France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone, spy on people
gazettengr.com
A bill that would allow police in France to spy on suspects by remotely activating cameras, microphone including GPS of their phones has been passed.
That's a good reason to riot.
The US federal government has been doing this since the 00's. Snowden exposed them and the public responded with hatred towards Snowden. Unfortunately the average citizen just doesn't seem to care.
I don’t think the majority of people KNOW what Snowden was even trying to tell them. I remember when this came out and the news media was clutching their pearls over the act of leaking information rather than discussing the contents. I’m still learning about what was contained in those leaks to this day. It is so heavily propagandized that we need a new word for it.
Now those same people are saying it's no big deal that Donnie kept all the no-no papers.
Snowden Ten Years Later - by Bruce Schneier
Mostly boomers who don't understand tech
That’s an erroneous understanding of our era. The younger generations are gods at liking and commenting on social networks, but they just don’t care about privacy. They flock like birds to litteral spyware just for a quick meme fix.
Not everything you think is wrong has to do exclusively with boomers.
I think it's a bit of A and a bit of B. Boomers and younger gens have both embraced the rampant violation of privacy, particularly in the US.
Not public, propaganda. The public result was confusion and ultimately apathy.
Guess degoogled phones with custom OSes will soon be illegal then?
Linux and encrypted messengers too lol
If you don't share dick pic you sent to your partner with the spooks... You go to the gulag labour camp until you redeem yourself.
Wasn't a guy convicted on france not long ago and the deciding factor the judge used was because he used linux? WTF is going on there?
Modern hardware is likely exploitable by state actors via firmware/hardware vulnerabilities that can't be mitigated at a software level.
Ya just look at the Intel management engine. Or the AMD platform security processor. Lot of spooky shit like secret op-codes.
We need more open source HW.
How is this even feasible on Android or iPhones? Are they going to force everyone to download Team Viewer or something?
Usually with Pegasus. And yes it works. Don't ask about it.
[https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/jul/18/what-is-pegasus-spyware-and-how-does-it-hack-phones](Well crap. We’re fucked then?)
Well crap, we're fucked then?
Title then link
We are just as fucked as we’ve always been. Hackers use zero-day vulnerabilities. Can’t do too much about that. Any device is hackable. That became clear after Snowden, and the USA hacking irans centrifuge.
The US hacking Iran's centrifuges would have been preventable though with careful device management as far as I understand. The worm they used, Stuxnet, didn't come from nowhere. It either came from a USB that hadn't been properly sanitized or their systems were connected to an external, unprotected network when they definitely should have been isolated. That's a preventable virus and unrelated to conversations about backdoors being built into technology for governments to access.
Yup. If you can’t hack over the network, you can hack them into psychologically creating a vulnerability
People are pretty much always the weakest link when it comes to security.
Weren't Iran's centrifuges only hacked because they used off-the-shelf parts made in the U.S.?
We dropped a USB stick in the parking lot and they plugged the virus into the system lol
I don't know that part would have made much difference, they were already air gapped and the NSA probably could have figured out just about any centrifuge: The hard part was delivering the payload, which was apparently delivered via a rubber ducky left in a parking lot.
Goddamn that’s scary
Can't we even avoid that by using lineage or graphene? We're really fucked unless we are like cybersec experts...
How do you get Pegasus onto LineageOS or GrapheneOS? Especially on hardware with modem isolation?
Linux and similar Systems are harder to hack but not impossible, i cant tell more, cause i don't know more.
On lineageos also just pegasus. Only thing that makes it better than stock android is that you have more chances for security patches. Dumno about graphene, it has some additional protections, but still susceptible to some vulnerabilities of android.
Same way you do with everything else: Exploits.
Wonder if Google, Apple, or SoC makera are asked or secretly mandated to leave certain backdoors in. I know mobile providers have quite a bit they can see on their end.
It's a good thing we're always presented with two choices for everything, like mobile OS's, to control our choices like we're toddlers.
They don't really need to, the company making Pegasus is very very skilled, they however get paid for that as well, its absolutely not worth it for a normal person usually.
Mobile operators have baseband which is why we have modem isolation. And some of us can see quite a bit on our end, too.
Everyone causally saying the government can just do it with Pegasus is ignoring the fact that Pegasus itself is an exploit. It is a hack, to breach your personal device. If I used the same methods to get into a bank’s systems it would be a violation of the law. Same if I created this software and gave it to you for the same purpose. Ask yourselves why it would be permissible to sell this software then commercially? And, why is it permissible for the government to use it to hack your own devices. Let’s not just brush over this discussion like it’s nothing.
Nobody ignores the fact that government is doing something illegal when the conversation about their rampant spying happens. You may just be late to the party. We all know it's illegal, unethical, and immoral. It basically comes down to this:
What are you going to do about it?
We're living in objectively dystopian times. Our government does illegal shit literally all the time and gets away with it.
The very least people can do is talk about it and acknowledge it's bad.
Acceptance and normalization support the other side.
My generation has talked it to death. It's pretty agreed upon that we're being fucked and have very little power to stop it. Eventually you don't have time to rehash all the heinous shit that happens because you realize there's a constant deluge of it. Has nothing to do with "supporting the other side" lol. If reality has got you feeling insane, well, you're on the right track.
We have everything we need to stop it, we’re just spun and poorly organized (by design).
Bingo.
Tangential quote: We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. -JFK
The fact that things are the way they are by design makes it harder for us to overcome them, but it should also make it abundantly clear it’s on us to do so.
I empathize with the feeling of powerlessness. And I encourage reaching past that from time to time to see where action is already taking place that only requires the slightest nudge from you to boost. Many hands make light work when those hands are pushing/pulling in the same direction.
While this news article is, apparently, not trustworthy, in general, France could demand every phone sold in the country include some kind of spyware. Many sellers already add a lot of programs by default anyway, so this would be how I image it might be implemented.
Given that 7 people were recently arrested for using privacy respecting tools like the Signal messenger and Protonmail, removing that bloatware/spyware might then be cause enough to arrest you. After all, only terrorists want to have privacy, right?
Oh my sweet summer child
At least they have the decency to tell you they are doing it.
In the US it took Snowden to leak this to the public that the government has been doing it for ages behind their backs.
The whole world is going to shit
This has been my view for quite a while.
There is so much news like this coming from France lately. What is going on over there?
Huge wealth gap. Poor people are treated like shit. They're are hungry and angry. Historically, the French are quick to protest and the rich are doing what they can to stop it. I believe we're getting a glimpse of what is going to happen all over the world soon.
Oh yeah, the infamous starving masses of France…
LOL!
My man’s clearly not been to Paris lol
Please do explain to my clueless French self how much more you know about Paris than me?
Likely an overreaction to the current protests / social unrest / whatever you want to call it
The oppression will continue until revolt stops!
Things didn’t go very well for Ceaușescu, so I’m sure Macron won’t repeat any of the same screwups.
There. Fixed it for you.
Here is the correct version.
France, yall okay with this?
I'd say this is worth another riot.
I can't even reconize my country values for the past few months and yet it's only the beginning for the current government, we still have 4 years to go with Macron. Who knows what ideas they hold for the future.
Preach. The shitshow is only getting started.
A Google search for "France phone camera" only gives this posted link and dailymail.co.uk article, both of which are not really trustworthy sources, IMO.
So I'm gonna go with "this is very possibly fake news".
Not fake. Just not really talked about in English, but it was mentioned in most French newspapers.
https://www.leparisien.fr/high-tech/loi-justice-lactivation-des-telephones-a-distance-approuvee-par-lassemblee-nationale-05-07-2023-SY5B2JW7H5FYRAD2RVMNZ3KMSQ.php
https://www.la-croix.com/France/Justice-feu-vert-lAssemblee-lactivation-distance-telephones-mouchards-2023-07-05-1201274354
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2023/07/06/france-set-to-allow-police-to-spy-through-phones\_6044269\_7.html
Rules for thee and not for me, unsurprisingly.
You got a lot of faith in google search engine chief ...
Any specific reason for this?
"Liberal left" - suuuuure
Macron isn't left wing, even by international standards. He was an investment banker at Rothschild. La Republique En Marche is a centre or centre right party.
Nice society we live in. All those sci fi movies was just giving ideas for the people who wants everyone to be under their boot.
We're heading towards cyberpunk without the cool implants lmao
This article doesn't link to a single primary source.
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2023/07/06/france-set-to-allow-police-to-spy-through-phones\_6044269\_7.html
I mean how are they really going to stop FOSS? They'll ban linux and then nobody can use the internet.
They don’t care about us. We sometimes forget we techies are a tiny fraction of the people they want under their boot.
If they can’t hack you they’ll get you other ways, if they want you.
Take solace that people in France and the USA aren’t falling out of windows every other day. Yet.
The road to fascist hell is paved with liberal good intentions
Ok what the fuck? New protests this weekend I guess?
France deserve as much shit as Hungary and Poland get within the EU tbh
Better to not bring your phone during protests anyways.
There is something to be said for bringing your phone to protests so you can livestream them to the world when the authorities use heavy-handed, violent tactics to stop them.
In all honesty, it would probably be best to have a dedicated device for that situation as well so that if they choose to search it then all they will get is the footage from the event.
Edut: Didn't scroll down to see you suggested the same thing!
While I agree that filming is important, it’s also important to remember that between the J6ers being dumb fucksticks and their social media site being absolute dogshit, a lot of them were caught because EXIF data wasn’t scrubbed. Having one’s phone with you could end up being the thing that gets you prosecuted.
Maybe the solution is to get a burner phone for protests? Because being able to livestream them is pretty important these days.
I would suggest getting one of those faraday bags that block the signals to/from the phone. Then, if you really need it, you can still use it.
If you get arrested during a protest, they can force you to unlock the phone (it can be a felony to refuse) , so better not to bring it at all.
Deploy the 3300s. Excellent brick for throwing too
Can someone please explain how will this work?
at least they're honest about it
i'd imagine they have the same ability here in the states they're just gonna advertise the fact
Patriot act + 2008 FISA Amendments Act.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
It's not exactly a secret anymore, it's just that no one seems to care.
Media and normie stream are cool with it since they got nothing to hide.
Rest of us just pretend that using encrypted messengers do something which they do against bulk data collection but once they want your shit, they just compromise you device. So it is really more of a political statement at this point rather than real tool.
nearly half of computer-related engineers/developers/technicians/analyst who refuse to believe that this and other similar programs that snowden revealed on purely ideological grounds is a huge source of fuel for my misanthropy; the fact that they tend to be the most successful and/or well paid in my field (software development) is a several fold bigger source.
we're so fucked
from what i understand, this gives the power to monitor communications like emails / text messages. which in my opinion is fundamentally different from turning on your camera or microphone.
having said that, I haven't read into this in depth so perhaps that was outlined previously
The NSA has a 'product' catalog called ANT:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANT\_catalog
One example is DROPOUTJEEP, which allows near complete control over iphones, including their camera's.
France isn't part of FIve Eyes, but do have a secret deal with the US anyway:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lustre\_(treaty)
(This is all decade old Snowden stuff, so I suspect their capabilities have expanded since then).
This being said, I assume much of what they do isn't exactly legal, so who knows. Given some of these treaties are secret, maybe they also have secret laws.
So if you dont use free software and live in France, bye bye any and all digital privacy?
that will calm the protests for sure 🤣
what is he doing? he's just making it worse smh