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France looking at banning Tor, blocking public Wi-Fi

arstechnica.co.uk

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

#91

Post by mcansky »

acd wrote: post #85

West will not win against crazy groups by reimplementing the great firewall of China. If the state wants to control our lifes, they should have real time access to credit card and phone data. One main issue is religions and that it turns people against each other due to different beliefs.

no book of religion pushes people to grab a knife or a gun to harm others; crazy leaders do and unstable and uneducated people follow.

yet, even if we discard that previous point : forbidding religions would be exactly the same as creating one and pointing "believers" as enemies of "non believers" ... triggering more of what you try to stop

general education and broad tolerance between cultures (either religious or not) is quite probably the only way to move towards non violence and peace ...

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

#92

Post by amyjess »

bvr22 wrote: post #57
mtgx wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> France is no longer a democratic country

"Democratic" and "liberal" are not synonyms. They often go together, but they don't have to: there is indeed such a thing as an "illiberal democracy" [0], and a bunch of them exist already (e.g. Singapore, Russia). France is still democratic, though it's taken a serious turn towards illiberal recently.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illiberal_democracy

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

#93

Post by chaostheory »

acd wrote: post #85

West will not win against crazy groups by reimplementing the great firewall of China. If the state wants to control our lifes, they should have real time access to credit card and phone data. One main issue is religions and that it turns people against each other due to different beliefs.

That's assuming that the western gv's opponent is crazy groups. What if they were only red herrings? What if the real opponent were their own, law abiding citizens?

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

#94

Post by Squarel »

GrumpyBen wrote: post #89
bvr22 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Most of the time, they found nothing They found 230 illegal weapons. That's not what I call nothing...

2500 raids, 230 illegal weapons?

We could say "Oh, this means there were almost 10 illegal weapons at every raid", but, they were not evenly distributed, just like raiding every house in a dodgy estate will turn up a lot of illegal items, but most of them will be centered in a small % of properties, so, yeah, for 2500 raids, most of them will have returned nothing.

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

#95

Post by agumonkey »

leaveyou wrote: post #86
crdb wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The public never said that. The "public" is not the people at rallies, not even what people in the street and cafes are saying, but the tally of the vote at the next election, and politicians act accordingly. As you can see from the first round of the regional elections, the French "public" overwhelmingly voted for more.

"they act accordingly" by doing exactly what suits the power structure and their campaign sponsors best and the public never really wants.. what a convenient response.

Typically the kind of things that makes me thing democracy as it is is broken. It's a self-sustaining low-hanging-fruit race. I wish I knew how to tweak it back into sense.

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

#96

Post by loup-vaillant »

_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…

> Whether you think terror could ever escalate into a full-blown war […]

Funny words: full-blown war scares me much more than mere "terror".

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

#97

Post by GrumpyBen »

gotchange wrote: post #37

The French regime again showing its ugly authoritarian and statist face with these draconian bills. It wasn't enough for them to put environmentalists under house arrest and subject innocent people to humiliating mandatory reporting to different police stations 3 times a day or obligatory curfew for certain people or neighborhoods without any judicial oversight. [0] I knew it from the beginning that they would abuse…

The police found more than 300 illegal weapons during their searches. People that were put under house arrests have a file on them because of their links with terrorists or terrorist organizations. I don't feel the government is abusing the state of emergency, I just feel they should have done all this before the attacks.

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

#98

Post by girvo »

Rexxar wrote: post #87

France doesn't consider anything. If you speak French, just read the original article on lemonde. It's just a wish list from people working in police and gendarmerie. Etabli mardi 1er décembre par la direction des libertés publiques et des affaires juridiques (DLPAJ), il recense toutes les mesures de police administrative que les policiers et les gendarmes souhaiteraient voir passer dans le cadre des deux projets de…

Does the French public complain that "nothing gets passed" like the Australian public does? I am a massive fan of that system. It has stopped dangerous legislation from being passed. Not all of it, and not enough, but some, and that's better than none.

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

#99

Post by euroclydon »

jacquesm wrote: post #60
_yosefk wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

Don't you think Pakistan has shown these facilities to the US Government? I believe the US is ready to destroy them, or surgically invade, if IS were poised to gain access to them.

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

#100

Post by TallGuyShort »

ultramancool wrote: post #70
gotchange wrote: post #37

The French regime again showing its ugly authoritarian and statist face with these draconian bills. It wasn't enough for them to put environmentalists under house arrest and subject innocent people to humiliating mandatory reporting to different police stations 3 times a day or obligatory curfew for certain people or neighborhoods without any judicial oversight. [0] I knew it from the beginning that they would abuse…

I'm getting really afraid of these authoritarian opportunists. Seems much more likely to have an impact on my life than terrorist attacks at least...

I'm genuinely more afraid of the people who are afraid right now than I am of the people who they think I should be afraid of. The anti-Muslim rhetoric (e.g. yelling "All Muslims are terrorists" at town meetings) scares the hell out of me. How easily could that attitude be shifted towards any arbitrary group with just one or two tragic events?
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