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France, Up In Arms Over NSA Spying, Passes New Surveillance Law
An anonymous reader writes: French President Francois Hollande held an emergency meeting with top security officials to respond to WikiLeaks documents that say the NSA eavesdropped on French presidents. The documents published in Liberation and investigative website Mediapart include material that appeared to capture current president, François Hollande; the prime minister in 2012, Jean-Marc Ayrault; and former presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac, talking candidly about Greece's economy and relations with Germany. The Intercept reports: "Yet also today, the lower house of France's legislature, the National Assembly, passed a sweeping surveillance law. The law provides a new framework for the country's intelligence agencies to expand their surveillance activities. Opponents of the law were quick to mock the government for vigorously protesting being surveilled by one of the country's closest allies while passing a law that gives its own intelligence services vast powers with what its opponents regard as little oversight. But for those who support the new law, the new revelations of NSA spying showed the urgent need to update the tools available to France's spies."
"Opponents of the law were quick to mock the government for vigorously protesting being surveilled by one of the country's closest allies while passing a law that gives its own intelligence services vast powers with what its opponents regard as little oversight." that is because in the spy game, everybody spy as much the other as they can. there is with almost certainty french spy right at this moment trying to intercept Obama's conversation. But getting caught, be it red handed or by a leak is a no-no - the biggest sin - as the government HAVE to pretend they are angry , etc... It is all theater for the plebe, while the spy and counter intelligence on both side sigh and go on as usual , maybe tightening their protocol. The bottom line is : this will change nothing in US - France relationship, it will just force US politician to be a bit contrite for a few days (maybe - if even), French politician to be angry for a few week, and then wait that the media move onto the next story and forget it all. And the shadow game then continue.
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What's the use in crying terrorism to pass these kinds of laws when you can just blame it on the US? Seems like an easy way to gather all the data you want if you ask me. Makes perfect sense
Or you could ask yourself whether it is a positive development for the USA that people in other countries are now using the USA as an excuse to pass laws like this where in the past they used to use the likes of Al Qaeda as an excuse. Perhaps that's something the people of the USA might want to change before it fucks up their relationship with their oldest and closest ally who helped you wriggle out from under the iron heel of British tyranny and whose soldiers shed their blood to secure the independence of the USA as a nation at the battle of Yorktown? Just a thought...
These are always the best laws...enacted right after an 'emergency', with no debate. Helpfully, the law was pre-drafted and just in a filing cabinet waiting for the right circumstance to pass it.
Of course, I'm not exactly sure how this helps with the 'emergency', that the NSA was spying on the French gov't. I guess the emergency for the gov't was that they finally realized that the NSA knew more about everyone in France than the French Secret Service does. The new legislation should even it up, by greatly increasing their ability to spy on their own largely law-abiding citizens.
Problem solved! This calls for a round of embezzling.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
You're doing it wrong.
I have nothing but utmost respect for those who shed their blood for freedom, unfortunately human history is such that those who died for the cause almost always died in vain
Not because they didn't win the battle - they did
But because whatever victory they have achieved would, one way or another, be completely eroded by politicians
No matter which culture - no matter which era
No matter if the battle took place 2000 years ago or 2000 years in the future, politicians will always be the ultimate victor
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
And in general, I think: Let the governments spy on each other. That's fine with me. Let them play their games with themselves. Hey, even government agencies of the same government spy on each other.
What I am not ok with is if spy agencies that are not allowed to spy on their own population do it via agencies in other countries. The german BND is not allowed wholesale data collections of german people, thus they just ask the NSA to filter it for them. On the other hand, the NSA sends the BND a list of keywords, and the BND uses its investigative power to hand the matching data over to the NSA.
In some way, all legislation around spying powers gets made obsolete if you just have that befriended agency in that befriended country which just happily will provide you with all the data you are not allowed to collect -- they are not subject to your legislation, they don't have to report to your appointed watchdog, and they will not obey the will of your people. All the bad things that are illegal for your people are just outsourced to others, to the mercenaries somewhere else, to the foreign torturers and to the shady deals everyone can deny if they grow sour.
These are always the best laws...enacted right after an 'emergency', with no debate. Helpfully, the law was pre-drafted and just in a filing cabinet waiting for the right circumstance to pass it.
Of course, I'm not exactly sure how this helps with the 'emergency', that the NSA was spying on the French gov't. I guess the emergency for the gov't was that they finally realized that the NSA knew more about everyone in France than the French Secret Service does. The new legislation should even it up, by greatly increasing their ability to spy on their own largely law-abiding citizens.
The French are mad, but only for the show. They simply cooperate with the NSA, and this is the opportunity they've been waiting for. Now they can pass a new law that will help them cooperate even better with the NSA. They thank Wikileaks for helping them.