The internet is a perfect surveillance machine. It is irresistible to those in power. I believe it shifts the balance of power towards the center more than it empowers distributed forces. For example, protesters have more tools to organize but governments have more tools to know what protesters are up to, they know where protesters will show up, how many and who they are. So there are no surprises. Overall advantage goes to the government. The Hong Kong protests probably would have sparked a revolution 20 years ago, but today they got nothing. As governments get better at this the internet will be a huge stabilizing force for power.
Lawmakers in France Move to Vastly Expand Surveillance
41–50 of 104 posts
Re: Lawmakers in France Move to Vastly Expand Surveillance
#42Talking to friends lived or are still living in France, here are just some of the problems I heard: - in Paris, it's common to get robbed, and sometimes beaten up if you are not careful, and cops can do nothing. This is from a guy who went to school in Paris, I can't imagine what's it like to be a girl. - some of the non-French speaking neighbourhoods are quite dangerous, even cops would avoid going there for their o…
[deleted]
Re: Lawmakers in France Move to Vastly Expand Surveillance
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Saying "encryption makes you a target" represents a lack of understanding for how spy agencies monitor all communications. It's not like spy agency analysts target only some people and when they are in their offices and see some encrypted traffic from someone they go: "AHA! This guy uses encryption - let's monitor his (encrypted) communications and his metadata!" It's more like everyone's wide-open communications are…
in that framework, consider that encryption is just a special keyword. And then they see that not a lot of people use it, then they have an opportunity to add just a bit more effort to those cases (maybe just storing the encrypted traffic), because there are so few.
A lot of corporations use VPNs, and a bunch of them use them to connect to foreign offices. It's not as uncommon as you think.
Re: Lawmakers in France Move to Vastly Expand Surveillance
#44Mark Lilla has written a series of three articles that appeared in the New York Review that shed a lot of light on how very seriously the recent attacks have been taken in France, and incidentally predicted such a law would be passed.
From the first article, written in February (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/mar/05/france-...):
"[After the Prime Minister's speech], to the nation’s surprise, the deputies [in the French National Assembly] broke spontaneously and unanimously into the Marseillaise, the first time this had happened since the signing of the armistice ending World War I in 1918.
"On the question of security, this unity is likely to last. There is a solid consensus that more resources will have to be devoted to tracking suspected terrorists and monitoring the Internet for signs of trouble. Legislation will be required to give the government sufficient legal leeway to accomplish that, which it will get, since all parties recognize the deficiencies yet none wants to reproduce the American Patriot Act."
I had to read the article twice to begin to understand the French situation. There are parallels to the American case, but the French situation is unique, and in some ways more genuinely pressing than the American case. I urge the mostly American commenters here to not just draw the crude parallel and stop there.
One point of difference is the special role the schools have, in France, of imparting a republican ideal. Another is the traditionally strong centralizing role of the national state in French schools, and culture more generally. And finally, there is the proximity, in all senses of the term, of France to North Africa.
Re: Lawmakers in France Move to Vastly Expand Surveillance
#45> "The last intelligence law was done in 1991, when there were neither cellphones nor Internet"
Well, that's just downright untrue.
Re: Lawmakers in France Move to Vastly Expand Surveillance
#46Talking to friends lived or are still living in France, here are just some of the problems I heard: - in Paris, it's common to get robbed, and sometimes beaten up if you are not careful, and cops can do nothing. This is from a guy who went to school in Paris, I can't imagine what's it like to be a girl. - some of the non-French speaking neighbourhoods are quite dangerous, even cops would avoid going there for their o…
No, I don't think it's common to get robbed or beaten up in Paris. Although it may happen, just like in most big cities in the world.
And yes, there are indeed very poor and gloomy immigrant neighborhoods in France, with a higher crime rate (mostly drug traffic), where cops are not welcome. How bad are those places? depending on their political views, some tell you that these are islamist war zones and other say that these are happy melting pots.
This, and the question of immigration is a very sensitive issue in France, and people are extremely divided about it.
Re: Lawmakers in France Move to Vastly Expand Surveillance
#47The US has a huge influence over other free nations, and has especially since WW2. They mimic the US, they take cues from the US in terms of what behavior is acceptable, they often expect the US to lead by example. In the two centuries prior to WW2, Europe was dominated by dictators and monarchies. Afterward, the entire region was remodeled on American style government representation, modern central banking, market e…
Funny I talked about a U.S guy on a trip the other day, he said he wasn't in favor of security over liberty.
By the time the U.S backpedal, the rest of the world will 'enjoy' false security measures.
Re: Lawmakers in France Move to Vastly Expand Surveillance
#48"socialists" ... at that point if you vote PS you're a usefull idiot.
I am politically on the right wing (in the French way), but Sarkozy is no better, honestly - amongst other things, he tried to push his then 19 years old son to become head of the administration managing the business area of La Defense (dealing with several billion of euros). I have no doubt he would have done the same as the PS is doing now would he be in power.
I never said UMP is any better, in fact there is very little difference between both parties, aside from the Kabuki theater during the elections. The french political elite is rotten to the core. I'm left leaning by the way and I used to vote for these douche bags.
Re: Lawmakers in France Move to Vastly Expand Surveillance
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
> some of the non-French speaking neighbourhoods are quite dangerous there are no such thing as "non-French speaking neighborhoods" in France.
What was described to me was certain areas in the country or suburban immigrant neighbourhoods, which I assumed to be non-French speaking. But after some reading, it seems you are right, as people in the ghettos still speak French, and not necessarily fresh immigrants. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_situation_in_the_French_...
May I recommend the interested reader to watch La Haine[0] ("hatred") by Mathieu Kassovitz. This movie really sets the mood, and things barely changed since '95.
To be fair, such "ghetto" (la cité) people† mostly don't speak "verlan"[1] ("l'envers" with reversed phonetic syllables) anymore, but both the people and slang is usually referred to as "wesh"[2], from an arabic informal salute interjection. It's mainly poorly syntactically and grammatically worded French combined with limited vocabulary and heavy hand gestures and exaggerated arabic accent borrowings (e.g Rs are more pronounced) with various word borrowings from English or Arab.
Interestingly enough, I watched it recently in close proximity with The Wire[3], which provided great contrast yet striking similarities, and brings an interesting light into how we used to consider surveillance. In that regard, things have changed a lot. An awful lot, and certainly not for the better.
† It should be noted that many people and families that live there have adequate education levels and just live there because the rent is cheap and they can't afford anything else.
[0]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113247/
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlan
Re: Lawmakers in France Move to Vastly Expand Surveillance
#50Does anyone know what the so-called "black boxes" look like? Do they bring a server into the datacenter and log traffic? Is it software they force companies to run on their servers? Is it only for telcos or also for websites?