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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

#191

Post by beachstartup »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #100
ultramancool wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

you have reason to be concerned. see: japanese american internment. that actually happened.

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

#192

Post by wutbrodo »

alex_duf wrote: post #149
stefantalpalaru wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is the left in power. It's going to get worse when the right and the extreme right get their turn.

I think it has nothing to do with political side anymore. Just irrational reaction to fear from the public, and over-exploitation of that fear to gain more power from the government. It's not pretty to watch. [edit] Fear is irrational by definition, I'm not judging on that, and understand why people are afraid.

> I think it has nothing to do with political side anymore.

Really? I find this conclusion a little baffling, to be frank. Without saying which side of the political spectrum is more "correct", one can hardly deny that the right includes stronger reactions to perceived threats, practically by definition.

You can see it in the rhetoric, the policies, the constituents, etc of both parties. Even now, I would be surprised if policies like these were seeing equal amounts of dissent from the right and from the left (note that this is a different axis than liberal/conservative).

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

#193

Post by gotchange »

vegabook wrote: post #185
gotchange wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey people, I have a file on GrumpyBen, can someone please lock him up as he is deemed a threat to public safety? Joking aside, if activists committed any crime, you follow the legal procedures and challenge them in a court of law before a judge and let the defendants present their case in a free trial and see if any of the charges you brought against them sticks, otherwise shut up and leave them alone because if you…

I don't find your "joke" very funny at all, in the aftermath of almost 200 terrorist deaths (in the west) in November alone. GrumpyBen's prescription is not fun and anti-liberty, but so is living in a society being preyed upon by violent groups within it.

I don't find your comment constructive at all.

First, it wasn't a joke. Second, we were discussing putting environment activists under arbitrary house arrest not terrorists or terrorism. Your anger at the tragic death should be directed at the terrorists or the security apparatus which failed miserably to protect people in the "west" and not at me or the activists.

Try next time to read the comments first before jumping into the discussion.

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

#194

Post by celticninja »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #184
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, could you hold that thought for a moment? We're busy with our collective punishment programme of Christians, they should've stopped Breivik because hey, all Christians exchange terrorist plans and knew it was coming but they didn't warn the police! The only way we can convince them to warn the police next time is to punish them collectively this time, these Christians just don't care otherwise... Can you see how…

First of all, Breivik himself stated he's not a Christian, claiming allegiance to Odin. Second, if someone knew of his plans and didn't turn him in, they're guilty of complicity under current laws in most western countries. Third, far-right groups are regularly 'punished' (ie. Prosecuted under various laws) for the actions of their members, even if it doesn't comprise all their members. As are gang members, etc... Ha…

Laws exist to prosecute those that help support, aide and abet terrorists and they are frequently used against people in the aftermath of an attack. You seem to either think that all Muslims are guilty of aiding and abetting so should all be prosecuted or that these laws are not being used against Muslims who had prior knowledge of these attacks.

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

#195

Post by vegabook »

gotchange wrote: post #193
vegabook wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find your "joke" very funny at all, in the aftermath of almost 200 terrorist deaths (in the west) in November alone. GrumpyBen's prescription is not fun and anti-liberty, but so is living in a society being preyed upon by violent groups within it.

I don't find your comment constructive at all. First, it wasn't a joke. Second, we were discussing putting environment activists under arbitrary house arrest not terrorists or terrorism. Your anger at the tragic death should be directed at the terrorists or the security apparatus which failed miserably to protect people in the "west" and not at me or the activists. Try next time to read the comments first before jump…

your silly faux-incitement "joking" (your words) strikes the wrong tone in this literally deadly-serious subject matter, and if it potentially offends sensibilities then I'm sorry, but pointing that out to you can be constructive.

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

#196

Post by gotchange »

stefantalpalaru wrote: post #106
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…

And this is the left in power. It's going to get worse when the right and the extreme right get their turn.

The mainstream left in France mainly the Socialists are as awful when it comes to individual liberties as their peers in the center right.

A good deal of French people love the nanny state and their government to meddle into their private business and run their lives but they have their differences on how to achieve that and which flavor to pick.

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

#197

Post by nova »

swsieber wrote: post #132
stefantalpalaru wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not extreme left, it's center-left. The distinction is important, otherwise we'd reduce everything to communism and fascism.

What's terrible is that we only put politicians on a single axis.

I used to like the Nolan chart too, but recently I've been thinking that even 2 axes is overfitting.

Politics is so complicated that only a very simple model has predictive value, even with huge variance. I think a single axis order-disorder is the best we can do to talk in general terms.

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

#198

Post by yummyfajitas »

Kristine1975 wrote: post #134
wsc981 wrote: post #124

Socialist regimes have been te most suppressive in peoples history. Think about Pol Pot, Stalin, Lenin, Hitler, etc… Socialism kills [0]. Or a more eloquent and less extreme read would be "The Road to Serfdom" by F. A. Hayek --- [0]: http://jim.com/killingfields.html

>Hitler >Socialist Just because the Nazis called themselves National Socialists doesn't make them socialists. Communists and socialists were the first the Nazis sent to concentration camps.

Some of the Nazi party's 25 tenets:

Abolishing capital income, confiscation of war profits, nationalization of all trusts, a generous increase in old age pensions, communalization of large stores, nationalization and redistribution of farmland and nationalization of schools.

http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/25points....

Whether this meets your definition of "socialism" is mainly a function of how narrowly you define the word. But they were certainly a very economically left wing party.

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

#199

Post by jacquesm »

mindslight wrote: post #189
jacquesm wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's food for thought. Gut feeling: yes, ability to articulate: none. So I could be wrong on that because I have no data to support it. At a minimum it implies a harder problem to do a roll-back (if conspiracy were detected a roll-back would be easier). So I do think there are differences that are significant.

If one believes in democratic change, then I suppose that yes, exposing the conspiracy would cause it to be eradicated. So in effect, characterizing something as a conspiracy is perhaps taking an easy way out. Less easy than the simplistic "us vs them" narrative, but a shortcut nonetheless. I'm just sympathetic to the viewpoint because it feels as if it is at least coming from the right place, especially as the damag…

There absolutely is a mutually beneficial interchange between 'terrorists', 'the media' and 'authorities'. Each gets something out of the others existence and would have a much harder time getting their advantages without this assistance. That's also why this whole cycle is so hard to break.

For contrast: during war time there is a blanket ban on reporting 'bad news', successful attacks on ones own troops by the opponent because that is demoralizing or something to that effect. But if it really were demoralizing how come during peace time we amplify attacks way out of proportion? You'd expect that if the media being told to shut their traps would be to the advantage of those governing that this would be a fairly small thing to arrange. Instead we have the opposite, every instance of an individual event gets blown way out of proportion to push those buttons of powerful emotions.

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

#200

Post by ipozgaj »

lucb1e wrote: post #162
ipozgaj wrote: post #155

Even if they pass the law to ban Tor, you could still use it through an SSH tunnel, which is effectively undetectable.

The greater public is not going to know that. However Tor does have obfsproxy: > obfsproxy is a tool that attempts to circumvent censorship, by transforming the Tor traffic between the client and the bridge. This way, censors, who usually monitor traffic between the client and the bridge, will see innocent-looking transformed traffic instead of the actual Tor traffic.

Right, but my point was that the whole point of this legislation would be to prevent terrorists from using Tor. In reality, it would do nothing to stop them. Whoever really wants to have a way of communicating over an encrypted channel will always find a method of bypassing measures like this.
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