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French Bill Carries 5-Year Jail Sentence For Company Refusals To Decrypt Data For Police (dailydot.com)
Patrick O'Neill writes: Employees of companies in France that refuse to decrypt data for police can go to prison for five years under new legislation from conservative legislators, Agence France-Presse reports. The punishment for refusing to hand over access to encrypted data is a five year jail sentence and $380,000 fine. Telecom companies would face their own penalties, including up to two years in jail. M. Pierre Lellouche, a French Republican, singled out American encryption in particular. "They deliberately use the argument of public freedoms to make money knowing full well that the encryption used to drug traffickers, to serious [criminals] and especially to terrorists. It is unacceptable that the state loses any control over encryption and, in fact, be the subject of manipulation by U.S. multinationals."
If they want access to encrypted data, just give it to them. If they need it decrypted, that's their problem.
Who exactly goes to jail? The CEO? The CTO? The employees who supposedly know how to decrypt the data? How do you establish who has that ability? Suppose no one has that ability. Suppose the devices are designed so only the end user can decrypt the data. Do you jail the engineers who designed such devices? Do you jail the retailers who sold such devices? How does this work? How does the government prove a specific employee at a company has the ability to decrypt the data, or in the alternative, how do they prove which individual was responsible for creating a situation where the data can't be decrypted?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
It is unacceptable that the state loses any control over encryption
if you have such a hard-on for total control, you should NOT be part of any government.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I would hope that corporations faced with these unreasonable demands simply close up shop in the country. Google CEO going to go to jail? Well, Google pulls out of France and has no presence. Good luck French people with your search queries. If a corporation caves to one country then it will just embolden then next country. Better to draw a line in the sand and tell them to fuck off.
Shh.
here's the funny thing, he was the Ambassador to France from 1776 to 1785 and he couldn't talk any sense into them.
Ummm, that's not quite true. He did persuade them to help the Americans in their Revolution. Without that French help, we might be under the British encryption laws right now, which aren't really much better than the proposed French law!
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
They deliberately use the argument of public freedoms to make money knowing full well that the encryption used to drug traffickers, to serious [criminals] and especially to terrorists.
The same argument applies to cars, guns, knives, shoes... all used by drug traffickers, criminals, and terrorists. Knife companies should be required to install a failsafe so that the blades can be remotely deactivated at the government's request.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
This is not a signed law, this is a proposal, from opposition. And even if it passes, it also need to pass in the senate.
If you accurately represented his opinion, it would indeed be shocking.
Since you didn't, it is called a "straw man."
There is nothing at all fringe about the idea that European law is connected to American law; indeed, English Common Law was adopted from the start. The earliest legal document that gets cited in US law is the Magna Carta; look it up if you think that was an American document. ;) The reality is that the Constitution bans "cruel and unusual" punishment, which is and always was based on the current culture. It is perfectly reasonable to look to what is considered "cruel" and "unusual" by our formal allies, especially those ones who share certain parts of common law with us. If you read the Declaration of Independence, you know that the Framers of the Constitution did indeed care about European recognition of the United States as being a valid legal entity.
You extract his position on a specific and detailed debate, and convert it to a poorly generalized argument that is easily attacked. That is one floppy straw man.
Maybe someday you'll care about the things you choose to talk about enough to actually read his book for yourself.
Look, I know this is slashdot, so what I'm proposing may seem radical, but RTFA.
This is an amendment proposed by "Les Republicans", the opposition party, and will be rejected by the majority socialist group in the assembly. The government is against this amendment.
Who is the fool who should be fucked?