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French Legislation Would Block Tor and Restrict Free Wi-Fi (vice.com)
Several readers sent word that French newspaper Le Monde got its hands on documents showing the French government is debating two new pieces of legislation that are unfriendly to internet users. The first would ban people from sharing Wi-Fi connections during a state of emergency. "This comes from a police opinion included in the document: the reason being that it is apparently difficult to track individuals who use public Wi-Fi networks." The second would forbid the use of Tor within France's borders. "The main problem with such a ban on Tor is that it wouldn't achieve a whole lot. Would-be terrorists could still access Tor from outside the country, and if they did manage to access Tor from within France I doubt they're concerned about being arrested for illegal use of the network."
They start arresting shopkeepers with open wifi. Magnifique.
Gently reply
As long as we can stop ISIS and MRA's like Gamergate, this is a price worth paying.
Despite many people's assertions it's very easy to block Tor. You can get a list of relays within the network from the tor servers and you can get a list of bridges by launching a very simple bridge enumeration attack (you run some relays and record the first hop in the chain).
Just what the terrorists want.
They need to round up their politicians and corporate swine then behead their asses.
This will just push more terrorists into the "lone wolf" mode. If people want to kill, they will find their ways. Even a fork is a deadly weapon. Should we ban them?
There used to be a saying in France: "We have the dumbest conservatives in the world".
I vote to change it to: "We just have the fscking dumbest a-holes politicians in the world".
That is all.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
"Those who would sacrifice freedoms to gain temporary security deserve neither"
The "Le Monde" article is Paywalled thank you very much.
What I can read of it only refers to the proposed detention of subjects being that are the object of "S" type surveillance sheets.
rename Tor !
The Islamic Paris terrorists texted each other on a public network. One of the Islamic California terrorists pledged support to ISIS on Facebook.
If our national governments aren't bothering to watch the people who "like" ISIS's homepage or otherwise raise flags on themselves in public, why would we think any restrictions on encryption (that they won't watch either) would improve public safety?
One attack and Liberté, égalité, fraternité goes out the window.
When you get the urge to shout that someone needs to do something in the wake of a tragedy. It's exactly what an oppressive government counts on - "never let a good crisis go to waste" is the oft quoted phrase.
Paris attacks? Ban encryption (which had nothing to do with it). San Bernadino attacks? "Common sense gun controls" (none of which would have helped, but all of which can be seen as either an end run around due process or another step towards total confiscation & disarmament of the law-abiding populace). Think of the children. Sex offender boogeymen on every street corner. "The great Satan" versus actual foreign policy introspection. http://brainz.org/10-most-evil-propaganda-techniques-used-nazis/
That's exactly what ISIS told us was their strategy, and told us that they wanted us to do. Their public web sites and social media accounts have been quite clear that they want the west to make life worse for citizens and take away basic freedoms. That helps radicalise people to join their cause, and demonstrates that they are not some ineffectively little group by rather a powerful movement with the ability to influence and control western governments.
Terrorism is almost always about disrupting a society to the point it becomes fertile ground to me remade into something new. In the case of ISIS one of the goals is to undermine the West so that it becomes less democratic and less free and therefore a less desirable alternative model to a government and society based upon traditional and fundamentalist Islamic Law. The other goal is to antagonize largely Christian or non-Muslim nations into confrontation that will cause Muslims to increasingly turn to one another and unify against the West. There are nearly a billion Muslims of various traditions... or at least hundreds of millions of Sunni Muslims which is enough of a population base to establish a fairly substantial empire like the Ottoman Empire was.
Which is a legitimate fear, but also a fear that Middle Eastern dictators have been playing upon since the fall of the Ottoman Empire in order to gain the support of Western allies against their own people. Which has traded short term stability under the rule of terror while dictator's are at their strongest, generally 20 years or so, for periods of larger scale open violence and instability when those dictators begin to weaken due to physical illness or old age.
Islamic Law and the Caliphate begins to look appealing if the alternative model is based upon Western backed hedonistic and corrupt totalitarianism that is at war with Islam. With the caliphate you have the option to join (or die), but it isn't at all clear what the membership criteria are for corrupt Western backed totalitarian regimes. Opportunity in those regimes end up being realized through membership in very limited circles of trust where family, tribes and all sorts of other complicated attributes end up dictating your lot in life... with most people left to live off the scraps.
There is a lot of talk about trying to counter ISIS's ideology with moderate Islam, but that isn't really enough because ISIS is promoting not just a religion but a complete way of life including a form of government. The way to truly beat ISIS is with more democratic reforms and civil liberties in predominately Muslim countries and proving everywhere that you can still fight terror and live in a free society.
The sad-but-funny thing is, Romani are actually descendants of peoples from the North of India and part of current Pakistan who were displaced by the expansion of Islam and later by the growth of the Ottoman Empire. They're unrelated to Romanians and Bulgarians (and Polish and Italians and Greeks and Czech and Irish and Germans and.. and ...) as Roms, beyond the limited intermixing that happened while they traveled for centuries across Europe. Using them to claim that the Schengen Space has failed is a ridiculous lie as well as a wild anachronism.
But let's face the real issue here: Marine Le Pen's F.N. has successfully re-marketed itself as the new center of the french political landscape, and the reigning parties are only now getting the memo. Out of sheer laziness and panderism they've been casting themselves as merely reacting to each of Marine's sorties on every new topic, so she got to define everyone's position for years now. And the recent elections have just now given her all the weight she needs to make them dance any way she wishes. All of this, courtesy of both parites' strategy of popularizing the F.N. in the hopes of being the only alternative left against it. It's like Kodos and Kang playing less-and-lesser-evil to C'htuluh.
The F.N. has made Syrian refugees, unpatriotic (read: gov't-dissentive) behavior and Islam the topics du jour, so PS and LR have happily obliged, and bipartisanly passed State-of-emergency laws as well as broad mass-surveillance laws. Unemploy-what ? Who gives a rat's ass ? We'll only worry about the smoldering ruins of our economy when the moosleems are defeated, apparently.
But only after the current government is done building up the totalitarian state that the ex-far-right-and-now-center F.N. will need to implement its crazy policies.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
#FuckParis and #FuckFrance , there are more important issues, like poop swastikas, cultural appropriation and need for more safe spaces for marginalized students (no cis white males).
But to be honest, this is from the playbook written by Bin Laden (and still scrupulously followed by those in the West desirous of Absolute Powers). He knew that those holding offices requiring an oath to 'protect and defend The Constitution' were just mouthing words they truly didn't give a fuck about.
The Paris attacks were a false flag, and the powers that be are using it as an excuse to seize more control over French citizens. Don't let them get away with that. Contribute to the development of Internet 3. No DNS, No DHCP, no registered names or IP's and fully encrypted MESH network, with no control by government
My WiFi was secured ! I can't help that they hacked my password with my ssid of "mypasswordis12345".
Sieg Heil!
But don't forget, this is all in the name of FREEDOM
...on the OVH dedicated server that I use as a seedbox. It also runs a Freenet node. I do both because why the fuck not? The more "random" gbit nodes that aren't law enforcement related that both of those networks have, the better.
This is some serious fucking knee jerk bullshit. I dare say that Adolf Hitler would approve, as this kind of thing is right out of his playbook.
It would seem, to bring back a popular post 9/11 phrase, that the terrorists have won (ironic given the fact that this attack isn't at all what we've been told it is.)
If I have to stop running one or both of those, it won't really affect my life (they just run, as they have for years and years) but it would really make me feel like something very bad had happened.
Personally, having worked with China and dealing directly with the Great Firewall, I can't blame a country particularly a country with such wonderfully strong culture as France - for choosing to embrace control over their own information sources.
But to the point of blocking and sacrificing anonymity, that's where I would personally draw the line if I was leader of say a country which I am clearly not.
TOR and other P2P based services are easy enough to block, but can be reprogrammed quickly enough to not make a lick of difference, so this will prove to be a costly game of whack a mole by the local police force, and be just as exhausting as the 'hunt for terrorists' are. This cost can be so extreme, it will QUICKLY deplete the financial resources of an organization attempting to keep the country 'safe'.
As for free WIFI. France is walking a line that the United States and the UK both went down years ago which will ultimately end up inspiring the creation of an organization much like the NSA to monitor, rather than block information.
Now to be clear, what's at stake is the culture of the country itself. It's completely understandable some might be concerned over this.
But the real question is: What is that culture? Without clear definitions and with the whack a mole snipe hunt for terrorism, this can very quickly lead to a revolution in a country that's already seen it's students unhappy with the leadership decisions.
Terrorism is nothing more than a manifestation of the mind of the younger generation and a fear of change by the older generation.
Since 1971 OPEC is selling crude oil exclusively in US$, starting the friction between Islamic and Western; It's a lose-lose proposition; You're riding a Frankenstein monster; As a Muslim, President Obama is pretty much aware of it;
http://qz.com/562128/isil-is-a...
Casteism