Arrested for using Linux and encryption in France [video]
youtube.com
youtube.com
Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_December_2020_incident
tl;dr:
- The primary reason for their arrest wasn't the Linux/encryption tools.
- They were under investigation / suspicion after volunteering for a Kurdish militant group.
Secondarily to the above, the prosecution used their encryption/etc, (in a case of bad logic) as further post-hoc evidence or cause for suspicion.
In my opinion, omitting the primary causes here is intentionally muddying the issue, and making it sound like encryption itself was the cause.
*Caveats:*
- Yes, the prosecution clearly don't understand the technology, and obviously don't care to know.
- Yes, they are implying that use of encryption itself is due to "needing to hide something".
- Yes, they're implicating innocent (AKA "normal") use of encryption as something bad, and that's a problem.
Source please.
https://www.lepoint.fr/societe/ces-jeunes-partis-combattre-l...
https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/010919/ces-re...
As for the Wikipedia source, if you read the full article (it's not too big, give it a try) it can be interpreted differently from "fighting for the same cause as the group" compared with "volunteering to join forces with the group" when put side by side with the OP's statement that I asked sources for. One thing is to do a one off action in association with a specific group, another is to fully volunteer towards the group. Hence why I wanted more sources to disambiguate the word "volunteer".
Thank you for doing the research and not just upvoting due to click bait.
In 2009, Boston College police used a suspect's use of Linux and the command line in a warrant application on the basis that it was a sign of possible criminal activity.[^1]
I don't expect law enforcement to be experts, but can you at least ask your local IT guy to sanity check your work first?
[1]: https://slate.com/technology/2013/07/bradley-manning-and-the...
The HN crowd probably wildly overestimates the knowledge of the "average" IT guy, especially the kind working for local government.
Plenty of people use wget in a mundane fashion where they may want to automate or test stuff that is in no way illicit hacking, but likewise, malicious threat actors can have a field day with it. It's essentially a morally neutral tool with possibilities.
The "proofs" for conspiracy were apparently very light and the fact that the accused had used privacy protection measures, like instructions for a de-Google'd smartphone, Tails, TOR and encryption, were apparently enough to sue, detain and to have the DGSI investigate... I wonder what would happen if a similar case happens in the U.S.: they would have perhaps been suggested to have a plea bargain and plead guilty and serve X years in prison, and maybe liberated after Y years for good conduct. But, oh wait, being convicted of terrorism actually sentences you to 30 years[1] in the U.S. so you'll most likely rot in a cell and be forgotten by everyone except your captors.
[1]: https://code.dccouncil.gov/us/dc/council/code/sections/22-31...
People convicted for Jan 6 Capitol attacks are looking at 18 years[1] at least
[1]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/oath-keepers-founder-s...
Just a clarification that it appears to be 16 months of isolation and intense privations, not just any form of detention. And the State was condemned to a few thousand euros damages that's ridiculous.
> I wonder what would happen if a similar case happens in the U.S.
Ask Leonard Peltier or Mumia Abu Jamal. They are the "modern" equivalent of Sacco & Vanzetti or the 5 Haymarket Affair anarchists condemned to death. The US Justice system is very well-known for producing fake evidence to get rid of political opponents. That being said, as a french person i can't say anything better about the french justice system.
We may have technology now, but what’s clear is that the human nature that lead to the witch hunts several hundreds of years ago still exists.
No. The people arrested in that case were anarchists and had varying levels of engagement for social change. The main defendant, who this article talks about, was a vocal opponent of the State and state-sponsored injustices (police abuse, social inequalities, etc).
Whether he actually planned attacks against the State as he is accused of, i don't know although the fact all the accused were liberated tends to show the police had nothing against them. But even if these police fantasies were true, any damage he could do by attacking eg. a police station would be nothing compared to the millions of people who suffer/die every year do to french imperialism and its racist and ecocidal policies.
I hate gov.s as much as the next guy, but the rant is off-topic here.
The main problem is that they try to formulate simple encryption in a criminalizing way, which can lead to bigger problems if it becomes a widely accepted view.
I don't mean to be rude, but you sound extra sure while your message is wrong on two counts:
- the suspects are all anarchists, except for one person who might identify as a trotskyist ; the support networks that grew for the 8/12 case also grew in the anarchist milieu for this reason (i don't have an english source for this, but if you read french the mediaslibres.org planet would contain plenty of information about this)
- only one suspect was involved in the kurdish liberation struggle, and that's definitely not what any of them was accused of although that's probably what triggered the investigation ; they were accused of planning attacks against the french empire (not the civilian population)
> The main problem is that they try to formulate simple encryption in a criminalizing way
I agree.
PS: "anarchist" is not insult it's a political orientation. I myself am an anarchist.
[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affaire_du_8_d%C3%A9cembre_202...
They were then arrested preemptively (after the surveillance was retroactively authorized by a judge!) and one member was held in solitary for 16 months. Despite all that, the prosecutors apparently couldn't find an actual plot to accuse them of planning, so they're pointing at their use of Tor and Signal instead. It's pathetic.
them fighting alongside YPG has nothing to do with why they were arrested, it's just backstory.
That's not correct. One person fought against Daech in Syria, then a few years later a dozen persons get arrested ; most of them don't know one another. You can't really talk about a "group" and certainly can't say they took arms when only one of them did (and for an arguably very good cause which was approved by the State on paper).
I agree with you the video title is misleading, though.
Getting arrested for it is beyond lousy, as many other IT professionals will be doing the same things because they're industry standards. :(
Microkernel, multiserver, capabilities.
https://community.qbix.com/t/the-coming-war-on-end-to-end-en...
We need plausible deniability and a way to hide that these tools are even being used.
(nsfw... if you can't open it, the url explains it all)
There should be a way to make the Tails OS in such a way that each time the USB is plugged in, the contents of the flash drive are moved to your computer RAM, so that if you plug it off without running `shutdown` explicitly, not only you'll shut the computer down in 2 seconds, but your USB is also clean. The `shutdown` command being run with the USB still plugged in then copies the image from RAM back to your thumb drive. Your non-destructive shutdown routine will obviously take a lot longer though.
The fact that you've got valuable data on the "boring" volume is enough to explain why it is encrypted.
If you use an amnesic OS that does not right to the USB and is read only on the hidden volume, you won't be racking up the SMART data clocks on write cycles when within the "interesting" volume, making it look completely like a passive USB, sat there looking pretty and gathering dust just holding your wallets.
But even then, you could explain any high usage in the SMART data as it being a random USB you had lying around that you used to use daily, that you decided to throw your wallets on. The SMART data is not timestamped, it's just a total cumulative counter that goes up over the entire life of the device.
There are quite a few people in the whole process from surveillance to arresting and detaining them, that should have noticed, that they did nothing illegal (or atleast are employed there to be the ones who should be noticing stuff like this).
Engineer builds a house, uses way less material then needed to be safe, because it saves money,... then house collapses, engineer knew (or should have known) how much concrete/rebar is needed, still approved it, criminal negligence, jail. Why not the same for police, prosecutors, judges, etc.?
If you are doing something smaller personal means that just happens to be against the law, if you have to resort to plausible deniability, you already fucked up in a lot of ways. The sad truth is that many of the "hackers" are like a few steps away from being script kiddies, without basic understanding of opsec. The actual good people all realized that its much easier to go white hat and get paid reliable salary and live a comfortable life rather than fight an ideological war that doesn't matter in the end.
Normal everyday OS in Main encrypted volume, then your secret hidden OS in the hidden volume.
Should someone make you divulge your password, you give them the one to get access to the normal boring mundane volume, and they have no proof that the other volume exists.