very little content, the HN headline is misleading (the words "tax" and "monitor" do not appear anywhere on the target webpage), and the comments are impassioned soapbox generalizations. This is HN at its worst.
This article, posted to g8internet.com, from the Italian newspaper la Republicca, by internet reporter Arturo Di Corinto, provides more detailed arguments and a generous use of footnotes and citations - http://www.repubblica.it/tecnologia/2011/05/01/news/sarkozy_...
Hopefully more pieces like that will be found and added to the growing repository at the site.
As far as headline, I took that from an article by Dominic Basulto which I submitted separately here - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2581175 - apologies for any confusion.