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France legalizes remote camera and microphone activation in smartphones

francetvinfo.fr

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Re: France legalizes remote camera and microphone activation in smartphones

#71

Post by cwmoore »

donkeyd wrote: post #45
krzys wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those privacy-breaching bills are for the safety of the government, not citizens.

Having worked in law enforcement, seeing sentiment like this is just so depressing. On one side it's people saying things like this, while on the other side a large part is complaining about law enforcement not doing enough to combat cyber crime. These things go hand in hand. If criminals can have limitless access to new technologies, but LE gets no new ways of finding criminals using new technologies, we might as we…

"You can't outrun a Motorola."

Re: France legalizes remote camera and microphone activation in smartphones

#72

Post by wkat4242 »

stef25 wrote: post #43
dutchbrit wrote: post #11

So, how do they plan on activating cameras/microphones? Backdoor?

Back to 15$ Nokias I guess

Which come with microphones too.

Is S30+ or KaiOS (previously FirefoxOS) which Nokia uses really that much more secure?

Also, usability becomes a thing here. Most people don't even use their phone for calls anymore. Not being able to do the other stuff defeats the purpose.

Re: France legalizes remote camera and microphone activation in smartphones

#73

Post by blitz_skull »

donkeyd wrote: post #45
krzys wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those privacy-breaching bills are for the safety of the government, not citizens.

Having worked in law enforcement, seeing sentiment like this is just so depressing. On one side it's people saying things like this, while on the other side a large part is complaining about law enforcement not doing enough to combat cyber crime. These things go hand in hand. If criminals can have limitless access to new technologies, but LE gets no new ways of finding criminals using new technologies, we might as we…

Having worked in tech, I can tell you for a fact that this is not the kind of technology LE needs to do their jobs effectively. I didn't downvote, but I can tell you that most folks where I live are not complaining about law enforcement not combatting cyber crime. Cyber crime, by definition, is not life-threatening. Life-threatening crime is what most people think LE needs to be better about combatting.

I'm genuinely curious what kind of cyber crime does LE think it's going to effectively combat? And to what end?

Re: France legalizes remote camera and microphone activation in smartphones

#74

Post by Convolutional »

soco wrote: post #35
rjzzleep wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parliament certainly didn't stop Macron from pushing threw the pension reform against the will of virtually everyone. It's a pity that most of the media doesn't cover the legitimate concerns of the french population.

The french population is indeed concerned by the increasing of the pension age, but not concerned at all with the price paid by their own children for not increasing it. So I wouldn't call the concerns of the population necessarily legitimate, as present and pressing as they might be.

> the price paid by their own children

If French workers allow Macron to jack the retirement age up, the price surely will be felt by their own children.

Re: France legalizes remote camera and microphone activation in smartphones

#76

Post by stef25 »

wkat4242 wrote: post #72
stef25 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back to 15$ Nokias I guess

Which come with microphones too. Is S30+ or KaiOS (previously FirefoxOS) which Nokia uses really that much more secure? Also, usability becomes a thing here. Most people don't even use their phone for calls anymore. Not being able to do the other stuff defeats the purpose.

But no apps or dodgy email links you can hack them with, perhaps? No idea

The most basic phones don't have KaiOS.

There are / have been hacks using SMS that didn't even require the user to do anything, but then again they required Android iOS to carry out the hack.

The smaller the attack surface the better (for the criminal).

> Also, usability becomes a thing here. Most people don't even use their phone for calls anymore. Not being able to do the other stuff defeats the purpose.

Afaik criminals that were using these special phone systems like SkyECC just wanted to make calls and send messages, they'll use something else for TikTok or whatever.

EDIT: SkyECC didn't have microphone enabled, it was just able to send messages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutdown_of_Sky_ECC

Re: France legalizes remote camera and microphone activation in smartphones

#77

Post by mordae »

donkeyd wrote: post #18
dutchbrit wrote: post #11

So, how do they plan on activating cameras/microphones? Backdoor?

Have you heard of hacking? Most police forces have offensive hacking teams by now, it's not much of a secret. Also there are some quite famous tools that aid in this.

Do they? I can't really imagine anything like that. I would be inclined to believe that they purchase ready-made tools from Israeli/US companies. But hacker teams?

Re: France legalizes remote camera and microphone activation in smartphones

#79

Post by Hamuko »

RobotToaster wrote: post #55
tpxl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless the light is physically connected to the power line of the camera sensor (and most aren't), it's useless as an indicator of covert camera usage - the spyware can just not turn it on.

What's infuriating is that it would be trivial to make it linked to the same power supply in hardware. It's obviously done that way on purpose.

The privacy indicator on iPhones is just a green dot on the display. I don't think that's really possible to link to the same power supply. It'd have to be a separate light like on MacBooks.

(Thankfully MacBooks do at least physically disconnect the microphones if you close the lid.)

Re: France legalizes remote camera and microphone activation in smartphones

#80

Post by jiminymcmoogley »

donkeyd wrote: post #45
krzys wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those privacy-breaching bills are for the safety of the government, not citizens.

Having worked in law enforcement, seeing sentiment like this is just so depressing. On one side it's people saying things like this, while on the other side a large part is complaining about law enforcement not doing enough to combat cyber crime. These things go hand in hand. If criminals can have limitless access to new technologies, but LE gets no new ways of finding criminals using new technologies, we might as we…

I think this is a very appropriate argument when it comes to offensive physical weapons, like if cops with tasers are in a shootout with a gang strapped up with (illegal) AKs it's easy to see an undesirable outcome from that situation for just about everyone except the gang members - but does this same logic really hold when it comes to spy tech? Is the only way to stop a bad guy with remote access to your machine a good guy with the same?
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