France Will Not Ban Wi-Fi Or Tor, Prime Minister Says (dailydot.com)

Patrick O'Neill writes: Despite requests from police following the deadly Paris attacks, France will not ban the Tor anonymity network or public Wi-Fi, Prime Minister Manual Valls said on Wednesday."A ban of Wi-Fi is not a course of action envisaged," Valls responded on Wednesday. Nor is he in favor of a ban on Tor, which encrypts and masks users' identifying data. "Internet is a freedom, is an extraordinary means of communication between people, it is a benefit to the economy," Valls added.

Comments

Vive la France

[EvilEddie]

Vive la France

Re:Vive la France

[Trepidity]

In this case afaict the politicians never said that public wifi was going to be banned. It was the police who requested public wifi to be banned, which isn't surprising since police always want these kinds of things shut down. The government initially didn't comment on their request, and now commented that it's not in favor.

Actions of a few..

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact this was even proposed shows how disconnected many are from reality. Feel good legislation will not fix anything and will only impose problems on common folk.

The actions of a few must never dictate the life of the many.

Re:Actions of a few..

[CaptnCrud]

“Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”

  Benjamin Franklin

Re:Actions of a few..

[Viol8]

Problem is - a soundbite sentence like that can have its goalposts moved to suit either side of the argument. Well all surrender a certain amount of freedom for security. If that wasn't the case you'd have anarchy and while that might appeal to a small group of posturing delusionals, the reality is you'd have murder, theft. rape , you name it, with true absolute freedom.

Re:Actions of a few..

[delt0r]

It can be argued that we do indeed have these freedoms. Since you are free to commit murder, theft and rape, nothing is stopping you for the most part. And indeed people obviously do that. However we enforce consequences to these acts after the fact.

Re:Actions of a few..

[Archangel Michael]

Corporations are constructs of the state. The exist only because the power supports their existence. All power is derived by those exerting it. Not all power is good, not all power is bad.

However, without a defined and meaningful limitation of power, tyranny will always creep into power.

Socialism is a power structure that depends on the state to support it. Taxation required and the forced confiscation of earnings of the workers needed to keep it functioning is the same power tyrants use. There is no difference. Socialism is a form of Statism. Your view that Socialism has no attachment to a state is simply incorrect, as it requires a state to tax the workers (forcibly take) in order to give to those that it chooses to support. Unless you can name a Socialist system that doesn't contain confiscatory taxation policy, your point is simply wrong.

People opposing Liberty are almost (if not) always statists, because they fear it.

Just so you know, I don't believe the government has any right to the earnings of the workers, especially via taxation. The fact that we have become accustomed to it speaks loudly to how far we've fallen in the last 120 years. My view is that ALL taxes are regressive, and I have tons of examples as evidence. Simply put, the rich and powerful will always be able to avoid taxes where the middle class cannot. Ultimately, the rich can move, pay people to avoid taxes, and otherwise simply not consume their wealth in support of the State.

I also don't believe in equality of outcome. Not everyone has equal ability. Giving trophies to everyone just devalues the trophies. There is only one Wimbledon Trophy, only one Heisman. It is what makes those valuable. It is also not possible for everyone to win one. Equal outcome is tyranny. Giving a Heisman to everyone negates its value.

I do believe in equal opportunity. Everyone should have a chance to win the Heisman, or Wimbledon, but those that work hard, have excellent athletic abilities and the willpower to achieve should be rewarded. Taxes are not a reward for success, it is a way for socialists to punish those that they think achieved unfairly. And if you listen closely, you can hear it in every taxation discussion "Unfair" "Fair Share" "Evil one percent".

I just don't buy into that form of jealousy.

Re:Actions of a few..

[Cruciform]

If you're a white, well-off, adult male in a population that tends towards those people being in power (whether in politics or business) then you're not going to be hurt by a lack of oversight in the day to day operations of society.

If you're one of the groups sidelined by whatever the majority believes (whether that's racial supremacy, religious nuttery, etc) then having state protections can be good.

Making sure that the political machine has safeguards in place to prevent any group that ends up sidelined or in conflict doesn't become a target for abuse by the state also has to be a consideration.

It's a delicate balance.

I'd rather have a degree of protection for my neighbors who have a history of being stepped on, than an illusory freedom that lets robber barons run amok over us as well.

If we didn't have such a problem with greed / material wealth gathering, a lot of the issues that trickle out from that would likely end up with a society that has a lot fewer rules.

Re:Actions of a few..

[LongearedBat]

In your view, who/what would pay for a society's infrastructure?

It's the government, not the country

[Anonymous Coward]

Please stop saying "[country] will/did do this ...".
Instead, say "The current government of [country] will/did do this ...". Governments come and go.

Re:It's the government, not the country

[wonkey_monkey]

You knew what it meant. I knew what it meant. Everyone knew what it meant.

What else could it have meant?

Re:Hold up.

[Earthquake Retrofit]

Forward-thinking, no knee-jerk reactions, no inflammatory rhetoric to rile up his base, not immediately jumping on an open opportunity for a power-grab... are we sure this guy's a politician?

This Prime Minister SHOULD be praised. When a politician does the right thing, he or she should get just as many hyperbolic e-mails as when they screw up. Yeah, yeah, I'm well aware I'm living in a dream world, but It's always been harder to build up than tear down.

Communications is also an anti-terror weapon

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a vent for angry people to express their anger in a non-destructive manner, rather than get more frustrated to the point of actions.
Anonymous speech is a way for them to be confident that their words won't bite them in the ass if they have to express extreme anger.

See, when you do mass surveillance, and you say "your words are watched so watch what you say", you are actually saying "your words are watched by people with their world view and their grudges and their opinions and biases, so be careful not to contradict their world view, or trigger their grudges or contradict their opinions". As if there is a ruling class and a ruled. Slaves and masters. It drives extremism too.

So we have this right. The right to free speech, and we have this other right, the right to privacy, and you surveillance lot, you need to get back within society and respect those rights. The UK in particular, what you are doing in the donut, its not legal.You know its not legal, you know they keep trying to pass the damn surveillance law, you know Parliament keeps rejecting it, and you know Parliament is the top body above Cameron, yet you keep doing it anyway. You need to come back within the boundaries of the UK system.

We had Jacqui Smith's soundbite: "the right to life trumps the right to free speech", it's a false dichotomy. Suppressing basic rights drives extremism. We booted her out of office, and good riddance. Parliament said no. Now we have that other woman in Home Secretary (they can't put men in that office because their porn surfing history is leverage to foreign powers) and she is trying the same "what if your kids die because you don't let us control free speech?" She won't last long either.

Stop following these surveillance idiots, get back within the legal framework of the democracy. /rant

and government can be topled

[aepervius]

People have the courage to protest and go to the barricade in some countries, and France is among them. Make a rule which enrage most french, expect to have nasty consequences. See De Gaulle and the protests of 68.

The United States will.

[Etherwalk]

Neither will the United States, as that will be viewed as an attack on our freedoms, our free speech, our liberties, and will result in war.

No. Not enough people care about it. Not enough people outside the tech world understand it. And if you rise in rebellion, you will find nobody rises with you.

Eventually the intelligence and law enforcement communities will find a boogeyman big enough that they can use it to get the rest of the government to support fucking over everyone by making encryption illegal so that mass surveillance works again. Look at how they responded to Snowden--by making *corporations* hold on to mass surveillance data, they were able to get mass surveillance renewed. The only situation in which they might stop is if they are able to penetrate the encryption entirely.

It may take another terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11. But eventually, such an attack will happen. It's just too easy to cause mass panic if you have a few people willing to do your bidding.