Hosting Companies Threaten To Leave France Over (Yet Another) Surveillance Law. But Where Could They Go?
from the black-box dept
Back in December, we reported on how France sneakily enacted a controversial surveillance law on Christmas Eve, obviously hoping nobody would notice. Now the French government is quite brazenly saying last year's law didn't go far enough, and that it must bring in yet another surveillance law that is even more intrusive, and do it quickly with only minimal scrutiny. Here are just some of the problems with the new bill according to Human Rights Watch:
Serious flaws include expansive powers for the prime minister to authorize surveillance for purposes far beyond those recognized in international human rights law; lack of meaningful judicial oversight; requirements for private service providers to monitor and analyze user data and report suspicious patterns; prolonged retention periods for some captured data; and little public transparency.
That requirement for ISPs to install "black boxes" for algorithmic surveillance of "suspicious patterns" is particularly troubling:
The bill's requirement for service providers to install secret, unspecified, state-provided means of analyzing suspicious patterns -- for example, visits to websites advocating terrorism, or contacts with persons under investigation -- could potentially be applied to a virtually unlimited set of indicators, Human Rights Watch said.
Once these black boxes are in place, it can only be a matter of time before the copyright industry starts pushing to use them to detect copyright infringement. After all, it will doubtless point out, since the equipment will already be there, it wouldn't impose any further costs on service providers to carry out such scans. Who could possible object? Leading French Internet companies certainly do. As ZDNet reports, some are threatening to leave the country if the law is passed in its present form when it comes to the final vote on 5 May:
Seven companies, including web hosting and technology companies OVH, IDS, and Gandi have said in a letter to the French prime minister Manuel Valls that they will be pushed into de facto "exile" if the French government goes ahead with the "real-time capture of data" by its intelligence agencies.
The companies say that between 30 to 40% of their turnover comes from customers outside France, attracted by the current framework's strong protection for online privacy (original in French.) It's a great gesture, but the question is: could the companies carry out their threat? After all, given the rush to introduce far-reaching surveillance laws in many other European countries, it's not clear where exactly those companies could go. Even Switzerland, that old standby, has its surveillance programs, and the risk is that it, too, will bring in measures like those of its neighbors.
The companies argued that being required by the law to install "black boxes" on their networks will "destroy a major segment of the economy," and if passed it will force them to "move our infrastructure, investments, and employees where our customers will want to work with us."
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Filed Under: black box, france, hosting, surveillance
Companies: gandi, ids, ovh
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'Might' vs 'Is'
Other countries might introduce similar measures in the future, but the French government is introducing them now.
Entire companies pulling out will serve dual purposes, both as a means of very visible protest, and a large boost to the reputations of those companies, quite possibly making up for the costs of pulling out of France in the long term.
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Re: 'Might' vs 'Is'
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If they back out nothing will happen. If they start blackboxing, poland will start rioting again and the idea will be shelved for another decade.
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Surveillance == back doors and security holes
Bad as that is, it's not the worst part. The presence of those boxes on a provider's network means that it's already compromised AND equipped with data exfiltration capabilities. This lowers the bar for attackers considerably, since now all they have to do is compromise those boxes -- at which point they can leverage them against the provider, its customers and its users.
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What would happen if all the ISPs and other internet companies in France just shut down? The government's not in a position to take over providing internet access to the entire country. I doubt there's any law that says the government can force a company to continue operating, or that they're allowed to just take over a company and run it themselves.
So if faced with a mass shutdown of the internet in France, would the government still go ahead with a law that they would have nothing to apply it to?
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Not to mention pull this off and you've just proven there is an effective monopoly, which enables France to take legal action against you.
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@7
unless they control it so no , ovh and such should come to canada
it already has a presence in north america and it should move to the swiss in europe
stay clear a australia and britain and hte usa they as bad as france or worse
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Numerama reports that Altern.org and Eu.org, resp. a small hosting association and a free DNS provider (also small-ish) committed to their threat to leave, and are currently leaving France. But that is just two small service providers leaving, nothing that really threatens the law project. (Sources: http://www.numerama.com/magazine/32836-loi-renseignement-le-service-euorg-va-migrer-ses-serveurs-a-l -etranger.html and http://www.numerama.com/magazine/32833-loi-renseignement-l-hebergeur-alternorg-demenage-a-l-etranger .html)
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I wonder though since OVH also has a major presence in Canada, how will they deal with black boxes placed in the BHS center or will that violate Canadian privacy laws?
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Seriously? They're going to remove the cables they've laid and take them off to another country?
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At least france doesnt let private companies access this data yet, so they can argue that things could be worse.
But then it doesnt really matter since the US still has Google on a leash which is pretty much the same thing.
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Democracy!
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Lots of Places
Web-hosting is a much less demanding business than banking, insurance, and stockbroking. The various financial businesses tend to involve multiplicities of experts who can value various kinds of assets (*), and that requires a town of a certain size, eg. Zurich or Geneva. This constraint does not operate on web-hosting.
(*) For example, on what terms should a prima ballerina be allowed to insure her legs?
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Re: Lots of Places
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Who's behind this?
Now all of this surveillance crap. Not just what Snowden revealed, but Canada's Bill C-51, this thing in France, and the article implies there are several more like it in western Europe now.
Are we to believe that all of these countries are suddenly and simultaneously going surveillance-happy independently of each other, and that the timing coincidence is due to sheer chance?
There must be some shadowy international organization behind this, which is pushing for these anti-freedom and anti-privacy changes throughout the world, probably by flooding the electoral processes with dark money to buy elections and put their own figureheads in high offices around the world.
Perhaps that Bilderberg group?
Clearly fighting these bad laws in one place at a time is a losing battle. Time to directly address the root of the problem: identify the conspirators ultimately backing all of this garbage, slap the cuffs on them, and try them for treason in their various nations ... or perhaps try them at the Hague as war criminals, especially if they can be linked to any violent acts. But I think that buying elections and then undermining the freedoms specified in the UN Declaration of Human Rights really ought to suffice to face war crimes trials, even if they never fired a shot.
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Re: Who's behind this?
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Re: Re: Who's behind this?
Follow the money. Where do these corporations have contracts with the governments of the countries involved?
There's your answer.
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