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Revelations about the French Big Brother

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Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#51

Post by PavlovsCat »

threeseed wrote: post #36
tomelders wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for what, with surveillance like this, how is there still crime and terrorism? either it's ineffective or they're overselling the capabilities or they're more interested in dissidents, and judging by the way activists and whistle blowers are being treated, i suspect this is the real reason these systems exist. EDIT: Or there's some other threat none of us know about and these systems are working perfectly at keep…

So the government is NOT trying to prevent terrorism but instead has setup these elaborate systems just to prevent activism and whistle blowing. You sure that aliens aren't involved somewhere in there ? The FACTS are this. The head of the NSA has testified in front of congress that over 50 potential terrorist acts were thwarted because of PRISM since 9/11 including bombing of the NY subways and stock exchange. And th…

That it's a fact that he said that doesn't make it a fact that it is so.

Oh, and the irony of thinking otherwise and mocking "tinfoil"; I never saw anyone resorting to that who didn't strike me as projecting. It's for example a conspiracy theory to simply note that buildings don't just fall into themselves because of office furniture fires, but it's not a conspiracy theory to believe Saddam is about to unleash WMD without even being able to name what he'd gain from it. It doesn't take genius to note that the deciding factor is not how realistic or dumb fucking stupid something is, or even physically possible for that matter, but wether it goes against or with power.

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#52

Post by dragonwriter »

PavlovsCat wrote: post #51
threeseed wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the government is NOT trying to prevent terrorism but instead has setup these elaborate systems just to prevent activism and whistle blowing. You sure that aliens aren't involved somewhere in there ? The FACTS are this. The head of the NSA has testified in front of congress that over 50 potential terrorist acts were thwarted because of PRISM since 9/11 including bombing of the NY subways and stock exchange. And th…

That it's a fact that he said that doesn't make it a fact that it is so. Oh, and the irony of thinking otherwise and mocking "tinfoil"; I never saw anyone resorting to that who didn't strike me as projecting. It's for example a conspiracy theory to simply note that buildings don't just fall into themselves because of office furniture fires, but it's not a conspiracy theory to believe Saddam is about to unleash WMD wi…

> It's for example a conspiracy theory to simply note that buildings don't just fall into themselves because of office furniture fires, but it's not a conspiracy theory to believe Saddam is about to unleash WMD without even being able to name what he'd gain from it. It doesn't take genius to note that the deciding factor is not how realistic or dumb fucking stupid something is, or even physically possible for that matter, but wether it goes against or with power.

Well, yeah, the phrase "conspiracy theory" refers to a theory that involves a massive conspiracy among the power elites to keep the truth about some important thing from the public.

So, yeah, the claims about Saddam's WMD's weren't a conspiracy theory, they were just lies by those in power (an accurate description of the nature and motivation of those claims would have been a conspiracy theory, which demonstrates also that "conspiracy theory" and "false" aren't the same thing.)

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#53

Post by _k »

jgrahamc wrote: post #5

So, let's see. The NSA does it, GCHQ does it, DGSE does it. The operating assumption should be that all countries are monitoring all communications for at least metadata. Personally, I would not be the slightest bit surprised to learn that all phone calls are being recorded and as much Internet traffic as possible. I'm not surprised by this news at all. The technical means have been there for years and years. And the…

It's no surprise but give me 6 months of your data and I will use it to turn you into a criminal. It's no surprise but it's a huge problem.

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#54

Post by hbbio »

bsaul wrote: post #34
alan_cx wrote: post #6

It will be interesting to see how the French public react to this in comparison with Brits and Americans. Not to mention the Germans.

I'm guessing, nobody will react. We already have the most impopular president of the last 50 years, one of the highest tax rates of modern country, highest unemployment rate, high abstention rate in elections, high immigration rates, high debt ratios, and the extremist political parties are on the verge of gaining massive support in the next european elections. That, plus the fact that we've had numerous previous exp…

I have to agree with many things you say, but I can't figure out why "high immigration rates" may be a problem.

If you imagine a country as a giant shop, the more customers the best.

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#55

Post by espadrine »

jgrahamc wrote: post #16
morsch wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not it's surprising is totally irrelevant and you should stop pretending it isn't, if that is what you're saying. But you've got an interesting point in that the desire has always been to capture everything -- while the technical means to do it have been available for a couple of years. Along with a further shift in how people communicate towards easily moniterable technology, that is the crux of the matte…

This is a discussion on HN, not in a general public forum. Sure, the general public is probably surprised by what's been revealed but we should not be.

Being french, I am quite certain that this is a lesser news to french people than PRISM was to americans.

Read the comments (if you can read french), and you'll notice that the reactions are all a sarcastic combination of "not surprised at all" and "that darn government probably didn't even get this right".

To sum up the differences:

- PRISM was legal. That said, in France, legal coherency is a joke. Laws conflict with each other, and even when voted, they may not be applied.

- There is an implied contract in the US that the government won't spy on citizens. Nobody believes that in France.

- As a result of the above, the people behind this "revelation" won't even be sued.

- French people tend to use services from abroad (mostly american, sweden and german), so the government doesn't have much leverage to get information from companies. I doubt they broke TLS. They do have a huge understanding with ISPs, however. Incidentally, ISPs are severely distrusted by their users.

All in all, our democracy is even worse than yours. Yes, that is possible.

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#56

Post by PavlovsCat »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #21
jgrahamc wrote: post #5

So, let's see. The NSA does it, GCHQ does it, DGSE does it. The operating assumption should be that all countries are monitoring all communications for at least metadata. Personally, I would not be the slightest bit surprised to learn that all phone calls are being recorded and as much Internet traffic as possible. I'm not surprised by this news at all. The technical means have been there for years and years. And the…

We need to stop being so blasé about the way countries spy on each other and the general public. No, it's not anything new. Yes, spies spy, that's their job. But it shouldn't be their job.

Exactly.. so many unexamined assumptions go into all this.

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#57

Post by _djo_ »

neolithic wrote: post #24

Was this leaked by Snowden? If so, it might explain why France blocked the Bolivian president's plane from using French airspace.

From what I've heard, no. This isn't a Snowden leak, it's the result of a journo sitting on information and having an opportune moment to publish.

This isn't the first exposé of the French government's communication surveillance either. There have been quite a few articles on this over the past few years.

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#58

Post by tomelders »

lttlrck wrote: post #46
tomelders wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for what, with surveillance like this, how is there still crime and terrorism? either it's ineffective or they're overselling the capabilities or they're more interested in dissidents, and judging by the way activists and whistle blowers are being treated, i suspect this is the real reason these systems exist. EDIT: Or there's some other threat none of us know about and these systems are working perfectly at keep…

You think this means there should be no crime by now? How would that work exactly?

You're straining my point I feel. I simply think that this sort of surveillance would have made a big impact on the $36 billion drug trade, what with the war on drugs being such a hot topic an all.

But no. It seems drug dealers don't use phones or computers or send mail to communicate with any of the cartels or drug lords we know of, and presumably coordinate their gargantuan logistical operations via telepathy.

Or, the government doesn't deem the drug trade worthy of scrutiny, despite the warnings that it funds terrorism.

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