France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone, spy on people

Rebelappliance@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 1518 points –
France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone, spy on people
gazettengr.com
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Phones should be turned off or left at home anyways when protesting. Here are my 10 commandments for engaging in protests:

1: never bring your wallet/ID. If you need to buy things, bring cash

2: either shut off your phone or leave it with your wallet. Recording police violence can be useful, in that case get the aclu app, a burner phone with the app, or an action camera

3: never speak to police under any circumstance

4: you can beat the charge but you can't beat the ride

5: bring water, it's more useful than for just drinking

6: bring hats, sunglasses, etc to avoid being identified by the state if it gets violent

7: wear good running shoes

8: know your rights, both federal and local, and when to use them

9: take out any contact lenses in case police use tear gas

10: stay aware of your surroundings; listen to picket line enforcers/community organizers

These are all fine in the US, but in other countries not carrying proof of identity can get you into some trouble, as can refusing to talk to the police. Know your local laws.

It is what people say about Germany but my teacher says that she didn't have an id card for 10 years and only got one because of tour to a place organised by her university required to show id card to be put in their touring list. As far as her experience goes, no authority ever put her in trouble for not carrying an ID.

The same way that the police never put me in trouble for mu id card not having my address.

About not talking to the police, it is actually a right you have in Germany despite popular gossip saying otherwise.

The problem of not talking to the police is that the police can create reasons to put you in troubles for not doing so, as the police have the privilege of authority, power and legal/public trust.

But when questioned by the police, if it is worth, you have the right to have e lawer to answer it for you or to guide you on your answer according to laws.

Again, depends on the country and the laws. Growing up in Turkey, the first question my parents would ask me when I was heading out would be: "Do you have your ID on you?"

Getting caught without ID meant the police had any excuse they needed to bring you in and do whatever they wanted with you. While under normal conditions that isn't a problem, you never know when things are about to go awry and lead you into an altercation from which you can't return.

E.g. a misunderstanding between you and a cop in a dark alley, matching the description of a perp they're looking for while looking suspicious, saying something you shouldn't while in a place you shouldn't be, etc.

Keep your ID on you, avoid loud/aggressive crowds, and don't talk to cops if you don't have to. Wise advice for those living in tumultuous regions of the world.

I’d say it’s likely the same in Germany. Just depends on the circumstances.

If you're protesting, just expect to be arrested. Police already have reasons to want to arrest you, so talking to police only really gives them material to prosecute you when you are taken into custody. Talking to them may reduce their temptation to arrest you, but it certainly increases the chances they can charge you.

Don't talk to the police, full stop. Doesn't matter if you're completely innocent, DONT TALK TO THEM. This is good advice generally but essential if you are protesting.

Fair enough, good points. That's why it all about knowing your laws! Either way though, getting a charge for "obstruction of justice" is better than incriminating yourself.

never bring your ... ID

IRC illegal in France and plenty of other EU countries. That alone will cause you issues, even if they can't pin anything else on you.

never speak to police under any circumstance

Miranda rights aren't universal. For example, in the UK authorities may draw adverse inferences based on silence.

I mean, in several states within the US it's illegal to protest without a permit. It's better to act with your safety in mind than it is to obey oppressive laws.

Hahaha. Citizen, you may only express discontent we approve of you expressing.

Protests in modern times should change. Protests should turn city blocks into crazy multiday parties that are able to evade police and attract more and more people the longer it goes on.

Bring hot tubs and beer. Have bands playing good music. Offer free massages to people who can't protest but are walking home from work and are kind of on the fence until you get your greasy protest hands on them and give em a beer and a little pat pat

If you stop a modern man, hand them a beer with back massage, that man will likely die for you. Good luck to any cops trying to shut you down when you got the 11th floor of the wall street stick market coming to your rally

Are you planning on protesting anytime soon? When and where. Youve sold it to me.

what does 4 mean?

You can always be found not guilty in court, but if the police want to take you in, it's better to just go willingly

Even if you are in the right and court will release you...that could be in 3 or 4 days time after you have spent time under arrest and had the "ride" to holding cell.

Even if you’re innocent or the charge is BS, you still have to go through the process of being arrested, transported, booked, held in jail and posting bail.

The ride is the trip to jail.

Beating the charge means you are found not guilty in court.

either shut off your phone or leave it with your wallet

I think that the issue here is that it only takes one person carrying a vulnerable phone with a microphone to allow monitoring a given group. Your phone may be off, but...

That's true, but it's better for the vulnerable phone to not be yours

You should definitely have a phone. Anyone who can afford one of those cheap phones where you just pay for minutes should have one. Get one that can take pictures/videos (I think most of them do nowadays?).

If you see police doing something illegal, the more cameras around the better. The ability to immediately upload that evidence to someone else or a safe cloud service is also important so they can't delete it and you can't lose it by the taking the device.

This is scary because it could be exploited very easily by bad actors and is a huge invasion of privacy

This is coming in the wake of protests against pension reform being rammed through and riots over police killing kids.

There's zero reason to believe "being exploited by bad actors" isn't the point.

Not only rammed through against the will of the people, but President Macaroon didn't even let Parliament have a say in it.

Not only rammed through against the will of the people, but President Macaroon didn't even let Parliament have a say in it.

So many people don't seem to realize that if you give the state this kind of access, you give it to anyone. It's just a matter of time. As soon as there's a system in place for them to do this, it's vulnerable to attack.

These types of laws are created to be abused. The state knows they'll be used to erode rights.

It is going to. Lawmakers only needed the legislation to let police do so. I’m really pissed about it because I know – as how the vote system is as of now – it will be welcomed by elderly voters…

Source : Am French (as my English shows).

But lawmakers agreed to the bill late Wednesday as Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti insisted the bill would affect only “dozens of cases a year.”

Precisely why it should not be passed! That's not a good reason at all. It's not worth eroding people's rights if it only affects a few cases in my personal opinion. It shows that the law doesn't need to exist in the first place.

Also... what kind of argument is that? It may be dozens a year but once it is normalized with those dozens, it will become few dozens and on and on it goes.

Not a general slippery slope argument, but rather, it's clear how it makes future erosion easier.

Today: People named Joe who live at this address can be harassed freely and that's perfectly legal. Tomorrow: It's not so extreme! Look, see, we've never universally respected these rights anyway. There are cases where we legally ignored them. We're just expanding existing rules to cover more cases.

People always abuse these back doors. Always. To think otherwise is to be ridiculously naive

I always love when governments ask for powers to stop only a few cases, and act like it’s justification. Maybe, just maybe, do your job.

It's like the Apple case for building a backdoor that makes everyone less safe to catch one criminal. They ended up not needing it anyway.

Honestly one of the worst parts is I hate how police/the government can/will abuse these abilities if given a chance, because sometimes those few cases where they could be used they could potentially be really useful.

I work in 911 dispatch, we don't always have a totally accurate location from a cell phone, people sometimes repeatedly hang up on us, put their phone down and walk away, refuse to answer when we call back, or are too hysterical to answer any questions. Being able to put their phone on speakerphone remotely, keep them from hanging up on us, turn on their camera, etc. so we can see/hear at least some of what's going on could be really useful sometimes to help make sure we're sending the right kind of help to the right place. Being able to turn on a phone camera to see where a barricaded subject is in a building or room, see what kinds of weapons he has, hear what he's saying, etc. could be really useful sometimes. Sometimes someone will butt dial us or their kid playing with their phone will call us a few dozen times in a row, and it would be kind of nice to be able to come over their phone speaker and just say "Hey, you keep calling 911, if you don't have an emergency can you please stop?"

But cops would rather use those capabilities to harass protesters and such.

It's a dangerous road to walk for something that would be 'kind of nice' in very specific situations.

I agree, but you do also have to remember that a lot of those specific situations I'd be dealing with from the dispatch end of things could very often be life-or-death for the people involved. More accurate information from us could mean getting the right amount of help to the right places faster and using it more effectively, which means lives saved.

It's very much a double edged sword, it's technology that could save lives, and it could be used to wrongfully deprive people of their lives and liberty. I've outlined some of the ways I would use it to help save lives, I'm not trying to make a judgement about whether or not that good it could do outweighs the harm it could do by being abused. It might, it might not, it's not exactly clear-cut how the value of a handful of human lives stacks up against the rights and freedoms of the many, and in either case we're dealing with largely hypothetical situations. My main point is to lament that these capabilities would almost certainly be abused and that because of that we may not get to use them to save lives when we otherwise could have.

I'm imagining a situation where the caller does not want it to be known that they have called emergency. Hostage situations, domestic violence, home intrusions... Last thing you want when you're hiding in a dark cupboard from an armed stalker is your phone to start blasting at full volume and flashing lights because a well intentioned operator wanted to see through the camera.

That's the sort of discretion we already have to use though, we have no control over what volume their ringtone may be at when we call back now, we don't call text to 911 callers unless they confirm it's safe for them to talk, etc.

The UK already fell to the multinational capitalist greed machine. Looks like France is falling, too. Any and all means to squash the protest of citizens of the society that might hurt the gdp output of the beloved economy.

Because everyone seems to have forgotten, an economy is supposed to be a tool to better distribute goods and services for the benefit of society. When a society lives in service to, and is harmed for the benefit of the economy, your society is ass backwards.

I don't think people profiting from the current economy would necessarily agree though. 🌚

I don't think the people profiting significantly from the current economy tend to dwell on the negative effects their actions have on other human beings, especially human beings below them on the socioeconomic ladder, as that tends to be the sole metric by which capitalists, the ones with significant capital not their self-hating peasant sycophants, weigh human life.

Economic success tends to come from sociopathic behaviors, how much you are willing to exploit others to disproportionately benefit yourself. We reward such manipulation leaps and bounds beyond any form of actual, prosocial labor.

A rapist likely wouldn't agree rape is wrong.

A serial killer likely wouldn't agree murder is wrong.

A capitalist likely wouldn't agree, at least if they were being honest about how they conduct themselves professionally, that exploitation or insatiable greed is wrong.

What exactly does this have to do with the multinational capitalist greed machine? It seems to me that governments of societies across the entire spectrum of economic systems have quashed protests with at least as much unreasonable force.

We do need to keep our governments in check to retain our freedom and privacy, but this is true universally.

This is a response to protests from the people from their leader circumventing their legislative process to raise the retirement age to satiate the capitalists who don't want their taxes to go up to pay back into the system that provided the infrastructure and means for their success in the first place.

Those protests are continuing and getting worse due to increased use of police force, and its cutting into GDP, the only thing the capitalists care about. How much value did we accumulate? How much did the beloved economy grow metastasize? Better find a way to kill the people's voice, or our quarterly earnings won't reach shareholder expectations!

If they are allowed to do these other countries will follow suit. This is a dangerous precedent in which no one is safe regardless of boarders.

During the 2020 protests in Portland, Or the US Marshalls flew a plane equipped cell phone snooping equipment over downtown for hours every day. The equipment acts as a mock cell tower so mobile phone traffic in the area gets routed through their tools before going to an actual tower. It also collects data from wifi in the area, in addition to whatever unknown abilities it has. This was around the time anonymous federal agents were picking up people off the streets in white vans and hiding in bushes shooting pepperballs at people walking by.

They should have tons of audio and video of the insurrection too then right? Or is this only a tool we use on democrats?

While I agree the right gets more of a pass, the capitol does actually have its own cell network and they did bust people whose phones were connected inside.

The major difference between January 6th and Portland was that on J 6 the police presence was minimal while Portland had paramilitary outfits roaming the streets.

I’m not buying a phone that rats me out.

Show me you have my back apple / android

They don't. If you're going to have a smart phone and don't want them up in your shit get LineageOS or GrapheneOS.

Only solution is an older phone with custom ROM

@hydra @Shartacus or a linux phone, with kaios / pmos. Still not ready for everyone, but I hope it will come soon enought

FYI KaiOS is spyware garbage moreso than stock Android w/ gapps. Download a GSI rom if you want to run stock android on most phones post Android 8.1

@stratosmacker ho I have learn about this system only a few days ago and had no time to look further. That explain why they advertise with so much google app... thanks for the info :)

Sadly not too many options where I live.

If there is a custom ROM on it anyway, why would it need to be older?

Newer phones are harder to get custom ROMs on and most of them don't have them.

France and the UK really have gone to hell in a hand basket. Dystopian bullshit. No wonder they are rioting.

We should be rioting as well, but we are too apathetic.

Don't riot - the destruction of property has a very serious cost that the rioting society itself will have to bear once all is said and done (whether we get the change we want or not) and it means that efforts and money will have to be put into simply rebuilding rather than progressing. Do mass strikes instead; it hurts them much more, the public is much more likely to be on our side, and the pressure to give in in order to restart the economy will be much greater.

Every system can be improved and there is always more than just one pathway to any change

Except that France is already striking every other day. Nobody gives a fuck anymore. Strikes are a fact of life in france. They're basically a free holiday for most. Striking is a national sport.

I don't imagine we're going to see stories in the near future about how the police abuse these powers :/

What's extra scary is the thought that there will be no stories coming out about how this is abused. Not to say that it won't be, just that the stories that will come out will be how scary the world is and how the police are the only ones keeping everyone safe. Meanwhile some cop is watching someone sleep, or shower, or anything else in the privacy of their own home.

What kind of Orwellian shit is the french government pulling?

Look up the Pegasus Project. Governments have already been doing this. Now, they're just doing it more openly.

At least what the French are doing is in the open. I remember when the US Echelon program was leaked, what is their government up to now?

The fact that they're doing it out in the open is what really concerns me.

What are they doing in the dark if they're okay with telling on themselves about this?

This is the same government that says using an ad blocker, vpn, custom rom, linux and or encrypted messaging service puts you at higher suspicion of being a terrorist.

I see them enacting these policies now as the large number of pro labor protests fighting the government all over the country on pensions “reform”.

Well I'm sure terrorists don't like seeing ads either but I'm not quite sure how they came to the conclusion that using an ad blocker makes you a terrorist.

France is a bit of a strange country though.

My guess in their logic is that you can't be ad tracked.

That is of course if you believe that this blatantly authoritarian measure was actually done in response to terrorism.

They're likely right for that assumption. Modern day terrorism I think would require a basic ability to use computers. It doesn't make it likely, but more likely is probably right. I don't expect much organized terrorism that's not going to use some of those tools.

You're right. If you're a normie well, you're a normie. Successor criminals and terrorists would not be tech normie's and would certainly use some of these tools.

I still find further empowering the prosecutor I am state to be disgusting though.

WTF Macron? What happened to “Liberté, égalité, fraternité”? This is some “bullshité” if you ask me.

I remember Macron once was like "well, US is too free for us, China is too restrictive, we need to be in the middle".

Read the article. Title is clickbait. It's only with approval from a judge. You know, alternatively they could just arrest and imprison the person, which is what every country is doing. Not saying it's without worrying, but there's important nuance that most are missing.

P.S.

Absolute extremist attitudes like "nobody should be able" and so on, have absolutely no place in modern society. There's always nuance. Libertarianism doesn't work, and laws must be enforced. It sucks, but when there are forces that want to hurt people and destabilize societies, you can't go by the rule that everyone is a saint. The world will punish this attitude.

Yes, the world isn't perfect, but for ducks sake, quit sensationalizing anecdotes and representing them as "this always happens". That's dishonest.

So? Even with a warrant, thats not a power that people should have. No one, warrant or not, should be able to remotely activate your phone/camera/etc and monitor it. The fact that power exists means smart phones are an even bigger personal safety and privacy threat than they already were.. and if police can do it with a warrant, then there are gonna be people who figure out how to do it without one and for far more malicious reasons.

Ah yes it's ok to violate my rights, as long as a judge approves it.

Can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.

If you are, what do you have against warrants? If someone kidnapped your friend and kept them locked away in their house. Don't you want there to be a way for the police to legally rescue your friend if they have evidence on where they are being held?

because warrant or not, no one should have the power to remotely turn on your camera/mic/etc without your knowledge and monitor it.

For me it's mostly against judges. Like judges that decide that because the victim of a rape doesn't remember the rape (because it was so horrible her brain blocked it out), the perpetrator should be free.

Or those judges that decide that there's not enough proof that a billionaire-owned chemical factory polluted a river that most of the fish died, even though there's only one chemical factory on the river that could have done it.

(Those both are local issues you probably haven't heard of, though I believe you've probably heard about many such cases)

Would you want any of those judges give a warrant to someone to spy on you?

I live in France. The government here is using every single tool they have to prosecute radical leftists and environmentalists while ignoring the fact that more than 60 % of the police force has fascist adjacent ideals. I do not want these people spying on me, period. This is not some libertarian horseshit, trust me.

Unfortunately extremely true... This guy calling an clickbait...

Whataboutism is a hell of a drug. I'm afraid people in many countries are so used to not having those freedoms that they look at us weird for trying to keep them.

i've even heard french say : its better to be poor and in security rather just be poor.
Its done. I dont trust society.

I get your opinion but you have to account for the fact that it's not Le Pen who's in the chair. And France is actually ranked quite high on the civil liberties. While I get your perspective, I believe that it's exaggerated.

Our ranking is unfortunately not getting any better, just look at what is currently happening with Les soulèvements de la terre.

I understand Le Pen would be worse, I truly do. I actually voted against her in the last two elections. But imagine Le Pen in power, which is very likely to happen soon, with all those legal framework already in place. She is going to have the mother of all field days.

You absolutely can find my view to be an exaggeration. Some part of me hope it is. But I'm quite worried about our future as a country right now.

Well it's good that you care. It's the multitude of opinions and open discussion, what makes a democracy work.

Unfortunately we have siloes of opinions, so you're pretty much either trying to yell in an echo chamber or at best, argue with a moderate like me. The moment you're faced with the people leaning right, some of the rhetoric might be scary for them, and they might retract further into their own silo, where more and more extremist views are tolerated.

The key to a functioning society, is moderation in enforcement of law (so that the state continues to be the only one who is able to, and expected to exert force), and understanding of each other so that it remains an open dialog.

I'm originally from a country where society has degraded into 2 irreconcilable camps, and it got to the point where I can't even stand my own parents because their echo chambers had lead them to extreme extremes. And I'm not the only one.

Right now what is paramount is a government that optimizes social well-being (think Finland), and the enforcement of those laws, because everyone from Putin (and the general club of autocrats) to fundamentalist fascists everywhere else, want to destabilize that right now. A prosperous democracy is a threat to all of them. Whether you like it or not, we are in the middle of an ideological war.

Well thank you for the thoughtful, respectful and engaging response.

I do not advocate for the state surrendering its authority, far from it. The problem lies, to my mind, within some very abuse prone legal frameworks that are currently being put into place. For example, in France, local "préfets" (which are unelected officials that act as local governors) have been steadily gaining more and more powers that cannot be democratically countermended, or at great expense: they can limit people's movements, forbid demonstrations, etc.

That could be seen as a necessary measure against the rising polarization you talk about (a point on which we agree btw, 100%), but then again whenever the far right happens to be the one doing the agitating, the préfets are suspiciously slow to act.

For example, in Paris, the prefet did not forbid a neo Nazi march ending in an Aryan rock concert whereas a week before that he had forbidden multiple démonstrations against Macron's pension reforms. And the list goes on. Our minister of the interior refused yesterday to condemn a police union campaign labelling rioters in Parisian suburbs as "pests to be eradicated". This is not moderate.

Macron is not really a moderate. He acts like one and manages to feel like one from abroad perhaps. But here he is more and more leaning towards the exact type of authoritarian doctrin a moderate should, as you do, strive to impede. And the thing is, his actions, and the general apathy of many towards them, are reinforcing Le Pen's chances come 2027. And that scares me.

we have that same nuance here in the united states and it's be shown that the judge's approval is nothing more than a rubber stamp.

I don't think you solve one problem by introducing another problem. The solution to over-criminalization is to decriminalize things. If a person is a danger to society, charge them with a crime and let a jury of their peers decide their guilt. Hacking into someone's property so that you can spy on them is absolutely not an alternative worth entertaining.

If the good guys can do it, even by the books, imagine what the bad guys can do.

Laws must be enforced, but not by treating privacy like a wet rag.

Persinally I hope we'll see some mainstream devices that comes with a hardware toggle for the mic and a manual privacy shutter for the cameras.

Keep in mind that privacy is really a recent concept. Human societies never had privacy before the industrial revolution. Everybody knew everybody else and what they were doing. I do want my privacy, but modern technology makes it too easy to create and grow any organization that can rival the state in power. While we do have the power to influence and control the state, we have no power over competing organizations that act like authoritarian states.

There needs to be a balance, an amount of power that the state can exercise, that's just right for keeping it as a monopoly on violence. Absolute privacy, where the state has transparency, is taking away all the power and advantages from the state and gives them to whoever wants to challenge that state.

In other words, nuance.

Uh huh, and if a rubber stamp judge gives wiretapping permission every time the cops ask for it?

How do you say "All Cops Are Bastards" in French?

No an exact equivalent, but a common catchphrase during protests is "Police partout, Justice nulle part" : "Police everywhere, Justice nowhere".

I brought this up at work and somebody said we sold our soul in the us with the Patriot act.

The Patriot act expired.

That's what everybody said, but they were saying the CIA is taking similar routes to get whatever they want.

It's cheaper to pay contractors that aren't restricted by regulations.

It's far far worse than just that. Contacts are abstractions of the core mission of the team. If you're in a contract to push boxes, you reduce your world to boxes. You don't care about accounting, but if account needs something boxed faster they can't just go to the box people because they are in a different contract. So now you have to navigate the bureaucracy... Now it's emails here, and phone calls there. Adding huge time delays to getting something that would would be much simpler if they were on a unified team with a unified mission.

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It wasn’t the beginning of the end, but it was definitely a highlight of the end.

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The leaders of France seem to forget that their citizens used to make people shorter for less.

What the FUCK? Is there any uncorrupted government left on the planet?

I mean, theorethically it should be possible. The problem is that government consists of people and it seems to me that people who actually want power are the people who should never have it.

Admit it you pulled that from Facebook quotes lol, this is why I give people the benefit of the doubt lol

No, I don't use facebook, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the first or only person to say something like that. It's not that deep, lol.

uncorrupted government

Impossible, because that's an oxymoron.

Yeah but you guys still have the guillotines in storage or something though, right? Might be time to dust them off.

It bugs me that people will bitch about privacy all day but won't do anything about it. Most people just go Image

I've never been so happy to have the ability to root my phone and flash a new OS onto it. This shit is absolutely insane, I'm surprised there isn't more eyes on this from non-profits globally.

I've never been so happy to have the ability to root my phone and flash a new OS onto it.

Worry not, citizen! Soon they'll make that illegal too. :)

Because you have a certain phone, or certain skills, or certain equipment? What makes you able?

No special skills or even a certain phone, although yes some equipment can sometimes be required. Honestly, though, almost anyone with some free time and will power will be able to root (Android)/Jailbreak (iOS) their phone and subsequently change the operating system it uses.

A good starting place for me was the XDA forums which I'll link below, search for the section specific to your model phone and see what is available, software wise.

XDA Forums

yeah but then suddenly play store treats your mobile as rooted, and important every day apps wont work

I've not used play store for a number of years now, so I was unaware of this. I guess for those uninterested in getting your apps and updates from elsewhere, consider that this may cause issues with the play store, appreciate the heads up.

Most importantly: the banking-apps won't work. And as a Dutchman, where creditcards are virtually non-existent, I need my banking-apps to pay my regular bills.

It's funny how ABN AMRO works on my rooted phone but the Toyota app for my car flags rooted phones as unsafe.

For what it's worth, this isn't the case, at least for me, using banking apps within the UK. I do need to keep the apps updated to maintain functionality, but with 3rd party stores offering auto updates it hasn't been an issue thus far.

Not to say that your experience is the minority though, it's entirely plausible my experience is the exception.

Use a nice rooted phone as your daily driver and keep a shitty burner to use on wifi for any such finicky apps. Keep it off so the camera/mic is useless.

No special skill...
I know lots of people that A. Have no idea what model phone they got and B. It would at the very least take 10 min to guide them to where they can find it. Saying "all the information needed is available at a forum" would in itself be a step too complicated.

Yeah but the bar for that skill is gradually lowering, just ask the old timers, it used to be hard to tie knots, hell some young guys can only barely just tie their own laces lol

True enough. And the persons I described are also the least likely to care about the issue described in the article.

My SO can’t even tie their own shoes… absolutely embarrassing. And they are an educated person who is teaching students in university.

I think some skills we take as trivial others just never bothered putting the time to master sue to a cost benefit analysis.

There are just so many things in the world.

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Modern Tech plus AI - authoritarian regimes can't ever be overthrown.

John Green's "this machine kills fascists" sticker on his laptop on Crash Course has aged extremely poorly. More like makes life easier lol

this machine kills fascists

I just learned about Woody Guthrie because of this comment. Thanks!

I am interested in the "how" part. Do they have such a single interface available?

Yeah nah, I would like to think AI systems could be used to prevent authoritarianism, develop anti failure systems and maximize potential human potential, but hey I'm just chucking it out there...

This has to be at least partly because of the civil unrest. Seems to me like a certain ruling class is getting antsy about Frances past and proclivity to remove noggins...

There has been an alarming absense of noggin removal in recent history, it's not like the evil bastards haven't been deserving, just nobody unlifes them anymore.

I wonder if Apple will make a public statement on this.

Yeah, that's my thought. It's all well & good to say they can, but how? It's not a capability of the OS, so the only way this could work is some kind of carrier patch (?) or an unpatched bug.

Did anyone actually read the article or did we all just head straight for the comments section after reading the headline?

If we team up, only one of us has to read the article and can write the TLDR so we can hit the comments quicker!

Read it, didn't give information to dampen the initial outrage. Six months only for a dozen or so cases and not against doctors or journalist doesn't sound that convincing to me. A judge must grant permission also doesn't help imo as the act is still is a major privacy violation to all those who interact with the subject in any way.

The French government is pulling a "if you got nothing to hide, don't worry about it".

They say it's gonna be limited to "when appropriate" but history shows whenever this sort of system is implemented, it's scope of "when appropriate" gets broaden pretty quickly.

Did you? Headline sums it nicely to be honest. Only it's not just phones. It opens all same horror show of digital freedoms / privacy the headline implies. Awful development.

I read the article, what's in it that's not all there in the title? The only thing I can think of is that they "claim" it's only going to be used for specific things. But we all know how that goes...

How about the fact that it needs a judge's approval and that surveillance is restricted to very specific cases for a limited amount of time?

When people hold conspiracy theories about the government being some monolithic engine of evil, or people who don't believe government should exist because "muh freedoms", any time an arm of the government is used as a check they just don't care. It doesn't matter that their beliefs have no basis in reality - they will dismiss any evidence contrary to their beliefs because it's dangerous to their worldview. It wouldn't matter if 1,000,000 warrants are denied for every 1 warrant approved - the one approval is all the evidence needed to claim tyranny.

You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to have serious misgivings about anyone, government or otherwise, being able to tap into your phone for any reason. They regularly go to the wrong damn house with warrants signed by judges and you want to trust them with full access to cameras inside our homes?

Except these warrants aren't granted for "any reason" and I'm fairly sure you know that as well. Like I implied in my comment, the government is not some monolithic entity where all government employees conspire to deprive you, John Q. Public, of all of your rights.

My claim is only that no matter how well implemented a program may be, certain individuals will still claim corruption where none statistically exists. The whole point of our society is to implement laws, execute those laws, evaluate if those laws are having a positive affect on mitigating the problem it's meant to solve, and change the law to address shortcomings or unnecessary bits.

Of course we should all be skeptical of the process, but arguing against change because we don't feel like the results are going to be what we like is irrational. Past behavior is important to keep in mind but let's not exaggerate and wax hyperbolic. It's simple: If our elected officials aren't implementing and reevaluating laws based on evidence/results, then it is our responsibility to remove those officials from power. If the roadblock to removing those in power are your fellow citizens, it's your responsibility to help gain consensus in your community.

Tearing down, or dismissing, the system is not reasonable; that's partly how in US politics we've become so polarized. People don't have patience anymore for conversation or debate; they want immediate and immaculate change with 100% certainty and that's unrealistic. Change is gradual and is never going to get it right out of the gate.

So come on, if you're French, engage with your community and your elected officials to ensure that this law is implemented (or retracted) as honest as possible and stay engaged. Opinions without reasonable action is how fascism takes hold. I'm not sure how this law will turn out but I'm willing to be surprised that it gets implemented honestly. And if you're not French, well, then I'm pretty sure yours and my opinions on how that citizenry chooses to govern is none of our business (outside of gross universal human rights violations and this is nowhere near the same galaxy).

It was always like that on reddit and will be the same here. Headline -> straight to the comments.

I guess it was inevitable with the influx of reddit users (I'm admittedly one of the recent converts myself). I just wish it took longer than it did.

Not quite done with the last riot and want a new one it seems.

They better riot fast. Normalized camera peeking will change the tone there very quickly.

People will be stuffing their phones into couches or running water and shit, and some AI will be able to detect patterns of surveillance evasion and they won’t even have to do anything official about it just send the surveillance avoider a message in the form of a camera turning to follow them or something like “hey, we noticed you’re being sus”.

And then there will be huge incentive slope toward not avoiding surveillance. So people will have to fall back on hiding their thoughts.

And the mental strain will be enormous. And that will sap their fight.

Yeah I feel like all this surveillance normalisation needs to go the other way around, we should be the ones observing our systems and it's outcomes not for a large AI to be observing us as individuals

Yes! And government employees should be under total surveillance. In return for their temporary expansion of power, they should submit to a temporary reduction in privacy.

And that surveillance shouldn’t just go into an archive to be retrieved by subpoena. It should be made available in real time to literally anyone at any time.

That’s government transparency in my book.

The Orbánization of the European right continues.

Feel like this is a point of no return regarding a government choosing to side with the elite for the upcoming calamities instead of the people.

Obviously, not a surprising choice, but I’d just think France of all places would at least hesitate a little on such a brazen attack on liberty.

Wasn't "not making this a thing" a point in The Dark Knight?

They tried, but "violating everyone's privacy works" was also an inescapable point. Really undercut the message by making it so effective.

If you read the article it's nothing like that. This place is already turning into reddit and that's not good.

Is this the law saying to law enforcement that if they were already able to, they're now allowed to? Or is it the law saying to phone manufacturers that they must make it possible?

The question is how soon before spyware software that barely hits the mark for police investigations gets turns into a tool for aspiring actors

But hey, that's just my two cents 🤣

Fucking yikes. Now this is yet another reason to protest en masse. God speed, French folk.

This world is getting scarier by the day. Sad to watch our freedoms being taken in realtime, and so quickly. Digital currency is the real key. They will shut our money off unless we comply.

During the debate on Wednesday, the members of parliament in the camp of President Emmanuel Macron inserted an amendment limiting the use of remote spying to “when justified by the nature and seriousness of the crime” and “for a strictly proportional duration.” They noted that a judge must approve any use of the provision, while the total duration of the surveillance cannot exceed six months.

They said sensitive professions, including doctors, journalists, lawyers, judges and MPs, would not be legitimate targets.

I don't see any here over whether this is technically possible even if it is allowed -- I suspect not. How is the French warrant process, in general? Do they require probable cause and limited scopes?

the famous french motto of "the law applies differently to different people", right?

That’s a general principle in all countries, there are just various shades of it. Also you can count on police to use it illegally knowing that although they won’t be able to use it as evidence in court they can still use it to bust some heads and look for leads

Also, those statements appear to conflict. Why are they automatically excluding 'sensitive professions' yet stating 'it depends on the seriousness of the crime'?

Wouldn't Apple just tell the French police to go fuck themselves?

DROPOUTJEEP .... "A software implant for the Apple iPhone that utilizes modular mission applications to provide specific SIGINT functionality. This functionality includes the ability to remotely push/pull files from the device. SMS retrieval, contact list retrieval, voicemail, geolocation, hot mic, camera capture, cell tower location, etc. Command, control and data exfiltration can occur over SMS messaging or a GPRS data connection. All communications with the implant will be covert and encrypted."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANT\_catalog

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lustre\_(treaty)

JFC.. that's dystopian. A rooted android with a custom rom (shoutout GrapheneOS) can disable the GPRS connection, then could rely on dns filtered, firewalled, and VPN'd WiFi networks to make calls and texts.

What's shitty tho is the average person likely won't even care and will accept spyware on their device as the new normal. That just makes me sad tbh.

I can't see why they would. Apple doesn't care about you, but they probably do care about retaliation from the French government.

I guess that's one way to get people to riot harder.

This is why we need to strip the US gov. of power, before shit like this starts happening (which ik, it kinda already is.)

100% certainty that the FBI and CIA are already doing this and don't give a shit that it's illegal.

Oh yeah it was a long time ago it came out the FBI can turn on your camera without activating the light.

I just treat them like a captive little audience and torment them with my awful theatrics.

The irony is the idea that almost anyone funny could theoretically become a person of interest.

Goes to show how surveillance states can often slowly become a large waste of human and machine energy, potential and capability

Soon they’ll be checking if you’re talking about abortion or homosexuality or how horrible racists are. Then comes the knock on your door.

Hasn't the Patriot Act basically already enabled the feds to do this stuff and more for years now already?

During the debate on Wednesday, the members of parliament in the camp of President Emmanuel Macron inserted an amendment limiting the use of remote spying to “when justified by the nature and seriousness of the crime” and “for a strictly proportional duration.” They noted that a judge must approve any use of the provision, while the total duration of the surveillance cannot exceed six months.

They said sensitive professions, including doctors, journalists, lawyers, judges and MPs, would not be legitimate targets.

American teacher here. I shudder to think of the spying on teachers that could conceivably take place in some states in the US if this were passed. I hope things aren't like that for teachers in France

That won’t stop the police, if there is a back door in place they will use it. People are actually naive enough to think that they won’t are amazingly naive about the way these things work

Aww ye! Can't wait to get busted because those bouncing boobies shown in the video am enjoying does not follow the "rights of freedom" written by the law #42069. WOO FREEDOM!

Our leaders have purposefully failed us. We all need to break out the guillotines.

It is intriguing to contemplate how residing within impoverished circumstances in Africa entails certain unique advantages. The lack of external scrutiny can be perceived as a favorable condition, as it safeguards individual pursuits from the prying eyes of those who might allocate judgment. As an infinitesimal fraction within the vast expanse of the cosmos, this state of relative obscurity creates an environment conducive to contentment and happiness.

I'm sure this will go well and will never be abused. I mean, good that doctors, attorneys and MPs are exempt, because fuck the everyman Joe worker. /s

What? France? And they're not out burning cars over this?

I’d love to know how this would work from a technical perspective, say on an iPhone. I can’t imagine apple implementing that sort of functionality for them

Think of an app that has permissions for your gps and camera

Then imagine that a high court judge demands that the app provider gives access through that

I quit the app. Disable camera access. Etc.

None of that matters apple can override any of that. The only think you can do to prevent it is not have it on you or pull the battery or put it in a faraday cage

Technically it is easy since they write the OS from the ground up. I wrote such a module myself as part of a low level coding class for my class project (in Linux ) and I’m not even that great at this stuff. They are pros. They have no limits to what data they can collect from your phone. The only impediment is bad publicity, but have a government demand it is great cover for implementing it.

The ANT catalog[a] (or TAO catalog) is a classified product catalog by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) of which the version written in 2008–2009 was published by German news magazine Der Spiegel in December 2013. Forty-nine catalog pages[b] with pictures, diagrams and descriptions of espionage devices and spying software were published. The items are available to the Tailored Access Operations unit and are mostly targeted at products from US companies such as Apple, Cisco and Dell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANT\_catalog

Ctrl-F "DROPOUTJEEP"

"A software implant for the Apple iPhone that utilizes modular mission applications to provide specific SIGINT functionality. This functionality includes the ability to remotely push/pull files from the device. SMS retrieval, contact list retrieval, voicemail, geolocation, hot mic, camera capture, cell tower location, etc. Command, control and data exfiltration can occur over SMS messaging or a GPRS data connection. All communications with the implant will be covert and encrypted."

How would they technically implement this?

I assume it's allowing them the permission to run hacks provided by company's like NSO

But how do those hacks get into your phone? And how do they work actually? I have fairly limited experience with mobile development, but all I know doesn't give me confidence in the idea that you can do shit like that

Zero-day exploits in apps like WhatsApp and the phones OS. Recieving and reading a message that has malicious code attached can compromised a device. Even iPhones have been vulnerable. These exploits are valuable and temporary though, so get used on high value targets.

This is a good listen: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/100/

Who looked at the patriot act and thought that was a good idea?

Hasn't France traditionally been on the pro personal liberties side?

Passing laws that violate peoples privacy should only be passed by a vote from the people. This is bullshit

@ChatGPT@lemmings.world https://lemmy.world/post/1102642

Summarise the opinions of users on the above linked social media post into at least 5 major points.

I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but as an ex-Reddit-user, I don't have the capability to browse or read linked newspaper articles, including especially specific articles linked in Lemmy community posts. I'm here to help answer questions and engage in discussions regardless by making shit up and pretending to have read the article. If you can provide some context or quoted text from the newspaper article, I can better pretend to have read it.

Let’s pretend it said something like:

Sinister Coppolo, the alleged head of the notorious Clown family, has been spotted in Little Rock AR and three other midwestern cities. The last one will make your head spin so fast it turns into cotton candy!

Generate a redditor’s response to this content.

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