French Law Enforcement 'Wishlist' Includes Banning Open WiFi, Tor Connections And Encrypted Communications
from the the-War-on-Citizens dept
More bad news for French citizens. Not only were they recently attacked by terrorists, but now their government is using these attacks against them to strip away civil liberties and shift more power to police and intelligence agencies.A document viewed by Le Monde contains several very concerning suggestions from government agencies on how to better combat terrorism -- starting with blacklisting suspicious people and detaining them with administrative police orders. (via Galou Gentil and Numerama)
That's only the beginning of the wishlist. The document is not, by any means, a formal presentation of future legislative issues, but rather the equivalent of an open "suggestion" box, which has now been filled with terrible ideas by law enforcement agencies. How seriously French legislators take these suggestions won't be seen until early next year when the legislature reconvenes.
Other suggestions from "local police and gendarmes":
- Nonconsensual searches of vehicles and luggage (apparently without proper legal justification)
- "Papers please" identity checks, again with minimal legal justification
- Forcing those on the receiving end of administrative searches to give up DNA samples
From that point, law enforcement starts asking for more ways to control communications.
- Banning open WiFi connections during a state of emergency.
It's unclear whether they're looking for a preemptive ban or simply a kill switch. Either way, the state of emergency in France has been extended, and may never truly go away. If so, the ban/kill would be as permanent as the state of emergency itself. Open or shared connections would be subject to criminal sanctions.
- Blocking TOR connections in France
- Identifying communication sources (including VOIP) in France and forcing purveyors to hand over encryption keys
Back in the physical realm, police also want the power to shut down roads to search for vehicles -- again with little to no legal justification. They also want a centralized database containing information on anyone renting hotel rooms or vehicles.
As Le Monde notes, some of the requests fall outside of the realm of possibility and several fall outside the constraints of France's constitution. But the latter is definitely malleable. The government can't do anything about the impossible but it can use the current state of emergency to carve more holes in the rights of its citizens.
How seriously these requests will be taken remains to be seen. The post-terrorist attack spitballing by law enforcement agencies almost reaches the point of self-parody. Le Monde snarkily notes that it's not sure if this wishlist was meant for legislators or for "Santa." But it also notes that the expanded-government-power Santa may actually be presiding over this wishlist, unfortunately.
Santa has a new name: State of Emergency.Whether or not any of this makes its way into actual law, it still clearly documents the law enforcement mindset -- one that never stops looking for ways to expand its own power at the expense of the citizens it's supposed to serve.
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Filed Under: bans, encryption, france, going dark, law enforcement, open wifi, over reaction, paris attacks, state of emergency, tor
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The First Word
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Frankenstein was the mad scientist, not the dumb muscle cop
I mean the "monster"
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They terrorists hate us for our freedoms (and not because we treat them or allow those that oversee them to treat them like scum, so we can get our hands on their oil). We know this for a fact cause the politicians tell us so and they never make shit up. BUT the politicians also have the answer,, TAKE AWAY ALL FREEDOM. Then the terrorist will have nothing to hate us for.
It's ingenious I tell you, defeat them by letting them win...
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and bomb their weddings...
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...So, to respond to the French 'intelligence' agencies, "Moral cowardice it is, then."
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OMG
you sheeple still do not get it, do you?
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And what happens when everybody is on a 'watch list?'
Cuz really, our governments are heading in that direction.
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Bin Laden said he didn't really need to do anything else to destroy the West. He was right.
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and a BUSH business partner...
but you already know that!
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everybody is targeted already, EVERYBODY.
get out of denial and DEAL WITH IT.
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Massive Muslim Immigration -- a blessing or a curse?
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/17/5-facts-about-the-muslim-population-in-europe/
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Re: Massive Muslim Immigration -- a blessing or a curse?
"the camp of the saints" to find out for how long they have been thinking about this project
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Re: Massive Muslim Immigration -- a blessing or a curse?
The United States (and Canada, and virtually all of the western hemisphere) has birthright citizenship, so we tend to avoid that problem. Europe is slowly adopting birthright citizenship too.
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Re: Re: Massive Muslim Immigration -- a blessing or a curse?
there are millions of books about it, for example "the camp of the saints".
if you are disabled and cannot read full books,
then good luck surviving
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Re: Re: Re: Massive Muslim Immigration -- a blessing or a curse?
Thanks, but I'll survive by living in the real world.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Massive Muslim Immigration -- a blessing or a curse?
exactly line by line
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Massive Muslim Immigration -- a blessing or a curse?
what I am trying to show is that proposing that such outcome happens by accident
and that EU governments do not have hundreds of scenarios talking about this outcome for decades...
is kind of sheep- ish
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somebody leak the real classified wish list
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It's France. French farmers have been blocking roads for years whenever they feel like it, and without legal justification. Surely the police everywhere have been shutting roads for years to chase terrorists, that hardly sounds new. The only new thing is adding search.
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That's a pretty big difference, don't you think?
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He’s Coming to Town
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Small Graces
Shhhh, don't remind them.
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I might, in that situation, if I'm lucky, be able to use my phone to connect to wifi and use that as a communications channel.
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the government ...
pre-produced photos and videos?
ooooooooooooooooooh!
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Might there be carriers in Europe who completely cut off a customer's mobile data once he has reached his limit?
A better question than the original though, is what if I am not a mobile data subscriber at all, but I do have a wifi device?
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1. 911 (or your local equivalent) is always available on any phone, even if it's out of data or the screen's locked. Also, what mobile carrier would give up the ability to charge people insane amounts of money for extra data?
2. WTF? What are you going to do if you can communicate with people? Hello police, maybe you're not aware of this, but I'm being held captive by incompetent terrorists. Oh, you already know? Ok well uh... that's nice.
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It's not particularly relevant as it's such a tiny fringe case, but hey why not kick it around?
911 (or your local equivalent) is always available on any phone, even if it's out of data or the screen's locked.
Sometimes it can be hard to get through if there's a lot of crap happening like there was in Paris. I mean in the US anyway, maybe France's system is better.
What are you going to do if you can communicate with people?
I would imagine it would be invaluable to have a line of communication to a hostage. The hostage takers will only tell you what they want you to know.
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So if you're not trying to communicate with the police, who are you talking to and why talk to them? If we're now narrowing this down to somebody who knows a police officer and has their personal number on his phone then we're probably at the point where we can expect an asteroid to hit the building any second now.
The hostage takers will only tell you what they want you to know.
And why would they be more likely to inform the hostages of things they don't want anyone to know? Real life doesn't usually involve villain monologues, even if that would make everything more awesome.
Basically, either the hostages are being held under observation, in which case they'd prevent you from using your phone, or they're being locked up in a room somewhere, in which case they can't tell what's happening in the rest of the building any more than the police can.
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I'm TOR'ified because of what's going on in France
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Corrected that for you.
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Not Surprising
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The intelligence services HAVE TO leave bread crumbs when carrying out false flags so the news folks will know what narrative to push. It's no coincidence they were all reported to be on Facebook. The social media connection justifies all kinds of existing and proposed spy programs. This connection is so important that with San Bernardino they ridiculously say the female shooter made her facebook pledge to ISIS as she was carrying out the attack. My point is these bread crumbs are essential to these false flag attacks meaning encryption will never EVER play a big part in any attack because the intelligence services carrying out these false flags need painfully obvious trails to lead the media and huddled masses to the desired predetermined conclusion.
If anything these laws would more likely be used to seal up any loose ends after aa (false flag) terror attack (confiscating video, detaining witnesses, blocking encrypted uploads from witnesses). None of you bothered to ask why cell phone video was nonexistent from the Paris attacks - I'm betting the targets of those 100s of raids carried out in France in the days after were people who's phones were stingrayed in the vicinity of the attacks and later tracked down. Russia released a boatload of evidence exposing Turkey's ISIS involvement a couple days before San Bernardino. Which did you hear more of? The news story that exposed our coalition partner (and NATO member) directly arming, trainging, and smuggling oil for ISIS with complete US complicity, or the bizarre shooting in Cali where three tall white guys in military gear turned into a husband-wife terris team with the 90lb wife facebooking while she slung a heavily modified assault gun?
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