French Constitutional Council Widely Approves Surveillance Law
laquadrature.net
laquadrature.net
The country has just reached a new low. I just hoped until the end that it would not pass but I was delusional. As a side effect, it's also going to destroy the few technological businesses we had left, like they needed that... I was really hoping that things would change and that the country could finally take advantage of massive amount of bright minds we have here... So much potential is wasted... Anyway, that will be for another year...
>> So much potential is wasted... That's the most tragic thing indeed. You can import food, clothes, cars and so on but you can't import talent. When it goes, it's final.
I also have a friend in Moscow I discuss with regularly. I can speak basic Russian but I don't mention it normally because it's really a Tarzan-like level, the language is really beautiful. I really hope things are going to improve there also. France is definitely not the place to go for IT, I'm sorry for that.
I've always liked France and its culture, and I speak French on some level, I guess that's why I take personally all bad things that I hear from France, as if they concerned mon pays natal.
If you'd like we could exchange privately, I could attempt to cheer you up (from the position of a person living in a place that has fallen much lower than yours), though I realize there's not much I can say to remedy the gloom you're seeing around you.
I did not expect political issues to get in the way. I did not think the misuses of our surveillance system would one day be even remotely on par with those of the US or the UK, to the point that I do not know today where my privacy is breached the more.
Of course we say "let's encrypt", we foster the use of Tor and the likes, but that misses the point. There should not even be a case for such a law which will help nothing but totalitarianism and is even a disincentive to investments in France. Still our politicians and administrations have paid little heed to La Quadrature du Net's and other actors' comments. Instead the government drafted this law in haste, seemingly to curtail the democratic process which should have taken place in its entirety, especially for a change that big regarding our freedom.
The way I see things, I have two options: leave for another country that still deems privacy as a fundamental liberty, or stay in France and get involved in politics in the hope that I can help reverse the current situation.
I do not think I have the skills to get involved in politics, nor do I have the desire to. I guess I will soon be part of their statistics on "brain drain", although right now I feel more ousted from France than attracted to anywhere else.
I feel similarly about Sweden. But assuming one does pack up and leave, where would one go? Without doing any real research on it I would have hoped that France, with it's strong historical record on liberty, would be a reasonably good option within Europe, but it seems that may have been no more than wishful thinking on my part.
That is an extremely good question and one that I've spent considerable time and funds on trying to answer.
In short:
Nowhere. There isn't a country that does not have some critical flaw in their political system. If a country without such flaws were come into being it would not last because a country that would 'play nice' with its citizens and that would be efficient with its funds would be over-run by more aggressive neighbors unless it were heavily fortified by natural barriers.
The countries that come closest to this in the world today are Iceland and Switzerland.
President Mitterrand was spying on anyone who could expose his lies (bigamy, fake medical certificates). President Hollande was spying on the discussion between former President Sarkozy and his attorney.
Even in the US, president Obama was using his own surveillance powers to expose the sources of political journalists.
It doesn't take a lot of imagination to consider how badly these laws can be abused.
I agree that surveillance authority should be tightly restricted, far more than it is today.
I'm just on false-equivalence watch. The investigation of Jeffrey Alexander Sterling does not sound equivalent to a sitting head of state snooping directly on his political rival and their lawyer.
And the protection of the sources that journalists enjoy is precisely because people leaking information to journalists are breaking laws and internal policies and would fear reprisals otherwise. This is an important counter-power.
To me, this makes sense. Literally anyone can be a journalist. Nobody elects them, and nothing but the market has any voice in what they do. I think it's better that way, too: you can see how fraught government involvement with even the most reputable state-sponsored media outlets can be.
> nothing but the market has any voice in what [journalists] do.
That "market" is pretty specific, and has a strong voice, though. Most media are owned by a few big corporations, and basically say what those corporations will allow them to say. Those who don't quickly find it much harder to sell ad space, their main source of income.
Corporation-sponsored media are structurally just as bad as state-sponsored ones. For practical purposes, they might even be a bit worse.
One way or another, independent journalism needs independent income.
I always found it quite ironic that their readership seems to feel like that guarantees impartiality.
On the subject of media bias, I suggest reading Matthew Gentzkow's work or even just a survey like this one: http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/shleifer/files/shleifer_cor...
TL;DR: Nope, ownership isn't the main factor in media bias.
"As important, Gentzkow and Shapiro [6] show that, after controlling for a newspaper’s audience, the identity of its owner does not affect its slant.1 Two newspapers with the same owner look no more similar in their slant than newspapers with different owners. Ownership regulation in the US and elsewhere is based on the premise a news outlet’s owner determines how it spins the news. Gentzkow and Shapiro produced the first large-scale test of this hypothesis, which showed that, contrary to the conventional wisdom and regulatory stance, demand is much more influential in shaping content than supply as proxied by ownership."
I don't know. I had 2 solutions in mind, and the rest of your comment suggests having the readers pay for the media doesn't work. The other solution I though of was basic income (it's the solution for many things.) Looks like true independence only comes from "fuck you money", that basic income would provide.
That said, even if your quote is accurate, owners of journals can just drop support if they notice they're talking to the wrong audience.
I guess this is time to escalate. Let's encrypt as much as we can. And maybe prepare for physical violence. This may get ugly in a few years.
However, I the twist seems to be in the word "susceptible": any encryption key is susceptible to be somehow used to commit a crime, while on the other hand a jury would probably "deny a request" of the authorities if they can't show enough evidences.
French here too... This law is sad but keep in mind that our justice is still the only place where they makes sense. Overall, our country is still a great place to live.
But I can't help but agree with Benjamin Bayart's analysis: we are currently living 3 major crises at the same time: the end of free energy (we are at peak oil already), the ecological crisis (worse than the one that destroyed the dinosaurs), and the internet (which fundamentally changes the way we communicate, and that our power structures).
I don't see how we can resolve this peacefully. If there's a solution, we'd better think of it real fast.
More specifically, consider how the US Supreme Court works. The Court's job isn't to decide what side is good and what side is evil. Their job is to determine what side is in accordance with the law, and if that law is consonant with our Constitution.
How similar to this is the French Constitutional Council? Were they given no choice, and forced to make an ugly decision because it is, indeed, what their Constitution allows?
If so, the answer isn't to bemoan the decision and criticize the Council, but to find a way to fix the French Constitution so that it no longer supports this decision.
We should also see the details of this decision. They may have interpreted the law (and documented that interpretation) in a way that makes it less unacceptable.
Also, there will a couple other recourse for that same law. It's not over yet.
There is a large movement in france to use encryption software. Hopefully this just fuels the fire.
Second, the only thing socialist about our government is the name. They're capitalists like the other big party.
This is France is it?
You'll see it's much more nuanced just by reading the second paragraph. The French system is usually known as "dirigisme".