France threatens GrapheneOS with arrests / server seizure for refusing backdoors

Following the propaganda of the ministry of interior, several articles were published in press about GrapheneOS, which is described as a solution for criminals because it allows to hide things.

La Quadrature du Net [similar to the FSF with regard to defending users' rights] argues that the purpose is of course not cybercrime, but to secure and protect the privacy of its users.

The head of the anticybercrime brigade of Paris threatens of suing the developers of GrapheneOS if connections with organized crime were to be found.

The government has repeatedly tried to extend cyber-surveillance previously. They are trying to use a law designed to fight drug traffickers in order to enforce backdoors in services that use cryptography, such as Signal or WhatsApp, without any success for the moment.

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So, it's a threat before having a proof. They also mention the arrest of Pavel Durov, who was arrested because Telegram failed to answer legal requests, which was then constructed as complicity with criminals using Telegram, but that's obviously a very different case.

But of course, if they succeed in forcing backdoors, criminals will just use other ways to communicate (doesn't matter if they are legal or not because, well, they are criminals...) or tricks; for instance, back in the day when (analog) phone calls could be wiretapped, they were already using code words. They could use e.g. steganography tomorrow.

But we will be left with backdoors that are an unacceptable compromise on security and privacy. This is a recipe for dystopia considering that far-right parties are getting stronger in Europe, including France.

[0]: This is not a figure of speech - many anti-social traits which result in NPD, ASPD and their subclinical versions[1] are genetic. There is literal evolutionary pressure to exploit others.

[1]: Meaning the trait is sufficiently pronounced to be harmful to others but not enough to be harmful to the person having it so it's not diagnosed as a disorder.

Politicians are routinely ordered to surrender their communication to justice to audit what they do. Missing texts from Von Der Leyen is at the heart of Pfizer-gate after all.

I don’t really know what to think about this to be honest. I don’t think it’s entirely black and white and I find it surprisingly easy to play devil advocate.

Remember that the US government has an insane level of access to private communications via all the post 9/11 laws, how cosy it is with the main tech companies and we know they do a lot of these spying unofficially and with little oversight since Snowden.

Meanwhile, France is struggling with an unprecedented level of organised crime activity with the amount of violent crimes reaching worrying level. We are talking murders involving automatic weapons in broad daylight in the middle of the streets of France second largest city. Two weeks ago, the young brother of a famous anti-drug activist was murdered by a hitman while shopping.

There has been a huge increase in the quantity of cocaine being smuggled from South America triggering intense gang competition for the control of deal points and the mean in place to tackle the issue increasingly look vastly undersized. Limiting the discussion to it being authoritarian measure is refusing to acknowledge the very real challenge police currently face.

Replying here to this seemingly flagged/dead comment (not sure why it was flagged - a very reasonable question).

I fully support higher scrutiny of public officials & cops, but this frankly isn't that. First & foremost, the problems you're describing are systemic, not individual. Monitoring a cop's phone isn't going to reduce police violence if the system isn't accountable - this is essentially the "bad apple" argument. The entire system needs drastic reform: backdoors won't solve any real problems here.

Secondly, independently of the levels of reform needed, at an individual level we're talking workplace conduct, reporting, protocols & transparency -vs- dystopian privacy invasion. There's a very broad spectrum here long before we reach the need for extremes.

Lastly, you need to look at the systems doing the monitoring of politicians' & cops' phones in this hypothetical scenario: if those systems contain the same systemic corruptions (which they inevitably do), the entire argument for oversight is moot.