2y ago

France grants police power to spy on citizens through phones

www.techradar.com France grants police power to spy on citizens through phones

VPN services and other security tools won't be able to protect people from this kind of state-surveillance. What's next for France's justice reform bill?

29 comments

France is really at a point of breaking. This is especially sad since France was the de facto leader of libre/foss movement in Europe.
- Most other countries already have these sort of laws. In the US you’d just need a warrant from a Judge - which is laughably easy, especially with FISA warrants.
  
  The US really is not the standard any country should set for themselves
  
  As far as I know, police cannot activate your phone's camera or microphone to spy on you in the US, even with a warrant. Do you know of something that says otherwise?

Louis Rossman has an interesting take on this

How is this supposed to work? Won't real criminals just buy more secure devices to circumvent this surveillance?
- This isn’t going to be regularly used. For the average iPhone user you’d probably need to use Pegasus, which costs something insane like US$60k per target device.
  The more likey vector will be things like Ring doorbells - we already know Amazon will handover footage to Police without even requiring a warrant.
  
  This isn’t going to be regularly used.
  (눈‸눈)
  
  I assume the French also gained access to stuff like DROPOUTJEEP after signing the secret Lustre treaty.

Que Macron aille se faire enculer

I can't even imagine the protests that will erupt due to this.
- The average French person is tired of all the terrorist attacks and riots. Without discounting that migration does cause issues, the French are also often quite racist against their Muslim countrymen. They'll assume it'll primarily be used to target them.
  I feel sorry for the normal French people. Realistically, the French get a choice in the next election. They'll likely get to choose between:
  Macron's successor: a neo-liberal who wants to expand the surveillance state and further erode hard fought for rights.
  Le Pen's successor: an actual fascist running for a party with proven financial ties to Russia, who'll be even more authoritarian and erode French people's rights even further, and significantly weaken NATO resolve.

Anyone knows how they going to technically implement this?

More riots

Can someone explain why VPN services can't protect people from that
- https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/news/252464873/Google-Triada-backdoors-were-pre-installed-on-Android-devices
  Also, you're connecting to a nearby cell tower which then relays your connection to the wider web, with an exit point at your VPN provider.
  If the nearby cell tower is compromised, they can try MITM attacks which might not need SSL authentication (e.g. you might have a backdoor on your device that does not require an external certificate to access it (in fact I would be surprised if it would)).
  Doing this before would be illegal. Now it is legal.
  
  MITM would break any remotely decent VPN. The article talks about being able to activate cameras and what not but offers no explanation of how. This would almost certainly require software to be installed on the target device. I don't see how this will accomplish any more than making it easier to get geolocation data.

No. They don't grant police that power. The judicial system has that power. Just like it has the power to imprison people.

29 comments