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France legalizes remote camera and microphone activation in smartphones

francetvinfo.fr

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Re: France legalizes remote camera and microphone activation in smartphones

#61

Post by hejcloud »

jgtrosh wrote: post #4

This is apparently with the approval of a judge (though that's not always meaningful), when targeting crimes that would lead to 10 years imprisonment at least.

In Germany they recently had a judge to allow for a swoop on annoying but harmless climate activists, including freezing their bank accounts and confiscating their homepage (in ridiculous ways, bc they only took the server and forgot assuming control over the domain).

It was very obvious that the ruling was politically motivated and they treated the climate activists like terrorists. What's alarming is that our governments seem to get more and more repressive.

Re: France legalizes remote camera and microphone activation in smartphones

#63

Post by driverdan »

pmontra wrote: post #51
y-curious wrote: post #12

There's a reason criminal rings buy crime-suited phones. Buying a cheapo android with the camera removed/disconnected is going to increase in Europe. Once again, I doubt this security measure will make anyone truly safer.

Opening a phone and removing front and rear cameras is easy. I did it when I replaced my broken ones. Plenty of videos on YouTube for any model. Removing the mic means listen-only phone calls, which arguably could be a feature in some businesses. Both are not for the general population. Maybe they'll sell some extra camera covers.

You could still use an external mic when you need it.

Re: France legalizes remote camera and microphone activation in smartphones

#65

Post by LanceH »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #32
ZoF wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, yes delinquency, there's that umbrella term we were looking for.

Among the delinquent, it's only reserved for the subset who are problematic.

Among law enforcement looking to use new surveillance powers it is anyone who could potentially do anything wrong.

Re: France legalizes remote camera and microphone activation in smartphones

#66

Post by mordae »

donkeyd wrote: post #45
krzys wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those privacy-breaching bills are for the safety of the government, not citizens.

Having worked in law enforcement, seeing sentiment like this is just so depressing. On one side it's people saying things like this, while on the other side a large part is complaining about law enforcement not doing enough to combat cyber crime. These things go hand in hand. If criminals can have limitless access to new technologies, but LE gets no new ways of finding criminals using new technologies, we might as we…

I wouldn't be concerned about LE getting more power if I've not witnessed the scale of public sector corruption and collusion with capitalists. LE is getting exactly zero more powers from me until I see specific people I've met end up in jail for the crimes they did, for which there is plenty of LE powers available.

Until then sorry, not sorry. You are not wasting my freedoms and resources on monitoring the populace to ensure the criminals stay in power.

I would be perfectly happy with defunding police to provide more resources to people who actually care for addicts and homeless, trying to rehabilitate them. That's for the petty crime. I would also accept less policemen in the streets if it meant policemen with actual tech knowledge investigating while collar crime.

Also, legalize all the drugs (with proper regulation) and lay off everyone who wastes my money on stopping their proliferation. Instead start taking care of people who use them (and everybody else, for that matter). Hint: it's usually the socioeconomic background that drives people to use.

(I am EU based.)

Re: France legalizes remote camera and microphone activation in smartphones

#67

Post by Fradow »

donkeyd wrote: post #45
krzys wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those privacy-breaching bills are for the safety of the government, not citizens.

Having worked in law enforcement, seeing sentiment like this is just so depressing. On one side it's people saying things like this, while on the other side a large part is complaining about law enforcement not doing enough to combat cyber crime. These things go hand in hand. If criminals can have limitless access to new technologies, but LE gets no new ways of finding criminals using new technologies, we might as we…

The general sentiment is that law enforcement is able to work well enough without being given the right to infringe on any citizens privacy unchecked (and by that I mean without a court order or minimal oversight).

In this case, it's with a court order, but the real issue is that it mandates having backdoors, something pretty much everyone with a lick of understanding of what it entails is strongly against.

Re: France legalizes remote camera and microphone activation in smartphones

#68

Post by rjzzleep »

soco wrote: post #35
rjzzleep wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parliament certainly didn't stop Macron from pushing threw the pension reform against the will of virtually everyone. It's a pity that most of the media doesn't cover the legitimate concerns of the french population.

The french population is indeed concerned by the increasing of the pension age, but not concerned at all with the price paid by their own children for not increasing it. So I wouldn't call the concerns of the population necessarily legitimate, as present and pressing as they might be.

There is a lot more immediate causes for the drop of living standards in France than the pension reform. Virtue signaling at the expense of the french people, nepotism corruption and Macron selling off critical infrastructure among them.

Re: France legalizes remote camera and microphone activation in smartphones

#69

Post by wkat4242 »

y-curious wrote: post #12

There's a reason criminal rings buy crime-suited phones. Buying a cheapo android with the camera removed/disconnected is going to increase in Europe. Once again, I doubt this security measure will make anyone truly safer.

The camera I don't worry about so much. A 1 cent piece of duct tape is enough to deal with that. As I've done on laptops for years until manufacturers started listening and making sliders.

A microphone is much, much harder to block. It will hear through tape just fine. For a normal user who just wants privacy and doesn't want to pry open an expensive waterproof phone, what recourse do I have?

Re: France legalizes remote camera and microphone activation in smartphones

#70

Post by lancesells »

stef25 wrote: post #47
gonzo41 wrote: post #6

All that will happen is criminals will just get good at opsec. This is downward selective pressure. Nature will respond.

They're not that smart. There's been several cases of "secure phone systems" getting breached by the govt who then got access the entire underworld's communications. Why don't they just use Telegram / Whatsapp / Signal? Sure maybe the NSA can get in but afaik they don't bother with mid scale European cocaine importers.

Am I wrong in thinking that you could bypass Signal / E2E security by having access to the display (screenshots)? Is that a lot less feasible than access to the microphone or camera? Maybe that's much harder at the OS level?
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