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French Version of 'Patriot Act' Becomes Law
Taco Cowboy writes: Thanks to the Charlie Hebdo massacre and other instances of terrorism, the French legislature has voted 438 to 86 in favor of the "Intelligence Service Bill," essentially a French version of the Patriot Act. It awards the French intelligence services sweeping powers to tap and intercept any kind of digital correspondence, including phone conversations, emails, and social media.
The bill decrees that hosting providers and Internet service providers in France must be equipped with a "black box" that can retain all digital communications from customers. "The new law would create a 13-member National Commission to Control Intelligence Techniques, which would be made up of six magistrates from the Council of State and the Court of Appeals, three representatives of the National Assembly, three senators from the upper house of Parliament and a technical expert. ... The only judicial oversight is a provision that allows the commission to lodge a complaint with the Council of State, but lawyers are doubtful that it could be convened on a routine basis." We previously discussed news that ISPs may leave France in protest if the bill was passed. Now we'll know shortly if those ISPs will live up to their word.
The bill decrees that hosting providers and Internet service providers in France must be equipped with a "black box" that can retain all digital communications from customers. "The new law would create a 13-member National Commission to Control Intelligence Techniques, which would be made up of six magistrates from the Council of State and the Court of Appeals, three representatives of the National Assembly, three senators from the upper house of Parliament and a technical expert. ... The only judicial oversight is a provision that allows the commission to lodge a complaint with the Council of State, but lawyers are doubtful that it could be convened on a routine basis." We previously discussed news that ISPs may leave France in protest if the bill was passed. Now we'll know shortly if those ISPs will live up to their word.
Now it seems France will learn the hard way as well that giving up freedom never buys you safety.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Never mind it is the first to fall and the last to get back up.
One of these two statements is true.
Do you know which?
Encrypt everything!
Ban encryption and round up all the criminals
Only the National Assembly has voted; the bill must also pass the Senate. That said, given the multipartite consensus on it, there's not much chance that the Senate won't pass it.
You never know, though: given that the Senate is often deemed useless (in France, the Assembly has priority), sometimes it attempts to actually work on the bills, debate in more depth.
Also, the bill has been submitted to the Constitutional Council (which is unusual, before it's voted on). They too can veto it. We'll see.
First they make a copy of our great monuments, the Statue of Liberty and the Las Vegas Eiffel Tower, and now they even copy our laws!
So.. what you are saying is that having near constant surveillance on anyone the US government wants, internally and externally, has not worked out well for them (them of course being the state..)?
Or are you suggesting that the French government would not love to copy this political power grab to be able to monitor who/what/when they like for pretty much any reason?
I would suggest that these capabilities have worked out VERY well for the powers that be - there have been a few hiccups along the way, when the damn unwashed masses heard about it, and they actually had to get around to passing legislation to make it all look a touch more legitimate, however that is a small price to pay for absolute political power!
After all, what world leader would not want to be able to retroactively dig up huge masses of 'private' information on threats (to their political power of course..) when and if they need them! It revolutionises the process of both local and international negotiations! Think how easy it becomes to squash people who dont tow the line!
After all, they need all this power, as they obviously have only our best interests at heart.
Think of the children!
Thinking about all those people that fought in the world wars for our freedom. I wonder if they would have fought if they knew their children would piss every freedom they fought for away in a generation.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - John F. Kennedy
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
It has not become law and will not for a while. The current text has passed the lower chamber (Assemblée Nationale). Now it will have to go through the upper chamber (Sénat), which will modify it. After a group of 10 representatives and 10 senators will meet to try to find a common ground. After the lower chamber will vote again. Then there will be challenges to the Conseil Constitutionnel (including by people who have voted the law) to strike down some provisions of the law (and it is so outrageously excessive that there is a very good chance that little meaningful will survive). Then the décret d'application needs to be published, detailing how things will be implemented in practice. This can be challenged too. Then if all fails, France will be quickly sued to the European Court of Human Rights, and will be condemned (at least with the law in its current form, it is hard to see how it could escape a scathing loss given precedents by the court).
In the meantime I will switch my parent to Tor. They are the least dangerous people in the world, there is no reason to gather any data on them.
First they create the problem, then they generate the reaction, they they offer the ready made 'solution'
Perfect use of Hegelian Principle...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Existence is absurd.
- The Existentialist
Because criminals are widely known to strictly follow the law?
... everyone suffers
That's the price all of us have to pay when we, the majority, cannot and/or dare not to, control the action of the few
No matter if it's USA or France of Belgium or the Netherlands or Germany, as long as our society can not (and/or dare not to) confront those Islamists and get them to ditch their barbaric behavior, all of us will suffer
You guys saw what happened in Garland Texas just days before
You guys saw the length the government of Germany has to go --- including canceling at least two public events --- just to prevent the events becoming a bloodbath by the hands of the Islamists
And that's not all ... the Madrid train station bombing, the Boston Marathon bombing, the London Tube bombing, what happened to the World Trade Center of New York City, and so on ...
As long as we, the majority refuse to, or are too afraid of confronting them Islamists straight on, TPTB will formulate stuffs like the Patriot Act, NSA, and whatnots, in the name of 'tackling Islamic Terrorism', and at the end of the day, it is US, the non-Islamists, lost the most
If them Islamists want to live in the West, they better behave like the Western people do
I am not born in the States, I am from China. But as long as I am staying in the United States of America, I respect the society, the people, and the culture of America --- even though I may not see eye-to-eye with everything that they do
If the Islamists insist on behaving like animals they can go back to where they came from --- they get to do whatever they like in the wide sand fields of Saudi Arabia, I don't care
I am sick and tired of them Islamists --- they create trouble EVERYWHERE
Not only in the United States, Europe, they also make troubles in Australia, in Russia, in Thailand, in Kenya, in China, in Nigeria, and so on, and so forth
The world at large has been very tolerant with them, but there is a limit to everything
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
When encryption is illegal only criminals will have encryption ~snark
Despite of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the French legislature has voted 438 to 86 in favor of the "Intelligence Service Bill"
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Fellow French citizens: I am with you, I feel with you. I'm sorry the idiots in your Government got away with that.
We have been more lucky up to now, but it's just sheer luck: the security lobby is there, waiting for any occassion to do its thing.
Never give up the fight for freedom!
What time do you have dinner and what time do go to sleep? Is the interval between those two activities long enough that all your dinner have time to turn to shit by the time you turn it in?
When George Bush said that the terrorists "hate us for our freedom" I had not been expecting that he'd suggest we try giving up our freedoms and see if we're any safer. But I'm not surprised now that the same has happened in France.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Let me fix your grammar for you.
Correct: "In spite of the Charlie Hebdo massacre..."
Correct: "Despite the Charlie Hebdo massacre..."
Incorrect: "Despite of the Charlie Hebdo massacre..."
... for French ISPs to make good on their threats. Go on, show us how it's done.
Exactly. And once it's clear that encryption = crime it becomes easier to single out people and remove them.
Hey France! Welcome to hell.
That tired old appeal to "what they fought for"
You know, perhaps you and people like you who spout this drivel should go to a quiet room and consider the difference between mass genocide of jews, gypsies, gays and eastern europeans by the nazis (yes, hello Godwin) plus the indescriminate bombing of civilian populations in Britain and elsewhere, and the recording of your phone conversations and emails on a little black box. Which if you work in any large company is already done anyway and has been for decades.
GTFU!
Mission accomplished. The French are shitting their pants in fear.
I would not worry much until the conseil constitutionnel has a look. IIRC the council CAN also look *before* the law get into action, after it was voted as raised by various political organs. So it could very well be that the law will be rejected by the constitutional council if raised by some institution (IIRC, only 60 parliament vote are necessary to check constitutionality, less than was in rejection of the law - 86). Otherwise the process is the same afterward , it go to a higher court in case of judgement, and can be set before the council by a high court for example. Anyway I find it an utter shame as described and would break fundamental right, so obviously against constitution (privacy/freedom right among them). My guess is that the law is NOT as described on slashdot as it often happen.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
ssh-keygen -b 4096 -f .ssh/id_rsa -C fuck@thefrog.com -o -a 5000
Tired of your government eroding your freedom ?
Lack of privacy in the 21st century getting you down ?
Terrorism and other ism's being conveniently used by your government to enact sweeping draconian powers ?
For everything else - there's Tor.
You just start using tradecraft. Almost certainly, the terrorists already are. Encryption *already* makes you stand out as a weirdo, precisely because it's uncommon.
Surely they follow the EU privacy regulations and collect the information solely for law enforcement purposes..Oh wait, they have explicitly expanded the use of information for other, market manipulating and fucking-up purposes. If this goes through as it is, I'll you in a French court via television, merdeholes! *Internet tough guy convulsions*
+1 Informative, thanks!
...but this time to the terrorists.
"You should never doubt what nobody is sure about." -- Willy Wonka
I just do not understand why they continue to pretend that nobody can see that this is not about preventing terrorism. It's blatanly obvious that they have simply taken advantage of a tragic incident to push something through that they wanted anyway. They act as though it's a natural response without even bothering to explain why and just assume that everyone will go with it. It's like The Emperor's New Clothes. Even if it was not an assault on French people's freedom, would still be in poor taste to be so opportunist about it.
did the sandniggers that killed all those surrender monkeys in that building buy their assault rifles on amazon or something?
what LE FUCK has the internet to do with that jewish cartoonists that clearly "van provocando"
oh wait, i already know the answer
pd, have some balls and dont delete this post
God, I know this is /. But wtf is up with all these conspiracy wackos? Go back to prisonplanet you psychos.
As a USAian, I am crying for 65 million people of France for what has just been done to them by those solemnly charged with protecting and serving those people's interest. I know what it's like.
This will allow authorities in France to make various crimes more difficult to foment. Will also damage the liberties they gained when they threw off the stupidity of reign being heritable. The big question is, will the good this does more than offset the harm this does?
Remember that this can't prevent ALL attacks, and won't even stop all coordination of attacks by electronic means, as unbreakable encryption does exist in the form of the OTPC.
Used correctly, with properly safeguarded keys predistributed and obviously truly randomly generated pads that are used only once each then destroyed, any spying can only make it harder to communicate and coordinate without the possibility of eavesdropping, NOT impossible.
Also, this does nothing about lone wolves.
Leaving aside all the political questions, I doubt blackboxes are _technically_ possible. The summary said "communications from customers", so that means upstream traffic. With cloud sync data (especially of photos/vids), that's _a_lot_ of data:
Say uplink is 10 MB/d per user. Over 40M users that is a manageable 400 TB/d, but these laws typically have retention periods, 6 mo being the shortest. That takes 73,000 TB which even over a few dozen ISP sites is a major undertaking. Metadata is ~1% so might work. Download is 50+times so would not.
(Just for information.)
They have won. They have made the French give up some of the values they used to hold dear.
Reactionary was the word we used to describe this sort of behavior.
A man doesn't need anything but his hands, feet, eyes, and a gun to kill blasphemers. Surveillance is irrelevant. They're making the same damned mistake we did, confusing power and the all-seeing eye with safety. They'll use this to round up Muslims, same as the US does. Innocence or guilt is irrelevant. They'll go into holes for life or get blown up real good.
The questions remains: who will protect us from the people spying on us? The people behind the spy eyes will change over time. The may even become the people who want to shoot you for blasphemy. Ever think of that? In Saudi Arabia, the all-seeing eye will be on the lookout for women driving cars. In North Korea, they'll be looking out for anyone they damned well want to kill. In South America, for anyone challenging the wealthy's control. In America, straight up they're looking for anyone who dares challenge corporate power - no more draconian surveillance was used here than when Occupy managed to gain some attention. The US managed an unprecedented surveillance and pre-crime arrest sweep during Occupy, showing what secret surveillance was really good for: control of the status quo,.
Oh well, freedom was nice while it lasted.
I say. It sure does seem like all the gov folks, regardless of country, are heavily into undie sniffing these days. Are all of them really so insecure about themselves and their place in society that they need to have such extreme measures? I thought we were out of the stone age.
me no understand why laws like this get voted in...
...Terrorist attack that highlights issues of freedom vs. tyranny, leads to legislation that highlights issues of freedom vs. tyranny. Cue Alanis Morissette...
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Here's the one word rebuttal: Circumcision
HAND.
there comes a coupe of idiots and kill everybody. And the french government attacks in turn its own people. That's similar to bosses, who are bossed around by their bosses, and vent it on to their inferiors.
Thus, the french government is a bunch of morons and assholes, as any government in the EU nowadays.
This is what the attackers want. They want to erode the freedoms of Western secular societies. The Charlie Hebdo attackers have won.
By Allah, that was easy
"this is how liberty dies with thunderous applause", Episode III
with https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
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What they truly need is a copy of the second amendment, not the patriot act.
Hello there,
The title of the news isn't accurate, as the bill still has to go through several stages to become a law. The bill very largely passed the National Assembly on Tuesday, 438 v. 86. It will be transmitted to the Senate, starting May 20. The text voted by the Senate will then be given to a Commission composed of MPs from both chambers, to obtain a final text (if a common version can't be agreed on, it will be sent to the National Assembly again, but this is unlikely).
The text will then be ready to be promulgated by the President. At this stage, it usually may be transferred to the Constitutional Council, a political body charged with checking the constitutionality of laws (among other things). I say usually, as a transfer to the CC is normally determined in the last weeks before the bill becomes law.
However, the President has already stated that he will submit it to the Constitutional Council. It is indeed authorized by the Constitution, but it never happened since the beginning of the regime in 1958. It is a very shrewd political move, as it favored the adoption of the bill by the MPs: one of the main political effects it had has been to reassure the MPs in voting the text, as they were "sure" in the end the text would be examined by the Constitutional Council. But the CC may not eliminate every unconstitutional provision of the law.
Normally, the adoption of the bill as a law won't happen before July. But the unequivocal support of the law by the MPs suggests that it will indeed pass...