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France Bans BlackBerries In Govt. On Fears of Spying
DesertBlade writes "French government officials are no longer allowed to use BlackBerries for official correspondence. The reason? Fear that the US government will snoop out French national secrets via RIM's network. From the article: '"The risks of interception are real. It is economic war," daily Le Monde quoted Alain Juillet, in charge of economic intelligence for the government, as saying. With BlackBerries, there is "a problem with the protection of information," he said. Juillet's office confirmed that he spoke to Le Monde but said he would not talk to other reporters. Officials at the presidential Elysee Palace and the prime minister's office were not immediately available for comment. Le Monde said information sent from BlackBerries goes through servers in the United States and Britain, and that France fears that the U.S. National Security Agency can snoop.'"
It wasn't through Crackberry messages that the US caught Airbus bribing the Saudis, Belgians and others. Have people already forgotten about Echelon?
The country that is accused of spying on AirFrance aircraft?
http://www.iht.com/articles/1991/09/14/spy_.php/
I thought France was regarded as being very, very good at industrial espionage. Shouldn't we be afraid of them?
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
This seems like a perfectly rational precaution. For five every crazed conspiracy theory where random Joe Public runs around screaming that the NSA is decrypting his SSL'd eBay login information and/or listening for words like "bomb" and "president" on his phone calls to his mother, there's one very legitimate precaution like this.
The real news story would be any government organization, US or foreign, that _WAS_ entrusting valuable national secrets to a third party vendor anywhere. The US isn't the only country with ELINT, and unless you have a network that doesn't require external trust (eg, the encryption is done server side or via a proprietary program that could be compromised) there's every reason NOT to make it easy for someone to profit at your expense.
The minute God crapped out the third cave man, a conspiracy was hatched against one of them. You don't need to be a tin-foil wearing, taxi driving crazypants to know this.
Blackberries can't do S/MIME? Every other email client on the planet can do that. If RIM just built S/MIME support into their products, then it wouldn't matter at all who routed through what and where.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
You always fear most the evils that you yourself would commit.
Thieves fear theft, liars fear that others are lying, backstabbers fear backstabbing... and the French fear economic espionage. Hmmmm. I wonder what the French might be up to?
I recall being told never to trust the shredders in French hotel rooms: they may have a scanner. Can't find that online, though.
I don't think it's unreasonable for a foreign government to suspect that our government is not currently obeying any laws, morals, or ethics where snooping on electronic information is concerned.
Currently? Why would they have ever trusted them? This time period is little different from the Cold War era. The only serious change is that it is now easier than ever for the Government to automatically spy and have less chance of getting caught.
This has nothing to do with our present executive, much as I love to blame anything I can on Bush. Our intelligence community has always depended on help from large American corporations. In return for them providing cover for our operatives overseas, we provide them with useful business intelligence.
This was why Australia tried to withdraw from Echelon, and outed the project when we whined. We refused to let them redact sensitive information regarding Australian businesses from the data, and they knew we were using it against them even though we were partners in the project.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Do you think it's illegal, immoral, or unethical for the intelligence community to spy on other governments? If it is, then why isn't there any uproar on Russia spying on us, or China, or even France?
I'm afraid that the USA makes an easy target for outrage and will always be an easy target.
Spying is necessary. Every nation is looking out for its own self interests. Spying on government entitites is fair game. Spying on your own citizens is not. It is a very fine ethical line but as long as the focus is foreign governments, they are on the right side of that ethical line.
Sure we'll get all of their secrets, but who cares? We already know about the secret lab under the Eiffel Tower where they're breeding all of the super soldiers, and we already know about the mind control agents they put into French cheeses. What else could they possibly have to hide?
it was well known for a long time that france was one of the few hold-outs in terms of letting its CITZENS use pgp encryption tech.
odd that they seem to be doing a 180 and are now CONCERNED (?) with privacy?
I know they now allow pgp encryption for the citizens, but for a long time, hardware vendors that shipped encryption had to 'worry' about how to deal with the french. very bizarre...
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I can see the slogan now... Linux: because you don't have to take our word for it! :)
Seriously, imagine if Windows Update pushed a reconnaissance-program to computers based on IP address before beginning other types of warfare. And conveniently I would imagine it would be difficult to detect the early stages of such an attack as Windows itself would no doubt have configured all the necessary permissions (firewall,...) while not reporting payload-activity. Eventually someone would notice that physical and audited network traffic don't match and then the jig-would-be-up. That's when you begin your land assault!
Shh.
A friend in university went to France for the summer to work for a French manufacturer. Once there, he was informed that his job was to gain employment at a competitor and steal marketing and product development material. Being a future lawyer, he ignored the ethically problematic aspects of the work, but with due mind for the legal consequences of getting caught, took the job(s), performed admirably, and collected two paycheques all summer.
So when the French are worried about economic espionage, we probably all should be.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Don't for a minute believe that the Canadian government necessarily knows what is going on. Chances are that they don't, even though these things are taking place in their own country.
20 years ago I would have thought such claims to be paranoid conspiracies. I remember rumours about the existence of ECHELON, and strenuous denials of its existence from my own government (the government of New Zealand) and other involved governments. Then, five or six years ago, the Australians admitted it existed, and that is now an established fact.
So, shouldn't members of the New Zealand governments of the 1970s-80s be held responsible for misleading the public? You would think so, since they built an ECHELON station at Waihopai in New Zealand (I remember lefties at the time correctly identifying its purpose, and being mocked for their troubles).
In fact, the New Zealand government of the time was blameless, because THEY didn't even know. That's right. The New Zealand government allowed a satellite tracking station to be built in our country, and had no idea that it was part of ECHELON. David Lange, the Prime Minister at the time later expressed his disgust when the truth came out (in a book he wrote the forward to). You can read it here
http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/sp/sp_f1.htm
So Canadians should be worried. There's a reasonable chance that the Canadian government is being kept in the dark.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS