Oops, they invited all the foreigners in and they're rebelling, now they have to spy on us to control them. Well played.
Tech-nazi.
Sorry, I was just noticing things.
France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone
311–320 of 465 posts
Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't seen "reeducation camps" in the west in a few decades
The US imprisons tons of people, with a strong bias towards certain races. Are our prisons meaningfully different from "reeducation camps"? Are they any less biased, brutal, or damaging? You can argue that prisoners in the US are "criminals", but states can call whoever they want a criminal.
This is totally ridiculous. China is literally committing genocide. They are kidnapping innocent people and harvesting their organs.
Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone
#313> But lawmakers agreed to the bill late Wednesday as Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti insisted the bill would affect only “dozens of cases a year.” Technically he is not lying or naive, because any number, including large numbers like 66 million, can be expressed in units of dozens.
it most likely really will only be a small number of cases BUT that doesn't matter it being abused against just one or two times in very important contexts (political, human right activists, etc.) can already be a major negative impact for laws like that the "it's just a few" argument was always worthless even if true
I dunno, I think the number will increase above dozens. They certainly won't start out doing dozens a year, then pare it down to one or two, and eventually realize the don't even really need it. More likely, the number of uses per year will creep up, until eventually it's not as controversial as it used to be, at which point it'll jump dramatically. As a comparison, in the U.S., no-knock warrants were controversial when they were first implemented, and they were stated as being only for very special circumstances—ya know, terrorists and such—and now they happen about 70,000 times a year, mostly for dangerous activities like marijuana possession or distribution. The ratchet only goes one way, which is why it's dangerous to grant the premise of "we'll only use this in exigent circumstances, we pinky swear".
Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the cops say “we pinged your phone”. What that entails exactly I have no clue. The cell phone infrastructure knows where your phone is. It has to in order for it to operate. The police routinely ask cell phone companies for locations of cell phones. Many (most?) not only won't require a warrant, but provide an official portal the police can use to conduct their queries without having to get a phone company employee…
The question is how accurate is cell tower triangulation?
It depends on the area. In very dense areas, it can be more accurate than you expect. It's also possible that they triggered a GPS response that told them rather precisely where the phone is.
I'm only speculating, of course.
Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the cops say “we pinged your phone”. What that entails exactly I have no clue. The cell phone infrastructure knows where your phone is. It has to in order for it to operate. The police routinely ask cell phone companies for locations of cell phones. Many (most?) not only won't require a warrant, but provide an official portal the police can use to conduct their queries without having to get a phone company employee…
The question is how accurate is cell tower triangulation?
Phones don’t just use triangulation. Modern smartphones will also use GPS (A-GPS).
Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
Triangulation by cell tower is really, really accurate.
Doesn't such tracking require a warrant? Looking at call logs may require less.
Cops can freely buy anything from one of Peter Thiel's panopticon products. He can buy all the data from brokers and companies for a pretty high price, and sell it to cops for an equally stupid price, and your tax dollars get used to bypass the entire concept of a warrant.
Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't seen "reeducation camps" in the west in a few decades
The US imprisons tons of people, with a strong bias towards certain races. Are our prisons meaningfully different from "reeducation camps"? Are they any less biased, brutal, or damaging? You can argue that prisoners in the US are "criminals", but states can call whoever they want a criminal.
You may argue that drug users should not be incarcerated or that there's bias in finding such users, but this unfortunately happens in most of the world and in China.
You or your children can end up in the camps for praying in Xinjiang, it's not exactly the same thing.
Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
The question is how accurate is cell tower triangulation?
Phones don’t just use triangulation. Modern smartphones will also use GPS (A-GPS).
This is about asking the cell network where the phone is. This is not about asking the phone where the phone is.
Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
what is "our" government? this site is worldwide..
Y Combinator is an American company and the website is hosted in the US.
What relevance does that have to the question, may I ask. Do you think, for example, that every user of Twitter is American because Twitter is an American company?!
Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone
#3205 min after implementation the first corrupt cop is going to sell the software that handles the backdoor access to shady characters(criminal elements, foreign actors) for use or reverse engineering.