Lawmakers in France Move to Vastly Expand Surveillance
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
While the most preeminent french hosting and cloud providers (OVH, Online, Gandi, Alter Way...) have been quite vocal about the issue, none of the big french telcos (Orange, SFR, Bouygues) have said a single word about it. Shame on them!
900 tech companies, research organisations, and trade associations (so far) have asked the government to reconsider the law proposal (http://ni-pigeons-ni-espions.fr/en/), with not success, obviously. Several organisations I'm part of (including the two companies I have founded) where part of the movement, of course.
There is still some hope that the law will be modified, by the french Senate, or that it will be censored by the french Constitutional Council, or the European Court of Human Rights.
We also plan to start evangelising people on the use of VPNs.
I'd rather have Putin spy on me, than my own governement, or its allies. He has far less influence over my life, and I doubt that french and russian intelligence are cooperating.
I wouldn't be so sure, as France and Russia have a long, special history of diplomatic ties, dating as far back as when both were among the most influential countries of the Old World.
You guys build warships for Putin's war machine which is murdering civilians in Ukraine, something the French knew they were going to empower someday with arms like these. You don't buy helicarriers for defense, you buy them to easily attack your neighbors. Ties between these two nations go back hundreds of years. I would absolutely not assume the FSB and DGSE/DGSI aren't talking. I would assume they are bosom buddies.
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/russia-to-order-french-m...
Countries with militaries that enable each other have tight intel relationships. This French/Russia rivalry is non-existant.
I think we are between a rock and a hard place here. I'd be willing to use a VPN in a non-cooperating country to evade state surveillance, but it is hard to make sure that you don't fall prey to non-state (or even maybe state) actors.
One thing which I'm wondering is how can this go ahead if they want to stay aligned with EU regulation. Wouldn't such a move automatically violate the "Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC" ? [0]
If this moves forward I'll move the company to Germany because giving any more tax-Euros to such a government would feel like supporting a Stasi like apparatus. Also if this gets implemented then good luck for the future when Marie Le Pen's far right government gains further power in this economy (and they will because France is doing too little too late to recover from the mess they're in).
Also the standardization body (ETSI) which does a lot of the global technical specs (3gpp) for mobile and M2M is keeping quiet on the topic of building privacy into the standards. I have brought up the lack of privacy focus in several work groups but somehow this is not a topic that gets addressed at all. Mentioned chairmen are of course deeply ingrained in the telco industry which again is in bed with government. And from a sales/marketing perspective it's easier to build/sell features such as Lawful Interception (LI) or Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) rather than a product which refuses to do something (such as pass on private data)
The Charlie Hebdo team would turn in their graves if they'd know what kind of aftermath their deaths caused. It makes me sick beyond words.
Online.NET is a big TelCo as well fyi. They own http://mobile.free.fr/ etc.
But yeah, I've dropped my OVH/Online.net servers in favor of more Hetzner nodes with the exception of their S3 competitors [I just can't find any equivalent price/performance/availability]. That and I front end the S3 competitors anyway via a CDN over https which I think is fine with this legal framework [it just sniffs unencrypted traffic iirc]
If you are making that kind of switch and are looking for bootstrapping automation for bare metal nodes at Hetzner:
https://github.com/asconix/hetzner-bootstrap-coreos
https://github.com/rmoriz/hetzner-bootstrap
From the first article, written in February (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/mar/05/france-...):
"[After the Prime Minister's speech], to the nation’s surprise, the deputies [in the French National Assembly] broke spontaneously and unanimously into the Marseillaise, the first time this had happened since the signing of the armistice ending World War I in 1918.
"On the question of security, this unity is likely to last. There is a solid consensus that more resources will have to be devoted to tracking suspected terrorists and monitoring the Internet for signs of trouble. Legislation will be required to give the government sufficient legal leeway to accomplish that, which it will get, since all parties recognize the deficiencies yet none wants to reproduce the American Patriot Act."
I had to read the article twice to begin to understand the French situation. There are parallels to the American case, but the French situation is unique, and in some ways more genuinely pressing than the American case. I urge the mostly American commenters here to not just draw the crude parallel and stop there.
One point of difference is the special role the schools have, in France, of imparting a republican ideal. Another is the traditionally strong centralizing role of the national state in French schools, and culture more generally. And finally, there is the proximity, in all senses of the term, of France to North Africa.
The laws that were passed have very little to do with the attacks. All people are saying is, if the executive power wants to spy, and they can already, they need a court order. Increasing executive powers without checks and balances only leads to tyranny and despotism.
When Obama allows drone assassinations, he is killing in your name - assuming you are american. Today it's in Yemen, tomorrow in Canada, in 10 years in US ... These people that failed protecting us at first place don't need more power, they need less. And it's well known that you stop terrorism with human intelligence, not with spying everybody at the source.
It boils down to this: If you're a freedom fighter/terrorist on the internet then you're there because the government's cost-benefit analysis favours you being there. Sometimes that's as innocent as the government having principles, avoiding bad PR or collateral damage, but if you're allowed to be on the internet then you're either not quite dangerous enough or the government's too weak technically or politically to shut you down (not relevant for those in the semi-developed world).
In most democracies, the state cannot open your mail or tap your phone without a warrant. But for some reason it's fair game to tap all your electronic communications. The sort of things that this law enables is nothing short of forcing all libraries, bookshops and newsagents to ask your ID when you pick a book or newspaper, keep records of what you read and send them to the state. Imagine how this would have gone in the sixties when you had strong political clashes in the society, whether it was leftists or social rights movements.
I think the issue is that the cynicism and short-termism of French politicians is combined with a lack of understanding of the technology (even today that generation and social group barely uses internet) to form a perfect storm.
I'm not advanced on the topic, but as I understand Hong Kong is protesting against the corruption of their new owner, China. And 25 years ago in China was Tianenmen, where the regimen squashed the revolution.
Yes Internet helps centralization too. It matches the concentration of money seen with the new enormous tech corporations.
The irresistible surveillance machine is currently more in the hands of the corporation owners: Facebook has mapped every relationships between people in the world. I'm wondering whether the NSA has a better knowledge than us on our own citizen's communications. I'm wondering whether the NSA provides information to the French government about those communications.
In the two centuries prior to WW2, Europe was dominated by dictators and monarchies. Afterward, the entire region was remodeled on American style government representation, modern central banking, market economies and so on.
Behaviorally for example, they followed the US into a global war on drugs that has been an epic failure, and fortunately they're going to follow the US back out of it too.
They followed the US into a global war on terrorism, that mostly consists of cracking down on domestic freedom in the false name of security.
The US isn't responsible for what France is doing, but the US is leading the so called free world down the wrong path.
In the two centuries prior to WW2, Europe was dominated by dictators and monarchies. Afterward, the entire region was remodeled on American style government representation, modern central banking, market economies and so on.
France had a populist revolution around the same time as the US, then got swept up in Napoleonic dreams of empire, then got rid of Napoleon. The country is not reliant on the US for a political identity for for economic ideas - indeed France has long rejected the conventional wisdom of 'Anglo-Saxon capitalism'. As far as things like spying and surveillance go, the French have been doing that sort of thing for centuries. Get hold of a copy of Les Liaisons Dangereuses which is a a manual of psychological warfare and intrigue dressed up as a sexploitation story.
Behaviorally for example, they followed the US into a global war on drugs that has been an epic failure, and fortunately they're going to follow the US back out of it too.
To some extent, but you seem to be overlooking the fact that other countries had chips on their shoulders about drugs for their own reasons, eg China's experience int he opium wars of the 19th century has informed the attitudes of most SE Asian countries about drugs and goes a lot farther towards explaining their extremely hardline attitudes towards drug trafficking than US leadership in that area.
I get the point you are trying to make, but I think you should broaden your historical perspective.
No, not really. The dominant form of government in Europe is the parliamentary republic (several at the backdrop of constitutional/ceremonial monarchies), compared to the more unique federalist model of the United States where there is a strict separation between the union and localities, and the President being the head executive as opposed to a Prime Minister.
Europe was also quicker to apply mixed market principles and has generally been higher on the dirigisme aspect (even though the US is hardly some paragon of non-interventionism itself).
Central banking was initially a European (British, I think?) invention.
You mean "parliamentary democracy" (which is a subtype of representative democracy), not "parliamentary republic". "Republic" specifically means the absence of a monarch, which, as you note, is not a feature of many of the systems at issue.
(Some, however, are republics, as well as parliamentary democracies.)
> Central banking was initially a European (British, I think?) invention.
The Bank of England wasn't the first central bank (Sweden, at least, had one first), though its often credited as being the dominant model for later central banks. It does seem to be a European invention.
As far as I know, both are true; most European countries nowadays are republics. There are only 12 monarchies in Europe, and three (Andorra, Monaco and the Vatican) are micronations.
I noticed that popular US fictions show cannabis in a very good light. For instance, Sergent Baptista in Dexter smokes a joint in his car after work, and it's cool. Or Brody's teenage daughter in Homeland smoke weed with her friend, and although it's frowned upon, it's apparently not that big of a deal. And the list goes on...
Eventually, I believe these fictions will lead to a better acceptation, and possibly legalization of cannabis in other countries (such as France) which are still very much opposed to it.
That'll tear down a lot of the global war on drugs, including a lot of financial & trade pressure systems that have been put into place to enforce it.
As that happens - and we're already seeing it now - more countries will feel free to liberalize on drug policies, no longer fearing US reprisal or group-pressure tactics. France will be surrounded by countries that legalize or at least de-criminalize marijuana heavily, and they'll follow suit (they'll practically have to, whether they get out in front of it, or are dragged that direction by cultural forces greater than their own politics).
By the time the U.S backpedal, the rest of the world will 'enjoy' false security measures.
I suppose it starts with a VPN service. I use VPNs occasionally, but never in a systematic way. How convenient are they in term of reliability and performance? then, what about gmail? are there other email providers that offer better privacy guarantees and offer a comparable service?
It's not like spy agency analysts target only some people and when they are in their offices and see some encrypted traffic from someone they go: "AHA! This guy uses encryption - let's monitor his (encrypted) communications and his metadata!"
It's more like everyone's wide-open communications are monitored in real-time and automatically searched for keywords. Not using encryption makes you more exposed and vulnerable to mass surveillance, not less, because everything is exposed by default without encryption and everything is searched.
It doesn't matter whether you're plotting an attack or "only talking about cats (therefore they can't possibly be interested in what I'm saying!)". It doesn't work like that, because there isn't a human that does the automatic searching, but software.
To make it even simpler: it's like law enforcement saying "hmm, this guy put curtains on his windows - he must have something to hide! Let's watch him more closely to see where he's going when he leaves the house, and such"
vs
you going to law enforcement and giving them a daily report of what you've been doing, as well as full recordings of everything you talked about.
Which is worse?
Of course we don't have the luxury of leaked French docs, but in the absence of data, we shouldn't automatically leap to the position supported by the least amount of evidence.
[1] Selectors used: https://prod01-cdn00.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/20...
Well, that's just downright untrue.
I have hoped learning from the mistakes the US gov made after 9/11 would be the one good thing coming out of 9/11.
French services has immense new legal authorities and permissive operating environment. They lack access to the financial resources and technical capacities of the NSA and GCHQ.
It seems inevitable that French Services will invite in the NSA to make best use of their new legal authorities. Soon they will find that NSA's primary customers are able to get intelligence at will on internal French matters.
I am a huge fan of Katherine Austin Fitts (solari.com) and while she discusses this type of policy that is harmful to average people, she makes the good point that there is not much to be done about it so it is better adapt to a non optimal world in ways we can control: understanding how central banks and the financial systems work, understand governments' desire for population control, etc.
I have mostly worked remotely as a consultant since 1997 and any prohibition against routine encryption would make it difficult for me to do business. I expect to see a trend where more small countries promote privacy and more secure non hacked by government infrastructure in an attempt at being more competitive, business wise.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/state-sponsored-terrorism-who-w...
PS: this comment will likely be censored
Extraordinary claims like this require extraordinary evidence. You haven't provided anything like that, merely a much more complex explanation than the obvious one.
That said: while I can't substantiate the specifics of OP's claims, there is sufficient evidence at least for the plausibility of false flag attacks by US agencies [1] [2]. While this doesn't tell us anything about more recent events, it's sufficient that we shouldn't be too quick to denounce the idea as mere paranoia. People who work in government and military institutions are still people, and humans are capable of rationalizing all sorts of horrendous atrocities.
That's pretty damn close to what iuyoiuyy is talking about. Razor thin distinction between FBI and intelligence agencies excepted.
> it's been established beyond doubt that in the USA the
> FBI basically creates terrorists
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/03/16/howthefbicreat...
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/25/isis-material-...
That this keeps happening is well documented. Just read some of the criminal complaints filed by the FBI themselves: the truth is out there, Scully ;)
I don't find it at all impossible that governments would resort to tactics like false flags. I don't find it to be an 'extraordinary' claim, just... a claim. I'd consider it if I saw at least some credible evidence. But in this case I just don't see much evidence at all beyond suspicion and innuendo.
That and false flags really aren't necessary. There are enough fanatics out there. Governments just have to wait for one of them to do something and then take advantage of it to push the agenda. No need to take the immense risk of forcing it when independent actors will do it for you if given enough time.
Furthermore just because two masked men kills innocent people that does not imply anything about who commit the crime. Your "obvious" belief is only obvious because it's what you want to believe.
All you have to do is look at what independent investigators like Chossudovsky have found and it immediately becomes clear it was a false flag.
Look at the Germanwings plane crash that happened recently. At first a lot of people were convinced that the action had been carried out by radical Islamists, because such people have a track record of that sort of activity and terrorism in general in recent years.When it turned out to be a white German guy, some people were sure that he was a recent convert to Islam or something - which was a possibility worthy of consideration but not of certitude. When it further turned out that he was a neurotic and depressed guy going through anxiety about his eyesight and the impact that it might have on his career, a few of the people who really really believed int he Islamic terrorist idea started talking about how it was a big cover-up. It's possible they're right, but it's much more likely that they're just imagining it.
I agree that it's possible that this is a false flag operation. The French security services have crossed the line into unethical behavior on previous occasions. There's also a high degree of xenophobia in French culture for various socioeconomic reasons, and in difficult economic times (like now) it's certainly more politically convenient to whip up anxiety about wicked foreigners than to take up the politically unpalatable task of structural reform. Thus, the motivation to carry out false flag operations certainly exist.
But motivation isn't evidence. Otherwise you could take my bank statements and say 'oh, you had a mediocre economic situation lately, I guess you had motivation to rob that bank last week, didn't you? Didn't you?!' And so on. It's good to be skeptical and examine inconsistencies or oddities in the way news stories are reported. But reasoning from the existence of such things to a firm conclusion about what happened can be just as misleading as unquestioning acceptance of claims by authority figures. For one thing, it depends on the false premise that people in authority never make stupid mistakes, so that if they say something which later turns out not to be true, it must be because they were lying. In fact, people in authority are just as prone to jumping to conclusions, making mistakes, forgetting things, and saying whatever bullshit they think people want to hear as everyone else. So while they sometimes do lie, you should at least consider the possibility of simple incompetence first.
Don't fall into the trap of swapping one kind of credulity for another.
- in Paris, it's common to get robbed, and sometimes beaten up if you are not careful, and cops can do nothing. This is from a guy who went to school in Paris, I can't imagine what's it like to be a girl.
- some of the non-French speaking neighbourhoods are quite dangerous, even cops would avoid going there for their own safety.
- many people don't have ID, or use fake ID, so it's easy for criminals to get away.
Those lawmakers might be inspired by their American counterparts, but they definitely have some level of local support.
- there is a lot of criminality in Paris and suburbs, but I have been robbed only once, in a real shithole. There is a lot of white collar criminality too.
- there are no non-french neighborhood, most people have french citizenship, most immigrants are from a french speaking country, and even inside a high immigration area, since people are coming from different countries, french language still serves as a communication tool. You will find a foreign language inside a family, sometimes the women won't speak french, but certainly not an entire neighborhood (you will definitely hear some foreign languages in the streets). And contrary to popular belief, almost nobody speaks natively arabic, you will find popular arabic courses (because speaking arabic looks cool in somme communities, and for reading the koran), but very few native speakers.
- I'd be very interested in detailed stories of non-white looking people not carrying an ID in France, last time I heard of a brown guy not having an ID it was in the news because the guy was released in appeal: "looking north african does not constitute a reasonable suspicion" (first time ever in France that a racist targeting derails a procedure). It gives you the tonality of the police here. If's you're not white, don't drive a luxury car, you'll get harassed.
Don't go out without an ID if you're not white in France, never. They can and will detain you for 4h without any suspicion of crime. Since it's not a criminal procedure, you'll have no lawyer.
I'm white, I always go out without an ID, because of white privilege, but my mixed race nephew doesn't have that luxury.
(street cred: I lived in a Paris suburb from birth to 18yo, in a shitty area, then I considered my debt to society repaid and I lived everywhere but Paris)
The guy told me about the danger of Paris is not French, so are most of his friends. I imagine their ignorance about what's dangerous and what's not caused them to get in more troubles than locals like yourself.
in Corsica alone: there were 78 terror attacks in 2012, 21 in 2013, 12 in 2014.
And I can tell you that also there is a strong immigration community in Corsica (among mostly racist and weaponized natives, it must be "interesting"), most of that was done by traditional Corsicans.
Let's go to our other favorite terrorists: the Basques, basically there was a tacit agreement that they don't spill blood in France and they wouldn't be chased (it's over), so they were bombing and killing in Spain and taking refuge in France.
There were bomb attacks in Brittany too, but they are stopped.
A common interesting theme between those 3 terroristy regions: they just love speaking and "defending" a local language ... that is not French.
there are no such thing as "non-French speaking neighborhoods" in France.
But after some reading, it seems you are right, as people in the ghettos still speak French, and not necessarily fresh immigrants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_situation_in_the_French_...
To be fair, such "ghetto" (la cité) people† mostly don't speak "verlan"[1] ("l'envers" with reversed phonetic syllables) anymore, but both the people and slang is usually referred to as "wesh"[2], from an arabic informal salute interjection. It's mainly poorly syntactically and grammatically worded French combined with limited vocabulary and heavy hand gestures and exaggerated arabic accent borrowings (e.g Rs are more pronounced) with various word borrowings from English or Arab.
Interestingly enough, I watched it recently in close proximity with The Wire[3], which provided great contrast yet striking similarities, and brings an interesting light into how we used to consider surveillance. In that regard, things have changed a lot. An awful lot, and certainly not for the better.
† It should be noted that many people and families that live there have adequate education levels and just live there because the rent is cheap and they can't afford anything else.
[0]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113247/
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlan
In France it's Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, where they all speak good french and a local dialect of arabic (let's say 60% french speaking people in all 3 countries, declining towards the local dialect), so it's easy to get the French as a common idiom. So you have many languages, but it's easier for everybody to use French anyways.
On the food packages, the second most common language (often exactly the same size as the french) is ... Dutch ... Ok, we'll have to go north and speak about Belgium. Those packages are sold in all european French speaking countries (Luxembourg, Switzerland, France, Belgium, in one day of trucking you can cross the area). Of those countries only Belgium and Switzerland have another language as official language, and only Belgium require to have both of it's national languages on its packaging (another story of bigotry for next time).
One exception to the language distribution I talked about might be the Chinese community, being such a populous country, they can be enough immigrants in an area to avoid French altogether, I don't know them very well, they are very concentrated in small areas, and I don't know if they speak both mandarin and cantonese, or if the majority is from only one linguistic area. But I'm pretty sure the kids speak french at school, it's mandatory and in French here.
Manhattan's Chinatown is pretty small (the Mandarin-speaking Chinatown out in Queens is much larger), and yet there are people born and raised there who only speak Cantonese.
http://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2015/05/06/en-20...
In other words, murders and voluntary homicides have regressed by 65% over the last 20 years in the Paris Region.
And yes, there are indeed very poor and gloomy immigrant neighborhoods in France, with a higher crime rate (mostly drug traffic), where cops are not welcome. How bad are those places? depending on their political views, some tell you that these are islamist war zones and other say that these are happy melting pots.
This, and the question of immigration is a very sensitive issue in France, and people are extremely divided about it.
???
Do you know what the area this friend spoke of was ???
Serious question.
I am French, lives in a mixed ethnic suburb south of Paris and knows well Paris, lived in silicon valley for three years too. In Paris, I don't know such a thing as non French speaking neighbourhood, meaning a place where you could speak French without the vast majority of people capable of answering you in perfect non accented French. There are places that you could call ethnic with a majority of (French) people of non european descent. I don't know about any nogozone contrary to the map presented by Fox. The original map was probably about something, but it's your guess. Places where housing is substandard, probably.
If you are a girl, expect cat calls from young boys. People lets their dog shit everywhere (that has been worse in the past). If you go in touristic places, watch your wallet and count your change. Touristic places are for tourists so you will find your Mac Donalds and Star Bucks. Prêt à porter with sky high price, too. Boring. Expensive. Like any town, there are places whee there are all sort of traffics. News at eleven. Stay away. Unlike many towns in the US, the regular police is not militarized. In fact, municipal polices are not allowed to carry guns. Better to be white or be a tourist with the police if you don't want you id often asked for, but beating to death are very rare.
There may place where cops don't go but that may have to do with real estate speculation and future gentrification. Forty years ago, Near Gare Montparnasse, they did let rot a whole area, so they could cheaply expropriate lower middle class people. The police station was 100 meters away. When construction started they dumped the squatters. I know for a fact, I rented a place as a student then. Now, you can buy a nice flat here with people like you, if you have the money.
But please don't listen on @cnn or @fox the crap from jewish supremacists like @pamelageller or @rabbischmulley who don't know anything about France, and probably never set foot there. Better for @pamelageller, because by French standards, she looks like a hooker. Contrary to what @rabbischmulley said, there was no progrom avoided by police but a street fight initiated by jewish supremacists. This was provoked in a street with a synagogue but the rabbi of the said synagogue said it was never a target. French press was not so forthcoming with the truth. Contrary to what @pamelaGeller says, France is not surrounded by ennemies (supposedly arabs). Does she know that France is in Europe and only 10% of its population is originally from Maghreb.
Criminality wise, Paris is a very average town, except for disenfranchised population of arabic origin who have taken twice the street with French people against Israel exaction in Gaza.
I am fed up of the press that takes France in hostage because Israel chooses to systemically violates international laws and at the same time wants to portrays jews as victims and arabs as terrorists. After the terrorist attack against the kasher store, there was a lot of incidents against arabs. Usually not reported, excepted when a comic strike like a girl whose robe was too long and was deemed ostentasiously religious. Every incident involved a jew is reported. Police takes them very seriously. Too much maybe, some (very few) of them have proven to be fake. A major incident is immediately deformed by people like @pamelageller and @rabbischmuley. Apparently, @cnn is not even capable to run google translate on a random french paper to confront them.
Recently a "grand Paris" project has been voted. If you see the map, almost a whole departement (county) has been left out except from the transportation for Charles de Gaulle Airport. Also, Minister of education accepts unqualified teachers for the same departement. That's a sad choice, and 20 years down the roads, we will blame the victims. We had institutions that worked and are slowly dismantling them.
As tourist, you can eat cheap and good in ethnic places. In touristic places, usually neither.
Unlike some americans and their stars and stripes, French people don't have a French flag on their windows. They know about their past in the colonies. But breeding racist in the name of security works pretty well here too. When the rich need people redirect their frustration. nothing beats an internal enemy. And it's cheaper than to wage war outside. Not much left of the "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité". People don't know about Ayn Rand here. She is winning anyway. But when I hear about France on the american media, I have no fucking idea of what fantasmed country they are talking about.
Well that's the case, the Jews are pretty much victim of the islamic terrorism in France. It's easy to hide your antisemitism under the umbrella of anti zionism. Fact is it's harder to be a jew today than an arab in France.