Comment by h0l0cube | Hacker News Reader

Comment by h0l0cube | Hacker News Reader

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> the people arrested have a far left ideology, have been to Syria to fight against the Islamic state, own weapons and encrypt all of their communications

Is there a place where we can read more about this? The article seems to explain none of that context, it only purports that people are suspicious and can be arrested for simply having good 'digital hygiene'.

Edit: Some relevant passages from TFA

> Likewise, the critical attitude towards technologies, and in particular to Big Tech (Google, Amazon, Facebook Apple and Microsoft, GAFAM), is considered as a sign of radicalisation. Among the questions asked to the defendants, one can read: Are you anti-GAFA?”, “What do you think of GAFA?” or “Do you feel a certain reserve towards communication technologies?”.

> These questions are to be read in light of one report from the DGSI titled “The ultra-left movement”, which states that “members” of this movement are alledgedly showing “a great culture of secrecy […] and a certain reserve towards technology”.

Don't see any mention of Syria or weapons.

> “members” of this movement are alledgedly showing “a great culture of secrecy […] and a certain reserve towards technology”.

So caring about one's human right to privacy is a "culture of secrecy" now

The desire to be alone has been scientifically proven to be a disease of the mind and a sure sign of antisocial tendencies. (s,lr,d)

Ah yes, because Signal is famously the app you use to be alone and not interact with anyone else

Well the intelligence community certainly is feeling snubbed.

I don't know how you jumped from "privacy" to "desire to be alone", those two things are barely related. Locking the toilet door isn't antisocial and talking to someone in private isn't either.

I believe the French Wikipedia page[0] is the most comprehensive place to get information on the subject. There is also a, much shorter, English page[1].

[0]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affaire_du_8_d%C3%A9cembre_202... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_December_2020_incident

Does the OP article refer to this specific incident? Or is this a larger phenomenon?

It refers to this specific incident (the OP article is even mentioned at the end of the French Wikipedia page[0]).

[0]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affaire_du_8_d%C3%A9cembre_202...

The op article is specifically about the 8th of December 2020 incident, from beginning to end.

However, it does make the point that it is akin to "L'affaire de Tarnac" that lasted from 2008 to 2018.

I don't know about this concrete case (and my french is not good enough to find out with ease) - but the context is likely, that they joined the YPG at some point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Defense_Units

It was/is a weird situation. They are very anticapitalist and marxist with some anarchist elements, but they got western support when they were fighting ISIS (and to some extent Assad/Putin) in Syria.

So in Syria communist rebells got US weapons and I believe US troops are still on the ground helping them. But back home in the west, those activists get prosecuted, because the PKK (the mother organisation of YPG) is considered a terrorist organisation (and likely they still are doing terrorism, even though it is of course a "separate" organisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan_Freedom_Hawks)

> Likewise, the critical attitude towards technologies, and in particular to Big Tech (Google, Amazon, Facebook Apple and Microsoft, GAFAM)

Like more than half of HackerNews :/

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