Criminalization of encryption in France: the 8 December case | Hacker News Reader

Criminalization of encryption in France: the 8 December case

laquadrature.net

53 pointsfold310 comments

It's part for the course in a country that bans paternity testing (to "protect the unity of families"! ) [0]

[0] https://idtodna.com/paternity-test-in-france/

Indeed, when you are married, you're the father. Abortion is the women's decision only.

The father used to have 14 days off when his baby was born, now it is 1 month, but it is still not as long as the mother's leave (very far from the 14 months in Germany to share between the parents as they want).

It is interesting that this case has apparently been dubbed according to the arrest date, which should be well-known throughout the Francophone world as the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, especially strongly associated with Bernadette Soubirous of Lourdes. What's that got to do with crypto and cyberterrorism? Left as an exercise for the reader.

Just don't get married then?

how would that ensure paternity

Wild.

If the true picture were to be revealed, I suspect it would cause an enormous disturbance in society. Poor dads, they should for sure check that their kids are really theirs

Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_December_2020_incident

Can anyone familiar with this matter provide some context?

I'm having a hard time understanding what is happening here.

The article appears to have been autotranslated or at the very least written by a french person who doesn't have a very solid grasp on english (the very french use of the future tense jumps out)

Bear in mind all that follows is context from the same article, and La Quadrature Du Net is very opinionated. I have done no fact checks on this.

Several people have been arrested and will be on trial in december for the nebulous charge of "being a group of people with the intention of committing criminal terrorism", a charge that is normally reserved for when you find a bunch of terrorists in an appartment and you don't want to go about proving that every single one of them is a terrorist. The reason given by the police is that they are apparently engaging in very secretive behavior, such as encrypting their android phones (default since android 8 iirc), using e2e ecrypted messaging apps, using TOR and Tails, and teaching others how to do all of that. Notice that the police has failed to actually give a reason on what terrorism they're planning on doing, citing their use of Signal as the reason they're unable to find what it is.

This disregards the fact that these people also use unencrypted SMS as does most of western europe, and that 5 out of 6 of them have given them access to the phones used to access signal, which means they can read the messages (In France, you do not have the right to not give the police your phone password. Failure to do so when asked (read: whenever you're arrested for any reason including being at a protest - Fun!) Usually results in more charges being tacked on, which are thrown out a fair chunk of the time).

Ultimately it seems from this article that the police saw these people engaging in behavior that looked suspicious because criminals use encryption (disregard that a lot of people use encryption) and were overzealous in arresting them, propmting them to produce any reason for doing so and turning this police error into a landmark case for the right to use encryption. We shall see in december (more likely far later due to appeals, this isn't going to be a fast trial) whether or not math is outlawed de jure or not.

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