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France rejects backdoor mandate

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Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#201
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listening to the debates in the lower chamber (Assemblée Nationale) and the arguments of those arguing in favor of backdoors clearly show they do not have a clue how any of this works. They are not clever players doing double-bluffs. They are ignorant stooges.

Why do they need to understand how encryption works ? They’re mostly interested in the goal ( a lock that can be broken by law enforcement, and allow wiretapping), and will tell you that these things are already possible in the physical world today. In other words they’re fine with intruding upon citizens privacy - this doesn’t require any understanding of encryption I think ( and if encryption prevents that, their a…

This is incorrect. They will quite often claim that it is possible to do without breaking encryption, as required for banking and such. They do believe it is possible to have a backdoor that will _only_ be accessible to the government. Completely ignorant of how quickly that backdoor will be found by hostile state actors.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#202
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crime rates from immigrant populations are highly dependent on where the immigrants come from, and the US tends to do a better job at integration than European countries in recent years. Not that the US did not experience problems with immigrant crime from South America, but it is much worse in Europe, notably with immigrants from the Middle East. I think the baseline crime rate in the US was also higher than it was…

The US is an ocean way from Middle East. What did you expect? If the US imported inmigrants from war zones, (like Mexico with narcos but far worse), California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas... would be shitting bricks today.

I'm pretty sure that the biggest numbers of immigrants in those states come exactly from that "war zone" that you think Mexico is.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#203
post #148
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it feels like it often boils down to the politicians just not understanding enough to take rational decisions. That's a very gullible take and kind of apologetic for the politicians. If you are implementing a backdoor to crypto-systems, you probably know exactly what you are doing. That, and this has been re-surfacing time and again under different pretenses make this a deliberate attack on freedom of expression. T…

Listening to the debates in the lower chamber (Assemblée Nationale) and the arguments of those arguing in favor of backdoors clearly show they do not have a clue how any of this works. They are not clever players doing double-bluffs. They are ignorant stooges.

The article clearly states that it was pushed by the Interior Ministry. Those in there know exactly what they are doing.

On the other hand, the interior minister himself has no clue, as well as all the politicians in the assemblée. This is where the double-bluff is from. (granted, I think Darmanain was an exception)

We have to remember that, while the minister changes with the government and thus is by definition a politician (seriously, look at some of our ministries, they go from education to health taking a trip by ecology with a pit stop in finance), the ministries themselves are made of people that mostly stay in place and are not affected by government changes. Those are the ones making the calls. And those precisely know what they're doing (thing DGSI and DGSE).

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#204
post #156

I've found the original debates video on the National Assembly website. My French is good enough for that (not enough for cooking et al. though), so I believe I understood. I'm positively surprised by some deputies remarks. But Bruno (interior minister) Retailleau is either totally incompetent technically, with his advisors as well, or is a liar. "We will apply the math selectively, only for those that are a threat a…

The level of math and/or tech understanding in the French political "elite" is abysmal. These people graduated high school, and went on to college without doing any math AT ALL after 10th grade ("seconde"), and probably sucked at math even then. And they have nothing but contempt for the people who do understand those issues ("les techniciens").

Vladimir Arnol’d (the famous Russian mathematician) touches on that subject in his essay « Sur l’éducation mathématique » https://smf.emath.fr/system/files/filepdf/Gaz-78-Arnold.pdf> (in French; Arnol’d also taught in France).

According to him, mathematical teaching has become overly abstract, leading to students being disgusted by maths, seeing it as disconnected from reality. Some of these students then end up being ministers… Original quote:

« Comme de telles mathématiques scolastiques, séparées de la physique, ne sont adaptées ni à l’enseignement, ni à aucune application éventuelle à d’autres sciences, les mathématiciens se sont fait haïr des lycéens (dont certains ensuite sont devenus ministres) et des utilisateurs. »

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#205
post #156

I've found the original debates video on the National Assembly website. My French is good enough for that (not enough for cooking et al. though), so I believe I understood. I'm positively surprised by some deputies remarks. But Bruno (interior minister) Retailleau is either totally incompetent technically, with his advisors as well, or is a liar. "We will apply the math selectively, only for those that are a threat a…

The level of math and/or tech understanding in the French political "elite" is abysmal. These people graduated high school, and went on to college without doing any math AT ALL after 10th grade ("seconde"), and probably sucked at math even then. And they have nothing but contempt for the people who do understand those issues ("les techniciens").

I think most of the people in the "making decisions" business don't really care about how or even if something is possible, they leave it as an exercise in compliance for the "boffins" and "les techniciens".

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French want less criminals and immigrants in the street. Whatever it takes. I'm french, i have not heard any people, work, street, even television or internet speak about that. The sad truth is that it wouldn't even solve the issue, criminals will always be able to use encrypted communications. there are open source software that can't be tampered with, software that doesn't use a single server where backdoor can be…

> French want less criminals and immigrants in the street. Whatever it takes. If that were true, France would have a vastly different immigration policy. It would even have an explicit, drastic, and targeted emigration policy.

Since when the general population are the decision makers? /s

Well, half /s anyways. Working class don't want them because "they're taking our jobs". Middle class don't want them because "blah blah security". Upper class want them because that's cheap labour. And as it happens, the upper class is the class in power.

Most french don't care. But this still creates tensions, even between immigrants, say for like housing. As we say in french, it's a "bourbier".

In the end, it's the same situation as in any other country where immigration has taken over the frontline of the political debate.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#207
post #156

I've found the original debates video on the National Assembly website. My French is good enough for that (not enough for cooking et al. though), so I believe I understood. I'm positively surprised by some deputies remarks. But Bruno (interior minister) Retailleau is either totally incompetent technically, with his advisors as well, or is a liar. "We will apply the math selectively, only for those that are a threat a…

The level of math and/or tech understanding in the French political "elite" is abysmal. These people graduated high school, and went on to college without doing any math AT ALL after 10th grade ("seconde"), and probably sucked at math even then. And they have nothing but contempt for the people who do understand those issues ("les techniciens").

France has great engineering tradition. One of the left leaders is PhD in math. As I mentioned, multiple comments by members of National Assembly were quite educated. The problem is with key politicians having perverse incentives and misrepresenting bad things to the less educated public.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#208
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your lack of empathy for others is always baffling for me. “I haven’t had problems with occupants, therefore they are not a problem.” They just said that they hadn't observed the same thing in their entourage. > Some had to crawl, bleeding on the floor, reciting to Coran. Are you referring to a recent event in France? Can't find any with the query "réciter coran otage". That quote makes France look like a war zone.…

I find your linked study intriguing, as an American who's aware of studies on my side of the Atlantic that show an inverse relationship between immigration and criminality - i.e. immigrants commit less crime than native born citizens: https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/illegal-immigrant-murde... Is that truly not the case in France? I'd be curious as to the results of a study comparing this effect across both count…

It's illegal to do such studies in France and to talk about them

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#209

France has rejected this backdoor but keep in mind that France is still in favor of chat control (mandatory on device scanning of your communication). There's now a majority among EU countries and the proposal is expected to pass. The next meeting is April 8th.

This seems like one of those situations that's going to turn regular people into outlaws. How could anyone vote in favor of something so foolish?

Also how would that even work, would your device get compromised by connecting to a wireless network inside French borders?

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These aren't dumb people. They know exactly what they're asking for. Privacy and security of the public's data is not a priority to them, surveillance and power is. Politicians would much prefer all communication in plaintext, to hell with individual freedoms and privacy, especially European politicians that don't come from the same traditions of freedom as the anglophone countries. What politician do you expect to o…

The UK and Australia are ahead of countries like France in restricting freedom, so this sounds like a poor attempt to avoid complimenting the US specifically.

What freedoms are you referring to wrt Australia?
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