France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone, spy on people
France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone, spy on people
A bill that would allow police in France to spy on suspects by remotely activating cameras, microphone including GPS of their phones has been passed.
Does anyone know how this even works? Is the technology for this already in place?
You're viewing a single thread.
Commented on this article in another thread
https://beehaw.org/comment/586170
Looks like there are caveats to this law:
You would need to be a suspect in a crime that has a punishment of 5 or more years in prison in order for the phone to be geolocated.
For video/audio you need to fall under the definition of organised crime or terrorism.
Sure, the issue is that, with no transparency, cops will use it even if they are just courios what they friends are doing. This is already known to happen in the US, where cops used it to stalk their SOs or even in extreme cases women they were starting to date.
If they already have the technology in their hands, there is no way to stop them.
Technically needs judge's approval
Once the tech is in place it can and will be abused. Also, non-police can find how to access the backdoor.
They should also need it in the US. The issue is, that if the tool is in the hands of the cops, there is no way to check who they spied on (and therefore if they had warrant).
At least if it was executed by a comercial entity, they can check the warrants and be liable if they do it without one. But that is very likely not how it will be implemented. The cops will get the tools to do with as they please.
As an example, one state in the US (forgot which one) put in a law that requires the police to submit every data search warrant into a public database so that they could be audited by the public. After they compared the contents of the database to number of requests in companies transparency reports, it turned out there were over 5 times as many requests in the state then what was reported in the database, despite reporting being required by law.
I really hope the power isn't abused. The second it is it will lead to more riots and even though I have in no way been directly affected where I live, it is a pain to get messages from friends abroad asking "Why is France on fire again?"
On one hand, I do want to ask why Frebch people love setting France on fire so much. On the other hand, when shit like this passes as laws, I wonder why we are not setting our countries on fire...
I've lived here since 2006 and I haven't met a single person that participated in any of the riots, which are offshoots of sanctioned strikes and do not represent France as a whole. I've had some students that strike for the environment or maybe do walkouts.
The closest I came to one was a strike about police violence and I happened to be in a café and had to evacuate because of year gas. In that instance, it turned out the person they were striking for lied.
So, I can't say why they want to destroy stuff.
A back door is a security vulnerability, even if the police never abuse such a power.
After a terrorist attack, emergency state was declared (nomally used in case a war actually put the survival of the country's institutions in jeopardy). First use of the extra-powers: assign some targeted pacific climate activist at home so that there would not be a protest during the COP.
Anti-terrorism bill was passed some time ago. It was used to repress the protests against the retirement bill, literally banning anyone from carrying a saucepan in the street (ban of "noise emitting devices") during a protest.
Climate protesters have been labeled "eco-terrorist" even though they never put nor attempted to put anyone's life in danger.
France is under requests from the UN for fixing severe issues regarding right to protest, police excessive violence and systematic racism in the police force. France is taking a dire path, joining Hungaria, Turkey in authoritarism, maybe evolving to a clone of Russia, as there were hint of a will to change the constitution to let Macron run again after his second mandate.
I have 0 trust this bill is intended to be used for severe crimes. It's another attempt to control and repress.
Yep some of my friends left France in part for that reason - the government and police are becoming increasingly authoritarian and they left not wanting to wait for things to get worse. And they're just super nice, normal people but they could see the wiring on the wall. 😞
It's so stupid that beehaw defederated from Lemmy world.
Such is the power of federation. Beehaw can choose to do so, and it'll be interesting to see how the fragmentation issue plays out
Yeah, I get it. It just seems like admins making a decision for an entire instance of users that they can't see the most popular instance anymore.
It was the first instance I joined too, which is the only reason I think about it. But Lemmy World so far is awesome and doing great things for Lemmy.
You can always use Kbin instead which is still federated with all.
Those caveats are just to get the laws passes.
Online piracy already carries punishment up to 3 years. All it takes them is make a law that technically holds 5 years but gets pardoned in practice.
Labeling someone a terrorist can be as simple as “collective undertaking with the aim of seriously disturbing public order through intimidation” aka protesting..
Oh ok then, that’s fine. I’ve got nothing to hide.
Ur comment is probably /s, but username does not check out for having an alt account with "nothing to hide" :D
lol, I’m using my alt bc beehaw seems to be acting up rn, but it made for a happy accident.
Ha, I'm sure... They'll spy the heck out of everyone. At the judge's discretion, of course 😉