Monday, July 10, 2023

France destroys the last vestiges of electronic privacy

 

Last week I published an article titled "Big Brother's unwelcome surveillance tools".  I emphasized that we have no real electronic privacy.  Now France has taken the next step and authorized its law enforcement and prosecution authorities to snoop on any cellphone user in the country.


Amidst ongoing protests in France, the country has just passed a new bill that will allow police to remotely access suspects’ cameras, microphones, and GPS on cell phones and other devices.

As reported by Le Monde, the bill has been criticized by the French people as a “snoopers” charter that allows police unfettered access to the location of its citizens. Moreover, police can activate cameras and microphones to take video and audio recordings of suspects. The bill will reportedly only apply to suspects in crimes that are punishable by a minimum of five years in jail and Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti claimed that the new provision would only affect a few dozen cases per year. During a debate over the bill yesterday, French politicians added an amendment that orders judge approval for any surveillance conducted under the scope of the bill and limits the duration of surveillance to six months, according to Le Monde.

“For organized crime, the police can have access to the sound and image of a device. This concerns any connected device: telephone, speaker microphone, computer camera, computer system of a car... all without the knowledge of the persons concerned,” French advocacy group La Quadrature du Net said in a statement on Twitter last month, machine translated by Gizmodo. “In view of the growing place of digital tools in our lives, accepting the very principle that they are transformed into police auxiliaries without our being aware of it poses a serious problem in our societies.”


There's more at the link.

So, the French government gets to define who's a "suspect".  Given the massive demonstrations across the country against President Macron's pension reforms, that makes any demonstrator or protester potentially a part of the electronic dragnet.  Even carrying a sign or shouting a slogan - perhaps even merely attending a protest - may be enough to make one a "suspect".  There's no First Amendment in France;  no guaranteed civil right to "free" speech.  (Of course, there's not very much left of that right in this country, either, what with the Biden administration openly co-opting Big Tech and social media to crack down on dissenting views - or, at least, their free expression - and encouraging news media to spout propaganda rather than disseminate actual news.)

Big Brother is gorging himself on what remains of the privacy of private citizens, in France, in the USA, and elsewhere too.  Ireland is the most recent European nation to join in the witch-hunt against free speech, and it won't be the last.  Basically, if you intend to speak freely, your privacy will be at best disregarded;  at worst, stripped from you entirely.  Human rights?  What human rights?




Peter

EDITED TO ADD:  Grateful thanks to commenter Steve Sky (see below) for bringing a Massachusetts case to our attention.  It seems the state government contracted with Google to install a tracking app on the smartphones of over a million residents as part of its COVID-19 control efforts.  No permission was asked or obtained from any of those on whom this app was foisted.  There's a court case ongoing, and I hope the constitutional rights of individuals are resoundingly affirmed and upheld.


10 comments:

  1. I can only hope France uses it to clean up the immigrant no-go zones, but I'm afraid they will target their own first.

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  2. Lol!......you think the migrants are the problem in France.
    How quaint.

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  3. I wonder how they'll do this technically... It's one thing to authorize it, another to carry it out to that extent.
    Yes, I'm aware of the wide range of tools available to help governments, but it'll still be quite the challenge.
    And of course, many criminals will have additional lines of ones hard to connect to them - I suspect, despite the claims to the contrary, that this will be used against other wise law abiding citizens who take part in legal but unwanted protests.

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  4. There are already ways to physically disable or control cameras and Mike's on computers - I assume we'll see similar options for phones, as well as sales of "hush boxes" or similar devices.

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  5. I'm not sure how this is possible short of France insisting everyone in France download a snooper app onto their phone.

    I mean yes Facebook/Instagram, Tiktok and some other apps have way too much snooping built in but those don't send their results to the French government they send them to Zuck's servers or the PRC. I'm fairly sure that the PRC won't be sharing with France though Zuck may

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  6. Even more reason to just leave the bleeping "mobile devices" at home. And of course, because you cannot remove the battery, they are not actually turned off, even when they are "turned off".

    My phone is due for replacement anyway, and because of the ridiculous cost of new smart phones, I was planning on getting a "dumb" phone, but I might see if I can just go without.

    I remember growing up just fine without a phone or a camera or electronic mapping or online commerce or mobile banking.

    Guess its likely to be "highly suspicious" to not have some sort of a "mobile device" with you at all times.

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  7. To those who are questioning the logistics and asking how France can install the Snooper's charter, let me offer an example from Massachusetts. Also note they are just admitting to it there, which makes me wonder how many other states it exists in.
    -----------------------------------------------------

    The New Civil Liberties Alliance is challenging the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) in federal court for coordinating with Google to automatically install spyware on the smartphones of more than one million Commonwealth residents, without their knowledge or consent, in a misguided effort to combat Covid-19. A newly-released video details how DPH’s actions have violated fundamental constitutional rights.



    https://nclalegal.org/2023/07/watch-government-spyware-on-your-phone-unfortunately-theres-an-app-for-that/

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  8. The difference between France and the USA is France has said it outloud.
    NSA, FBI have no respect for the Bill of Rights.
    They fear the Second.
    Exercise it. Often.

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  9. In the Good News / Bad News dept., my next phone will have a de-Googled operating system. After some research, I have decided on Calyx OS, which consistently gets good reviews for privacy and technical competence. Apps won't come from the play store but will be FOSS (free and open source) from F-Droid, also a place with a good reputation. That is the good news.

    The bad news is that Calyx works best with Pixel phones, which are manufactured by ... Google. Now there haven't been reports of hardware snoopers in Pixels, and monitoring of network traffic has not shown them to "phone home" with personal data, but still it is a fly in the ointment that one has to rely on the enemy to defeat the enemy.

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  10. Ok so reading stuff about the Massachusetts thing, this is not quite the same as the French plans (AFAICT) and as described only works on Android. Probably - there may be an iOS equivalent for iDevices and I have no idea if the two interoperate

    This 9to5google link seems to be pretty good and I can confirm at least some of what it says.

    At some point in the last three years, probably early 2021, google developed tracking technology to determine whether the phone had been close to the phone of another "infected" person and embedded it Android. I've done a check and all my android devices that have had updates since 2021 (which is all except some old phones stuck in drawers) have "COVID Notifications" as part of the "Google" settings.

    What this means is that effectively all android phones could be calling home to google to tell google where they are and who is nearby. Google then sends this information to the relevant health department. You may or may not be able to turn this off now (it was reported as off for all my phones as it happens) and google may or may not be lying when they say it is off. However there seems to be absolutely nothing stopping Google and/or the French telcos turning this on as an update for any android phone in France (in google's case any android phone anywhere) and not telling the user that it is on. The only way to stop this would be to disable google play automatic updates which has been made hard to do in recent Android versions.

    However this current app can only track you and your associates. It cannot turn on audio or video. To do that would require google to push a major update that might need to be a firmware update instead of just an app setting one. I'm not saying this is impossible but the French government will need the cooperation of google to do this. They may get it, if you see the French/EU compromising suddenly on google's ability to share news, ads, gather personal data etc. then this may turn out to be part of an unmentioned quid pro quo. However right now Google is not happy with the EU because the EU (with vocal support from France) doesn't like google's approach to data privacy and the like so it seems unlikely that google would work with them on this.

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