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France Broadens Surveillance Powers; Wider Scope Than NSA
krakman writes "With the NSA disclosures, French media was 'outraged'. Yet they appear to be worse than the NSA, with a new law that codifies standard practice and provides for no judicial oversight while allowing electronic surveillance for a broad range of purposes, including 'national security,' the protection of France's 'scientific and economic potential' and prevention of ;terrorism' or 'criminality.' The government argues that the law, passed last week with little debate as part of a routine military spending bill, which takes effect in 2015, does not expand intelligence powers. Rather, officials say, those powers have been in place for years, and the law creates rules where there had been none, notably with regard to real-time location tracking. French intelligence agencies have little experience publicly justifying their practices. Parliamentary oversight did not begin until 2007."
https://freedomboxfoundation.org
Ezekiel 23:20
That's because you're a stupid racist fuck.
Now everybody wants what the NSA has, and the next time someone brings up human rights, every dictator will brush off the criticism, and will be JUSTIFIED in doing so.
I'd rather take the chance of mass surveillance being misused
This sort of attitude is why we're rapidly losing freedom and privacy in some areas.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
You know, jackboots feel pretty much the same whether they're European or Muslim. Neither 'side' has a particularly defensible history. The harder question to answer is how effective a surveillance society actually is. Does monitoring every phone call, watching every street corner help you much?
My guess, given the lack of examples the NSA / FBI / CIA have trotted out is that the answer is 'no'. I'd rather take the chance that somebody will 'slip through' rather than live in a police society. Even counting up every terrorist action everywhere, one doesn't create a particularly dangerous environment. If you want to be rational about this, you would first ban cars, alcohol, cigarettes, guns, knives, kitchen utensils and cell phones. They are arguably more dangerous than 'terrorists'.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I was hoping that if I ever expatriate, France would have been a good choice.
They feel much better when I am the one wearing them. That goes for pretty much all footwear, except perhaps stiletto heels.
I would like to die like my grandfather did - sleeping. And not screaming in terror, like his passengers.
This summary displays the European Union flag
As a french citizen, I am getting more and more upset to see the European flag used instead of France's one for stories about France. 10 years ago I was very fond of the EU, but now I realized EU is not a democracy and I am not a EU citizen. It is quite the contrary, as EU project is to destroy democracy.
I wish Slashdot could add a logo for France, even something full of clichés, it will make me more comfortable.
As Voltaire so eloquently put it: écrasez l'infâme!
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I think what we have learned is that given the opportunity, no country's intelligence/police/security apparatus is truly more ethical than that of other countries. There's a huge difference between cheap, public words spoken by politicians and what's really going on behind the scenes. If they have the technical option, they will collect and spy and monitor whatever they can.
The NSA gets a bad rap, since (a) it has access to most information and thus is most scary and (b) in the US there is the constitution, which at least in principle should curtail certain government activities, giving critics something to use in their fight. In other countries there often aren't the constitutional documents, which aim to codify personal freedoms and liberties in the same way. Therefore, in the US the surveillance opponents at least have a document in their support that they can point at, while the same people in other countries often have no such thing. In that respect, the surveillance debate in the US could be more forceful with at least some ammunition for the opponents. In this regard, other countries aren't that lucky.
However, in the end it's all academic: Surveillance/intelligence agencies will do whatever they damn well feel like doing. Whatever local laws they have will matter little. These are agencies that have secrecy baked into their DNA. They know - for the most part - to keep their activities away from the public and also the politicians for that matter.
Pass whatever laws you want, it won't matter anymore.
If you are referring to the USA, we know we are being watched. It's in the news every day.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
Non sequitur much? If a substantial portion (something between 30%-50%) of Muslims in France publicly profess that their loyalty to the Ummah is greater than their loyalty to they country they live in, given that French intelligence agencies probably follow the polls, I wouldn't fault them for profiling them out.
Ezekiel 23:20
So the new law expands their surveillance powers, or doesn't, and just adds more rules for them. Could someone please explain which it is for those of us without access to TFA? I really hope this isn't typical American anti-French bias.
Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know. - M. King Hubbert
After the NSA covering the world, whats left? Spying on cows? They must be attacking us farting all the way to global warming.
Are they really outraged? We know the French can get barricades-and-guillotines outraged, or at least their forebearors could.
Or is this more "I shall say snippy things at parties?"
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
So now people can't complain that the government's intelligence gathering is illegal. Clever.
1990
"Lets fit everyone with a radio tracking device so we know where they are at all times"
"What, they would never allow that, it would never work"
2013
I can has two cellphones!
Mission achieved
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
French media was 'outraged'. Yet they appear to be worse then the NSA
that's some hard core reporting!
A religion != a race, you thick fuck.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Christian Jackboot, Canadian Cork boots, Elvis's Blue Suede Shoes, etc, it doesn't really matter what footwear an oppressor wears, it's where he puts it.
Besides that, it's not a chance that 'mass surveillance' will be misused by the government, it's only a matter of when.
If it can be misused for the purposes of furthering political power, it will be, it's always been as simple as that.
Two words, you cheesemonkey: Rainbow Warrior.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I second hognoxious: Well done France.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
We could start with the entire process of getting on an airplane. Due to my 4th amendment rights, I should be able to board a plane without being searched by a government agent unless there is reasonable suspicion that I'm committing a crime. If the airport's or airline's private security wishes to search me, that's between me and them as private entities.
There's also the 100 mile zone where the Department of Homeland Security claims they don't need warrants for searches.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/10/aclu-assails-10/
Cops are more likely to kill you than terrorists, and apparently only about 20% of that 5-10% go to mosques regularly. That means it's 1-2% of the population are moderately religious, let alone zealots. It's also probably a safe bet that at least 75% of the zealots within that subpopulation are zealots because bigoted asshats like you want to 'send a message' that feeds the persecution complex that breeds the very zealotry that you cower before.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Is Islam a race now?
This isn't about terrorists. Sure, that factors into it, but under this law, the police can now get access to surveillance information. No judicial oversight necessary.
They can do it for economic reasons, which means spying on foreign companies. That might be more advantageous to the average French than counterterrorism.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Are the French legal guidelines broader than the US legal guidelines. Broader than what the NSA and CIA are known to do? Narrower than what the French are known to do?
Thanks to Snowden we know the US agencies have exceeded their legal boundaries (or at the very least operated in secret to avoid any legal or constitutional challenge.) What is the situation in France WRT their intelligence agencies and their laws.
I don't like this practice.
But if at least they have the balls to admit it, put in the law, and let everybody know that in France you're being watched, then I'm kind of ok with it.
Not happy, grinning, but ok.
At least they have the balls to be transparent.
I wish the USA did the same, aka: "Complain all you want, but the NSA will continue to do it, if you don't want to be tracked at all, don't use the internet, don't use a cell phone, live a early 20th century live.
That would depend on what the Pope told them specifically to do, of course, but the most likely answer is 'yes' anyway - we happen to know that the Catholic church is a criminal organization already, and in the area of sex crimes, there's peer pressure to hush everything up. This is more for the vice dept. of French police than for national security, though - a different threat profile.
Ezekiel 23:20
Sorry if this seems fussy. I keep feeling that I need to suspend my disbelief each time
I see obviously bad grammar in posts.
Hey lighten up, it's not like programming is a field where you need to be able to understand syntax and type keywords exactly, right?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbPi00k_ME
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
If say 30 -50% of them profess their loyalty to the pope before the country then do you profile them?
That's not comparable. The "ummah" isn't a person or even an institution, it means "community." What the racist fuck has lost his head over is the equivalent of someone saying he's 'loyal' to his fellow christians no matter what country they live in.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
> A religion != a race, you thick fuck.
Right. The real problem here is the use of the word racist instead of bigot. He totally deserved to be called a thick fuck for mixing up two faces of the same coin. The actual bigotry, that's not a problem.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
But the Freedom Box will be located in your home.
Exactly whatever shadowy security (and/or criminal) forces backing it are counting on...
I wouldn't care where it is from, I'm not putting such an obviously open target to mount internal attacks on my home infrastructure in my house.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I may use GPL software, but I have no way to verify what it does. Sorry not a programmer here.
Well I am a programmer, and I trust it even less than you do. Knowing how hard it is to figure out a problem in other people's code I am dubious my own inspection would cough up anything placed there by someone determined to obfuscate it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Pompidou asked Kennedy "How can you control the population when you do not control the radio or the TV as we do?"
Thus the Democratic party's relationship to the modern day press. Thanks a ton for the suggestion Pompidou.
At least the press do the jobs they are supposed to do when Republicans are in office, it's ashamed they are asleep at the switch the other half of the time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
With the revelation of the NSA having collection points on an internal network between data centers, it sure seems like there's not a way to send any email within the U.S. without going through a collection point.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You should really start referring to them as "my opinions of how the 4th amendment works". As far as I can tell, not a single practicing or academic legal authority has ever endorsed this construction.
Now, of course, it's a free country -- you can represent your views however you want. But you don't get to pick your facts and you definitely don't get to reinterpret the law just because you don't like it (hellooo segregationists).
So you concur on the 'racist fuck'.
Knowing how hard it is to figure out a problem in other people's code I am dubious my own inspection would cough up anything placed there by someone determined to obfuscate it.
This is true, its very difficult and time consuming to read even a modest amount of code.
But add your eyes to mine, and several hundred others, (maybe thousands), and once verified, all you need do is look at changes. Look very carefully at changes.
Its harder to obfuscate code these days, because its harder to easily turn data blocks into code blocks without attracting attention
to the fact that you did so. DEP has found its way into almost every operating system these days.
Still there are ways to use horribly insecure encryption while making it look secure. The hardest code to verify as being secure is precisely the code designed to provide security.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
A great many have indeed endorsed this strange 'theory' that the fourth amendment means what it says; and Judge Andrew Napolitano comes immediately to mind so here you go.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Does the editor not understand grammar? Seriously...
Free speech is the big one. As long as the government is listening in on your conversations it puts a damper on speech, especially political speech. Want to run for office? It's much harder to win when the opposition can listen in on all your strategy sessions.
The right to fundamental justice is another one. The prosecution listening in on client lawyer conversations gives the prosecution an unfair advantage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Have you ever been an immigrant? Ever seriously talked to one? They left their home country for a reason - as often as not, because they have an oppressive autocracy, theocracy or dictatorship. They tend to love their new country more than their old, and why not? You love France because you were born there by random chance. They love it because they looked at every country in the world, and decided France was the best one to emigrate to.
So immigrants tend to embrace their new culture. Most people who fled Soviet Bloc countries turned into ardent haters of communism - why wouldn't people who fled Muslim theocracies turn out to be pretty ardent haters of Muslim theocracies? They may keep the religion, but in a more moderate, modern form instead of the controlling throwback currently dominant in the Arab region.
And those are first-generation immigrants. What about their children? They'll raise them Muslim, of course, but they'll raise them *French*. They'll be well-educated and (knowing children) liberal. They'll hear the stories about how bad the home country was, and unless their new country does something to disillusion them (like your racist shitspouting) they'll be patriotic for *that* country, not some country they've never been to and hear only bad things about.
Since you call them the "Fifth Column", look at the supposed Japanese "Fifth Column". According to US Army reports from the time, most Japanese immigrants were Americans first, and the concentration camps not only went against the best intelligence, but was outright counterproductive, turning Japanese-Americans against America. And then look up the 442nd Infantry Regiment - Japanese-Americans fighting for America in WW2. With 3800 members, they earned nearly 9500 Purple Hearts (severely wounded or killed in action), 4000 Bronze Stars (acts of heroism or merit in combat) and 21 Medals of Honor (the absolute highest award in the US military). Oh, and they fought many of their battle in France - your country, in a small part, owes its current non-fascist existence to immigrants fighting against allies of their native land on behalf of a country that imprisoned their families for the very logic you support.
If you are an example of the other 90-95% of France, I think your country might be better off if you do let the Muslims take over. I know my fair share of people of that religion, and none of them are as reactionary and racist as you seem to be.
"With the NSA disclosures, French media was 'outraged'. Yet they appear to be worse then the NSA
Dear USA,
You wrote these new rules, now we (and everybody else who used to be your friends and allies) will play by them. Please stop complaining, you asked for it.
Sincerely,
The French
Oh good, a nice little French poodle to go along with the British bulldog we've been toying with for years.
Sincerely,
'Murica. Fuck yeah.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
What the racist fuck has lost his head over is the equivalent of someone saying he's 'loyal' to his fellow christians no matter what country they live in.
That's not exactly how he formulated it, though. What he actually meant is the equivalence of saying that he has a problem with someone being more loyal to his fellow Christians in other countries, than to his fellow non-Christian citizens.
And those are first-generation immigrants. What about their children?
That's actually the interesting question here. First-generation immigrants from Muslim countries in Europe are exactly how you've described above - they tend to appreciate and support the increased freedom of their new society. Their kids, for some mysterious reason, not so much. All the extremist Sharia BS is much more popular among Muslim second- and third-generation immigrant youth than it is among their parents. That's where you get those insane numbers from, like 20% of youth in favor of Islamic law in UK.
Perhaps it is because they don't know how life has actually been where they came from, while on the other hand there's a Saudi-funded and trained Salafi preacher in the nearby mosque who tells them epic stories about heroic mujahideen fighting the forces of Satan. One thing that our free societies aren't particularly good at, is immunizing people against aggressive brainwashing by professionals who know very well which strings to pull.
I honestly don't know why European countries don't put an absolute ban on any travel by Saudi clerics to their territory. That alone would cut forced radicalization of their youth significantly. Better yet, embargo KSA completely, and destroy it by economic means (which, due to the structure of their economy, is very feasible). Not only is that country breeding terrorism in our societies, but their own society is so retrograde and oppressive that it rivals North Korea. Dismantling it is both in our interests, and in the interests of most of their people (other than the ruling elite).
The question isn't what the 4th Amendment says, but what does it mean, how does it apply legally under the given circumstances? There are many searches that the courts have found that require no warrant, boarding a plane is among them, along with sobriety checkpoints, and border crossings. Beyond that, there is the issue of Article II powers and how they play into this. Napolitano takes no notice of this issue, but the courts have, and it has a role, not to mention actions by Congress involving Article II questions.
You many notice that "Judge" Napolitano is no longer sitting on the bench, so he can spin whatever fanciful theory he cares to. The question is, would it hold up before a court? I think the answer is "No" in his case, otherwise he would be moving a suit forward on his theory. He apparently knows this, and that it would be political suicide since he would be shown to be engaging in nonsense, legally. Politically it's very nice.
But, if you like Napolitano, you may like this one too. Unfortunately he gets the question of law wrong, overlooking this document which he chooses to ignore for some reason, and it is highly relevant.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
One of the central jobs of a state is to protect it people by any means necessary and then some that aren't.
No, it's not. The constitution is the highest law of the land, and any powers not given to the government are not powers the government has. The government can't violate people's rights to give them 'safety'.
If you can't trust your state to spy for your best interests perhapes it is time to move to another state.
Selfish nonsense. I believe they should only spy against explicit enemies. Perhaps you only care about things that benefit you, but I don't want government thugs spying on random people and people in my country.
Being a U.Sian I have not problem what so ever with the NSA.
Not going to say it again.
Intelligence has saved lives. Lives that you will never know about due to the classification.
And yet you're gullible enough to believe these thugs even when they don't provide any evidence of such a thing. How naive. Even if they did save lives, though, it's irrelevant for reasons I've already stated.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
What are the French going to do? It's not like the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure is going to sink my boat..........right?
"Whenever the cause of the people is entrusted to professors, it is lost." ~ V.I. Lenin
So, there is no actual freedom being lost then when boarding an airplane since you are still free to travel.
Just like freedom of speech isn't being infringed upon if you force people into a free speech zone; they're still allowed to speak, after all! Let's apply this logic to an entire city: If you live in a certain city, you sign away your fourth amendment rights and give the government permission to search you whenever they please. Don't like it? Move. You still have that freedom, so it's okay!
The searches for boarding an airplane go back about 40-50 years.
That's utterly irrelevant, and the TSA wasn't molesting people 40-50 years ago.
They are completely legal and don't infringe on your 4th amendment rights.
If you need a court to tell you how to think, then you're nothing more than a mindless drone. It's sad how people in a country that was founded on a distrust of government put so much trust in the government and even allow it to control how they think.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
As far as I can tell, not a single practicing or academic legal authority has ever endorsed this construction.
Why would that be? Because they are complicit in the crimes against the American people. The correct interpretations of the fourth amendment are ignored because they do not provide as much power to the government. To me, these are blatant violations of the fourth amendment, but I wouldn't expect bootlickers like cold fjord to understand that.
But you don't get to pick your facts and you definitely don't get to reinterpret the law just because you don't like it (hellooo segregationists).
Much like courts' interpretations aren't magically automatically correct. Of course, if you need an authority figure to tell you how to think in the land of the free and the home of the brave, you've already lost.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
I was not aware it was designed to make me ashamed of my own country because of the way it behaves regarding others. That will be another problem solved when the whole thing will collapse below its own weight.
All the extremist Sharia BS is much more popular among Muslim second- and third-generation immigrant youth.
Case in point, Anjem Chaudhary. It seems his tafsir is quite popular among the muslim youth in Britain.
So immigrants tend to embrace their new culture. Most people who fled Soviet Bloc countries turned into ardent haters of communism - why wouldn't people who fled Muslim theocracies turn out to be pretty ardent haters of Muslim theocracies? They may keep the religion, but in a more moderate, modern form instead of the controlling throwback currently dominant in the Arab region.
And those are first-generation immigrants. What about their children? They'll raise them Muslim, of course, but they'll raise them *French*. They'll be well-educated and (knowing children) liberal. They'll hear the stories about how bad the home country was, and unless their new country does something to disillusion them (like your racist shitspouting) they'll be patriotic for *that* country, not some country they've never been to and hear only bad things about.
Immigrants embrace the new culture when they have to, which isn't the case anymore, since they're more than enough to build their own communities. You can live in France without speaking french, without eating french food, without dressing like french people, without knowing french history or any part of french culture, and then wonder why you can't blend with french people. Muslims are also actively pushing for their religion into the public life, in a country where religion is becoming more and more a private thing. And for their children it's even worse, they won't have any chance to try to integrate because their parents already put them outside french society, and if their parents can't teach them proper french, they'll struggle in school, pushing them further away. And you end up with african flags used instead of french flags when celebrating, among other things, which isn't really patriotic (well it is, but not for France).
Without calling them a fifth column, you'd have to be deluded to believe the muslims are well integrated in France. It's not their fault though, problem lies with the immigration policy which allowed too many people in without caring about their insertion into french society which is very different from the one they came from.
Three possibilities come to mind: Excessive youth unemployment, general tendencies to rebel against their parents, and regression to mean. The parents may be exceptionally free thinkers for their country of origin, but their children probably won't be. I would bet that 20% support you mentioned is higher in the populace that actually lives in a theocratic country. The youth unemployment rate in France is apparently about 22 percent, but I suppose it's a matter of opinion as to whether that's excessive or not.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
Is anyone actually being held back by this, though? The fact that you might be a crack addict who sleeps with interns while hanging out with crime lords is something that can easily be found out by the news media anyway. If you are that sort of person to begin with, perhaps you shouldn't be in government.
What information is the NSA going to provide that is going to cause problems for legitimately non-criminal candidates? You don't need the NSA to frame someone.
Don't mistake being regularly "religious" for being a candidate for terrorism. Most of these "jihadis" become full-on religious only fairly late in the process. I'm less worried about the regular mosque-goers than I am about fairly recent converts or the kids brought up Islamic, but who didn't care about it until they were lured in by extremist recruiters. The more you are educated about a particular religion, the less chance they can pull the wool over your eyes with their radicalized version of that religion.
Yeah, why should we trust judges when they explain the law? And what's with these pesky biologists trying to explain biology. And don't get me started on mathematicians telling me that I'm doing matrix multiplication wrong! And historians! Talking about history!
Anti-intellectualism at its finest.
Yeah, why should we trust judges when they explain the law?
Why should we trust judges to be automatically correct when they interpret a document that was written in plain English in a way that gives the government (which they are part of) more power? The Supreme Court overruled itself in the past. Would you believe everything they say? Do you not have a mind of your own?
Fact is, I read the constitution and I don't see where such ridiculous interpretations make any sense whatsoever.
Anti-intellectualism at its finest.
Authority worship at its finest. In fact, I'd say it's more like anti-intellectualism when you believe everything an authority figure has to say.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
It's sad that some people living in a country founded on a distrust of government need authority figures to tell them how to think.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
You can't change your race, so it's a bit unfair to bag on people over it. Same with spackers.
However religion is your choice, so it's a perfectly valid basis for criticism, especially if you choose a stupid one.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
However religion is your choice, so it's a perfectly valid basis for criticism, especially if you choose a stupid one.
So any criticism about something the person can change is not bigotry. How convenient for all the assholes of the world.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.