France looking at banning Tor, blocking public Wi-Fi • Hacker News Board

Re: France looking at banning Tor, blocking public Wi-Fi

#51

Post by jacquesm » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 1:37 PM UTC

s_q_b wrote: post #42

jacquesm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cynical view is that these people are simply using the attacks as a way to push through legislation that they wanted to push through regardless. Politicians like these are just opportunists and would use any hot button issue to get their way because they know that's the easiest way to railroad through their pet laws. It's easy to get people to vote against their own interest, all you need is fear. There are many…

The cynical view is that these people are simply using the attacks as a way to push through legislation that they wanted to push through regardless. I agree. However, I believe the reason for this is more legislative laziness than anything else. In the wake of a terrorist attack, the public demands that laws be changed to make them safer. The executive's law enforcement and intelligence agencies typically have a wish…

> In the wake of a terrorist attack, the public demands that laws be changed to make them safer.

Ah, but therein lies a little problem: we probably can't be made safer and eventually this will become obvious to the general population as well. Terrorists have it super easy in soft bellied countries like the west. We have but two choices: change our societies drastically for the worse or accept the fact that complete safety and societies such as the ones that we live in are mutually incompatible.

Re: France looking at banning Tor, blocking public Wi-Fi

#52

Post by jmnicolas » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 1:38 PM UTC

DominikR wrote: post #3

Once again the French show the world what they are best in. Waiving the white flag and submitting when threatened. They even suspended parts of the human rights convention on their territory after the terror attacks in Paris.

Honestly I'm fed up with the French bashing. I'm not responsible for what happened in WW2 where you and I didn't even exist. Are you 100% sure you wouldn't raise a white flag when far away from your keyboard and shells exploding around you ?

Now for the present situation, like most democratic country on earth we are at the mercy of a small political elite that will do whatever it wants since they are in power and when we vote them out their twins from the other branch of the unique party apply the same politic with minor cosmetic change.

Re: France looking at banning Tor, blocking public Wi-Fi

#53

Post by Kristine1975 » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 1:40 PM UTC

Angostura wrote: post #31

rwmj wrote: post #5

All this because 130 people were killed. What would they do to prevent the 4600 people killed in road accidents in France last year? Or the 49000 people killed by alcohol [in 2009]?

There are huge numbers of laws in place to try and minimise road deaths, including compulsory licensing of people found competent to drive, speed limits, compulsory periodic testing of cars for roadworthiness. So you know the answer to the first part of your question.

>There are huge numbers of laws in place to try and minimise road deaths,

4600 road deaths/year sounds like those laws should try harder.

Re: France looking at banning Tor, blocking public Wi-Fi

#54

Post by paulddraper » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 1:47 PM UTC

rwmj wrote: post #5

All this because 130 people were killed. What would they do to prevent the 4600 people killed in road accidents in France last year? Or the 49000 people killed by alcohol [in 2009]?

"You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan". But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!"

Re: France looking at banning Tor, blocking public Wi-Fi

#55

Post by Kristine1975 » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 1:47 PM UTC

s_q_b wrote: post #45

paulddraper wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more cynical view is that the government perpetrates the attack to provide the opportunity, ala 9/11 conspiracy theories.

No, that's the insane view.

Why? Pseudo-Operations are a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Flag#Pseudo-operations

>Similar false flag tactics were also employed during the Algerian civil war, starting in the middle of 1994. Death squads composed of Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS) security forces disguised themselves as Islamist terrorists and committed false flag terror attacks.

Re: France looking at banning Tor, blocking public Wi-Fi

#56

Post by _yosefk » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 1:47 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #20

gotchange wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a political standpoint, terrorist attacks are first and foremost attacks against THE STATE not the citizenry and that's why you see the Establishment is up in arms every time such a tragedy occurs because they know that the terrorists are challenging their authority and jeopardizing their power in the land. The Establishment really don't care about road fatalities or substance abuse related deaths of the populac…

I think that's a pretty sharp observation. The powerlessness of the state to prevent these attacks translates into a perceived weakness, effectively showing that those that are nominally in control of keeping 'us' safe have oversold their ability to do that.

Well, many individual people, not just "states", fear terrorists more than car accidents and while it's statistically irrational given the number of fatalities due to each cause at a normal year, there is something rational about it.

Someone killing a hundred people who would gladly kill a hundred million if they could, and who's presumably constantly looking for a way to do it, is more frightening than a car accident, because there can't be a huge sudden increase in the rate of car accidents, but there can be and there more than once was a huge sudden increase in the amount of people killed by enemy combatants.

(Whether you think terror could ever escalate into a full-blown war is another question, and many don't think that, or they think that it is the common countermeasures against terror that result in full-blown wars rather than terror itself, etc. My only point is if it's legitimate to fear paperclip maximizers because they're "strong AI" and always achieve their goals, it should be legitimate to fear dead-people-like-you maximizers because they're a form of wetware intelligence with a good track record of achieving its goals, and they specifically want to kill you, rather than it being a likely subgoal of "make more paperclips". From a citizen's point of view, the state is equally powerless against terror and car accidents, and still the dead-people-like-you maximizer is way more frightening for many and it's not stupid to think that.)

Re: France looking at banning Tor, blocking public Wi-Fi

#57

Post by bvr22 » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 1:48 PM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #11

DominikR wrote: post #3

Once again the French show the world what they are best in. Waiving the white flag and submitting when threatened. They even suspended parts of the human rights convention on their territory after the terror attacks in Paris.

I stopped "supporting France" after the Charlie Hebdo attack the moment I saw they were abusing that public support to push for more censorship and surveillance. Now they're looking at extending the emergency powers with very little oversight (by definition) indefinitely , all because the people showed "support" when the attacks happened. So I'm done playing their sick game. I hope more people (from France especially…

French guy here. Our government members are totally not looking to protect our liberties. Since the terrorists attacks on Nov13, more than 2500 police raids, at any hour in day or night, have taken place. Most of the time, they found nothing. La Quadrature du Net, a frnech association for online civil rights, tried to list some of the abuse here : https://wiki.laquadrature.net/%C3%89tat_urgence/Recensement (link in french). When our Assembly voted the extension of emergency state, our Prime Minister Manuel Valls told the Assembly "We know this law does not conform to our constitution, but [the governement] asks you not to seize the Constitutional Coucil and vote it". Six people refused to vote it. Among them, 3 were members of prime minister's party, and they have been publicly summoned to the party's siege on december 16, just after the local elections, "to explain themselves and receive intern sanctions".

France is no longer a democratic country, that's why so many people voted for Marine LePen's party last sunday. A lot of people are juste bored or frustrated by our politics, so they are seeking for some people able to change that. Even if that means electing a Nazi leader.

Re: France looking at banning Tor, blocking public Wi-Fi

#58

Post by dangerpowpow » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 1:54 PM UTC

do they think this will stop terrorists?

Re: France looking at banning Tor, blocking public Wi-Fi

#59

Post by drdaeman » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 1:54 PM UTC

realusername wrote: post #24

rwmj wrote: post #5

All this because 130 people were killed. What would they do to prevent the 4600 people killed in road accidents in France last year? Or the 49000 people killed by alcohol [in 2009]?

And as far as I know, they did not use any encryption anyway, so I don't even see the point here, it's totally unrelated. Should we ban unencrypted connections then since that's what they used ?

Let's get to the root of it - they were humans. We should definitely ban those. Mankind is evil anyway - just think of how many victims it had! /s

Re: France looking at banning Tor, blocking public Wi-Fi

#60

Post by jacquesm » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 1:56 PM UTC

_yosefk wrote: post #56

jacquesm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a pretty sharp observation. The powerlessness of the state to prevent these attacks translates into a perceived weakness, effectively showing that those that are nominally in control of keeping 'us' safe have oversold their ability to do that.

Well, many individual people, not just "states", fear terrorists more than car accidents and while it's statistically irrational given the number of fatalities due to each cause at a normal year, there is something rational about it. Someone killing a hundred people who would gladly kill a hundred million if they could, and who's presumably constantly looking for a way to do it, is more frightening than a car acciden…

They only way that that could conceivably happen is if terrorists gain hold of either nuclear weapons or biological weapons.

The scariest link there - I've said this before, but there is no harm in repeating it - is that Pakistan probably has both, we're sure about their nukes and we strongly suspect they have a BW unit.

IS gaining a foothold in Pakistan gives them potential access to weapons of a totally different grade than the ones that they have today.

If that should happen and these weapons would be brought to a readiness level associated with an imminent attack or if - which I hope we'll be able to avoid but which you can't rule out entirely - an attack with such weapons would be carried out the degree and scope of response will be such that the map of the regions involved will be totally redrawn.

As soon as terrorists cross the line where all-out war against them is justified and the cost to society is one we are willing to bear (and we're far from that, right now the most people can be seen to support is to drop some bombs from a high altitude) it will be 'game over' in a relatively short time with respect to the first level of confrontation and after that we will have a repeat of the aftermath of the Iraq war but on a much larger chunk of the globe.

The world is a tinderbox and way too many idiots have matches.