Chat Control refuses to die.
France moves to break encrypted messaging
111–120 of 149 posts
Re: France moves to break encrypted messaging
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
The murdering of French lawmakers is something we frequently celebrate here in France. Your profile suggests that you’re in Israel, where groups like the Irgun are celebrated as national heroes. Violent struggle against perceived oppressors shouldn’t be an unfamiliar concept.
You are correct, the Irgun are credited along with two other organisations as being the physical protectors of our people during a time when we were more typically known for being slaughtered. However, very few people here are extremists that celebrate the Irgun. Quite the opposite, the Irgun is famous internationally because they were the violent exception to the norm. Israel was founded by leftists, only in the lat…
Hey, I left you an email.
K.r.i.s.t.i.a.n.i.b.a.n.i @....
Might be in spam. I don't know. Lol.
Re: France moves to break encrypted messaging
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which are also known as right and left, respectively. What, did you think right and left were arbitrary? The words are arbitrary, but the meanings are not. They correlate quite strongly with the material interests of the up and down.
No, I'm referring to authoritarianism (up) and libertarianism (down).
Right, can we agree on "extremists" then? Takes the far-left, far-right, far-authoritarian and far-libertarian altogether.
Re: France moves to break encrypted messaging
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
The French people typically elect far-right politicians to represent them at the EU level, so...
It is true that "far-right politicians" had the most chance to be elected in the EU parliament but this is in fact insignificant. How individual country influence the EU is there is an invisible battle on putting their people anywhere under the commissioners. There are a lot of career people you will never hear about yielding immense power there and from what I know they do not have a political affiliation how we und…
Well I disagree.
Re: France moves to break encrypted messaging
#115Seems to me we're going to have to let the anti-encryption mob have their way until things go wrong—bigtime. No amount of expert advice will convince them until they witness firsthand the negative consequences of weakening encryption. It's only afterwards and as a consequence some highly newsworthy disasters occur such as a child abduction or political sex scandal involving a high profile politician come to light tha…
This is generally my opinion on accelerationism as a solution to concerning trends: https://thebad.website/comic/accelerationism
Yep, that's exactly right.
Re: France moves to break encrypted messaging
#116So in France you will not be able to send your friend gibberish text that only you and your friend understand. Will they also ban the ability to make new languages that only you and your friends understand. Will they also ban whispering?
Well, if it is some gibberish between you and friends the state doesn't understand, they will have you silently and continually investigated by a pre-crime unit. You and your friends could be committing "thought-crime".
But I thought crime---
- He said thought crime! bots start firing the machine guns
Re: France moves to break encrypted messaging
#117Hello, I am French and, with many others, fighting this. It is still a fight - no law is enacted yet - and it is not the first time we have to fight this.
To state how utterly ridiculous these politicians are, ANSSI itself - the national cybersecurity agency- published a paper in 2016 clearly explaining why backdooring encryption in messaging apps is both dangerous and useless (https://www.developpez.com/actu/102152/France-l-ANSSI-se-dit...)
This position has been clearly restated in 2025 by Guillaume Poupard, a former highly acclaimed ANSSI boss and a cryptographer.
Re: France moves to break encrypted messaging
#118So in France you will not be able to send your friend gibberish text that only you and your friend understand. Will they also ban the ability to make new languages that only you and your friends understand. Will they also ban whispering?
I have talked about it with a high-ranking french policeman. That person is mostly active in fighting sex-crimes on children, which is the angle I will mostly be referring to. From what I understood, it is very clear to them that even if these laws comes to pass, a good amount of criminal activities will move to other safer options.
However, the general criminal is not technically competent. Currently, with WhatsApp providing end-to-end by default, access to pedophilic content is extremely simple. By suppressing these simple means of end to end encryption, the goal is to reduce the amount of people accessing them due to a higher entry bar.
What's concerning to me is that it renders anyone using encryption suspect, which includes pedophiles and narcotrafficants, but also activists.
Also, if we're only targetting pedophile networks, one option that comes to mind to me is the following : Most of those images are known and have been circulating for a while. By hashing any sent images and comparing them to the checksum of known ones, one could easily flag suspicions senders and proceed to access the phones of those users. Does that seem feasible to you or am I missing something?
Re: France moves to break encrypted messaging
#119I have talked about it with a high-ranking french policeman. That person is mostly active in fighting sex-crimes on children, which is the angle I will mostly be referring to. From what I understood, it is very clear to them that even if these laws comes to pass, a good amount of criminal activities will move to other safer options. However, the general criminal is not technically competent. Currently, with WhatsApp providing end-to-end by default, access to pedophilic content is extremely simple. By suppressing these simple means of end to end encryption, the goal is to reduce the amount of people accessing these networks due to a higher entry bar.
What's of course concerning is that it renders anyone using encryption suspect, which includes pedophiles and narcotrafficants, but also activists and co.
Also, if we're only targetting pedophile networks, one option that comes to mind to me is the following : Most of those images are known and have been circulating for a while. By hashing any sent images and comparing them to the checksum of known ones, one could easily flag suspicions senders and proceed to access the phones of those users. Does that seem feasible to you or am I missing something?
Re: France moves to break encrypted messaging
#120The article is a lot more nuanced than the title or what most folks are discussing in comments. France has politicians voting in both directions and thus far the "keep encryption and enshrine it in law" side is ahead slightly. > Senator Olivier Cadic, of the Centrist Union, secured an amendment to a separate bill on critical infrastructure resilience and cybersecurity that would do the opposite, writing encryption pr…
> His bill was examined in committee at the National Assembly in September and has been stalled since.