
Lawmakers in France Move to Vastly Expand Surveillance - mineshaftgap
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/06/world/europe/french-legislators-approve-sweeping-intelligence-bill.html?src=twr&_r=0
======
fermigier
This is a huge setback, both for democracy and for the french tech ecosystem.

While the most preeminent french hosting and cloud providers (OVH, Online,
Gandi, Alter Way...) have been quite vocal about the issue, none of the big
french telcos (Orange, SFR, Bouygues) have said a single word about it. Shame
on them!

900 tech companies, research organisations, and trade associations (so far)
have asked the government to reconsider the law proposal ([http://ni-pigeons-
ni-espions.fr/en/](http://ni-pigeons-ni-espions.fr/en/)), with not success,
obviously. Several organisations I'm part of (including the two companies I
have founded) where part of the movement, of course.

There is still some hope that the law will be modified, by the french Senate,
or that it will be censored by the french Constitutional Council, or the
European Court of Human Rights.

We also plan to start evangelising people on the use of VPNs.

~~~
malka
I plan to use VPN in area that are NOT friendly with the OTAN, such as Russia.

I'd rather have Putin spy on me, than my own governement, or its allies. He
has far less influence over my life, and I doubt that french and russian
intelligence are cooperating.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>and I doubt that french and russian intelligence are cooperating.

You guys build warships for Putin's war machine which is murdering civilians
in Ukraine, something the French knew they were going to empower someday with
arms like these. You don't buy helicarriers for defense, you buy them to
easily attack your neighbors. Ties between these two nations go back hundreds
of years. I would absolutely not assume the FSB and DGSE/DGSI aren't talking.
I would assume they are bosom buddies.

~~~
meric
Do you have a source for heli-carrier being deployed in Ukraine?

~~~
brohee
He doesn't, because France is not delivering the Mistrals as part of the
sanctions on Russia.

[http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/russia-to-order-
french-m...](http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/russia-to-order-french-
mistral-lhds-05749/)

------
mturmon
Mark Lilla has written a series of three articles that appeared in the _New
York Review_ that shed a lot of light on how very seriously the recent attacks
have been taken in France, and incidentally predicted such a law would be
passed.

From the first article, written in February
([http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/mar/05/france-...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/mar/05/france-
on-fire/)):

"[After the Prime Minister's speech], to the nation’s surprise, the deputies
[in the French National Assembly] broke spontaneously and unanimously into the
Marseillaise, the first time this had happened since the signing of the
armistice ending World War I in 1918.

"On the question of security, this unity is likely to last. There is a solid
consensus that more resources will have to be devoted to tracking suspected
terrorists and monitoring the Internet for signs of trouble. Legislation will
be required to give the government sufficient legal leeway to accomplish that,
which it will get, since all parties recognize the deficiencies yet none wants
to reproduce the American Patriot Act."

I had to read the article twice to begin to understand the French situation.
There are parallels to the American case, but the French situation is unique,
and in some ways more genuinely pressing than the American case. I urge the
mostly American commenters here to not just draw the crude parallel and stop
there.

One point of difference is the special role the schools have, in France, of
imparting a republican ideal. Another is the traditionally strong centralizing
role of the _national_ state in French schools, and culture more generally.
And finally, there is the proximity, in all senses of the term, of France to
North Africa.

~~~
aikah
> how very seriously the recent attacks have been taken in France

The laws that were passed have very little to do with the attacks. All people
are saying is, if the executive power wants to spy, and they can already, they
need a court order. Increasing executive powers without checks and balances
only leads to tyranny and despotism.

When Obama allows drone assassinations, he is killing in your name - assuming
you are american. Today it's in Yemen, tomorrow in Canada, in 10 years in US
... These people that failed protecting us at first place don't need more
power, they need less. And it's well known that you stop terrorism with human
intelligence, not with spying everybody at the source.

------
guelo
The internet is a perfect surveillance machine. It is irresistible to those in
power. I believe it shifts the balance of power towards the center more than
it empowers distributed forces. For example, protesters have more tools to
organize but governments have more tools to know what protesters are up to,
they know where protesters will show up, how many and who they are. So there
are no surprises. Overall advantage goes to the government. The Hong Kong
protests probably would have sparked a revolution 20 years ago, but today they
got nothing. As governments get better at this the internet will be a huge
stabilizing force for power.

~~~
tormeh
More importantly, modern telecommunications (internet etc.) are
government/military infrastructure under government control and surveillance.
Just like GPS etc. It's often hard to remember this and sometimes we even
pretend that the internet is a place free of government control, which is
delusional. The wires, cables and radio towers are under military control in
any kind of crisis.

It boils down to this: If you're a freedom fighter/terrorist on the internet
then you're there because the government's cost-benefit analysis favours you
being there. Sometimes that's as innocent as the government having principles,
avoiding bad PR or collateral damage, but if you're allowed to be on the
internet then you're either not quite dangerous enough or the government's too
weak technically or politically to shut you down (not relevant for those in
the semi-developed world).

~~~
cm2187
The thing with the internet is that governments are allowing themselves
practices that have been long forbidden in the physical world, and for very
good reasons. Whether the technology was initially a military technology is
irrelevant.

In most democracies, the state cannot open your mail or tap your phone without
a warrant. But for some reason it's fair game to tap all your electronic
communications. The sort of things that this law enables is nothing short of
forcing all libraries, bookshops and newsagents to ask your ID when you pick a
book or newspaper, keep records of what you read and send them to the state.
Imagine how this would have gone in the sixties when you had strong political
clashes in the society, whether it was leftists or social rights movements.

I think the issue is that the cynicism and short-termism of French politicians
is combined with a lack of understanding of the technology (even today that
generation and social group barely uses internet) to form a perfect storm.

------
adventured
The US has a huge influence over other free nations, and has especially since
WW2. They mimic the US, they take cues from the US in terms of what behavior
is acceptable, they often expect the US to lead by example.

In the two centuries prior to WW2, Europe was dominated by dictators and
monarchies. Afterward, the entire region was remodeled on American style
government representation, modern central banking, market economies and so on.

Behaviorally for example, they followed the US into a global war on drugs that
has been an epic failure, and fortunately they're going to follow the US back
out of it too.

They followed the US into a global war on terrorism, that mostly consists of
cracking down on domestic freedom in the false name of security.

The US isn't responsible for what France is doing, but the US is leading the
so called free world down the wrong path.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
_Afterward, the entire region was remodeled on American style government
representation, modern central banking, market economies and so on._

No, not really. The dominant form of government in Europe is the parliamentary
republic (several at the backdrop of constitutional/ceremonial monarchies),
compared to the more unique federalist model of the United States where there
is a strict separation between the union and localities, and the President
being the head executive as opposed to a Prime Minister.

Europe was also quicker to apply mixed market principles and has generally
been higher on the _dirigisme_ aspect (even though the US is hardly some
paragon of non-interventionism itself).

Central banking was initially a European (British, I think?) invention.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The dominant form of government in Europe is the parliamentary republic

You mean "parliamentary democracy" (which is a subtype of representative
democracy), not "parliamentary republic". "Republic" _specifically_ means the
absence of a monarch, which, as you note, is not a feature of many of the
systems at issue.

(Some, however, _are_ republics, as well as parliamentary democracies.)

> Central banking was initially a European (British, I think?) invention.

The Bank of England wasn't the first central bank (Sweden, at least, had one
first), though its often credited as being the dominant model for later
central banks. It does seem to be a European invention.

~~~
icebraining
_You mean "parliamentary democracy" (which is a subtype of representative
democracy), not "parliamentary republic". "Republic" specifically means the
absence of a monarch, which, as you note, is not a feature of many of the
systems at issue._

As far as I know, both are true; most European countries nowadays are
republics. There are only 12 monarchies in Europe, and three (Andorra, Monaco
and the Vatican) are micronations.

------
yodsanklai
I'm wondering, is it possible to circumvent the surveillance, still enjoy a
good internet experience, while not devoting too much resources?

I suppose it starts with a VPN service. I use VPNs occasionally, but never in
a systematic way. How convenient are they in term of reliability and
performance? then, what about gmail? are there other email providers that
offer better privacy guarantees and offer a comparable service?

~~~
nraynaud
VPN will make you a target. That's the whole point of recording at the ISP
level, the traffic is still quite individualized.

~~~
higherpurpose
Saying "encryption makes you a target" represents a lack of understanding for
how spy agencies monitor all communications.

It's not like spy agency analysts target _only_ some people and when they are
in their offices and see some encrypted traffic from someone they go: "AHA!
This guy uses encryption - let's monitor his (encrypted) communications and
his metadata!"

It's more like _everyone 's wide-open communications_ are monitored in _real-
time_ and automatically searched for keywords. Not using encryption makes you
_more_ exposed and vulnerable to _mass surveillance_ , not less, because
_everything is exposed by default_ without encryption and _everything_ is
searched.

It doesn't matter whether you're plotting an attack or "only talking about
cats (therefore they can't possibly be interested in what I'm saying!)". It
doesn't work like that, because there isn't a human that does the automatic
searching, but software.

To make it even simpler: it's like law enforcement saying "hmm, this guy put
curtains on his windows - he must have something to hide! Let's watch him more
_closely_ to see where he's going when he leaves the house, and such"

vs

you going to law enforcement and giving them a daily report of what you've
been doing, as well as full recordings of everything you talked about.

Which is worse?

~~~
nraynaud
in that framework, consider that encryption is just a special keyword. And
then they see that not a lot of people use it, then they have an opportunity
to add just a bit more effort to those cases (maybe just storing the encrypted
traffic), because there are so few.

~~~
tomjen3
That is okay. I stream Spotify through a VPN try to break that much traffic
only to find my playlist.

~~~
tajen
How expensive is a VPN which lets you stream sevetal Gigs a month with good
quality?

~~~
tomjen3
Private Internet Access is insanely cheap.

[http://www.vpnfan.com/blog/private-internet-access-
review/](http://www.vpnfan.com/blog/private-internet-access-review/)

------
arbitrage
> "The last intelligence law was done in 1991, when there were neither
> cellphones nor Internet"

Well, that's just downright untrue.

~~~
anigbrowl
But an understandable mistake. There was no web in 1991 and few people outside
of academia would have been familiar with the internet. consumers were using
the MiniTel system. Likewise very few people had cellphones. I remember that
era quite well as I was spending a good bit of my time trying to explain the
concept of email to people in suits and writing reviews of 2400 baud modems
for computer magazines.

------
javiramos
Repeat of the 9/11 response in the US: Major Terrorist Attack -> Freak Out and
Decide that Surveillance is the Solution -> Implement Surveillance -> Major
Pushback Years Later from Individuals and Companies -> The story still
unfolds...

------
teamhappy
It's going to be very interesting to hear their excuses for this kind of
nonsense. By now we now it'll hurt the french population most. It'll hurt
their economy second (I'm a big fan of Gandi, but that might change very
soon), and it won't protect anybody either.

I have hoped learning from the mistakes the US gov made after 9/11 would be
the one good thing coming out of 9/11.

~~~
Qantourisc
I'm a customer too, will be at least moving the server to a different data-
centre soon. In terms of mail, I'm not sure what to do, I _DO_ know that you
not only need to trust the transportation of your mail, but also the receiving
end. I have know times, when using secure communication, only to have the
receiver store the messages in the USA.

------
zmanian
I wonder if French law makers realize how much power they will inevitably be
turning over to foreign intelligence services.

French services has immense new legal authorities and permissive operating
environment. They lack access to the financial resources and technical
capacities of the NSA and GCHQ.

It seems inevitable that French Services will invite in the NSA to make best
use of their new legal authorities. Soon they will find that NSA's primary
customers are able to get intelligence at will on internal French matters.

------
javajosh
In France, as in the US, the legislature and judiciary _exist_ to limit
executive power. Once the judiciary gives away this power, it will be
difficult, if not impossible, to get it back. One would think it hardly needed
to be mentioned, but these tools can be used against legislators, too.

------
mark_l_watson
This is disappointing news, not only for French people but also this is a
trend in many countries.

I am a huge fan of Katherine Austin Fitts (solari.com) and while she discusses
this type of policy that is harmful to average people, she makes the good
point that there is not much to be done about it so it is better adapt to a
non optimal world in ways we can control: understanding how central banks and
the financial systems work, understand governments' desire for population
control, etc.

I have mostly worked remotely as a consultant since 1997 and any prohibition
against routine encryption would make it difficult for me to do business. I
expect to see a trend where more small countries promote privacy and more
secure non hacked by government infrastructure in an attempt at being more
competitive, business wise.

------
throwaway41597
Does anyone know what the so-called "black boxes" look like? Do they bring a
server into the datacenter and log traffic? Is it software they force
companies to run on their servers? Is it only for telcos or also for websites?

------
cognome
Note that the nyt photo is misleading. The hémicycle was 3/4 empty when the
law was voted. vote by pricuration.

------
erazor42
As a french, i'm ashamed of those (idiot/useless) politics

------
iuyoiuyy
People need to wake up to the fact that many of these so-called terrorist
attacks are in fact being done by the intelligence services, which is to say
they are false flag operations, the sole purpose of them being to push through
a far right wing agenda that involves surveillance, unending war and
eventually Mass incarceration.

[http://www.globalresearch.ca/state-sponsored-terrorism-
who-w...](http://www.globalresearch.ca/state-sponsored-terrorism-who-was-
behind-the-charlie-hebdo-paris-attacks/5425322)

PS: this comment will likely be censored

~~~
matthewmacleod
It seems unlikely at best.

Extraordinary claims like this require extraordinary evidence. You haven't
provided anything like that, merely a much more complex explanation than the
obvious one.

~~~
iuyoiuyy
You can't pretend to have a high standard of evidence and yet never even
consider any evidence that contradicts what you want to believe.

Furthermore just because two masked men kills innocent people that does not
imply anything about who commit the crime. Your "obvious" belief is only
obvious because it's what you want to believe.

All you have to do is look at what independent investigators like Chossudovsky
have found and it immediately becomes clear it was a false flag.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
You condemn us for not considering evidence that contradicts what we want to
believe, _but you don 't actually present any_. Telling us to "look at what
independent investigators like Chossudovsky have found" isn't much. Maybe a
URL? Maybe more than one? Who are these people who are "like Chossudovsky"?

~~~
Lawtonfogle
I've found that 'evidence please' is 9 times out of 10 to be a tactic to
dismiss a point of view. Even when talking about facts that I can link to
scientific peer reviewed papers, I am accustom to a request of evidence to
indicate an attempt to call a bluff and not an actual desire to see evidence
on an issue.

------
aikah
"socialists" ... at that point if you vote PS you're a usefull idiot.

~~~
S4M
I am politically on the right wing (in the French way), but Sarkozy is no
better, honestly - amongst other things, he tried to push his then 19 years
old son to become head of the administration managing the business area of La
Defense (dealing with several billion of euros). I have no doubt he would have
done the same as the PS is doing now would he be in power.

~~~
aikah
I never said UMP is any better, in fact there is very little difference
between both parties, aside from the Kabuki theater during the elections. The
french political elite is rotten to the core. I'm left leaning by the way and
I used to vote for these douche bags.

------
analyst74
Talking to friends lived or are still living in France, here are just some of
the problems I heard:

\- in Paris, it's common to get robbed, and sometimes beaten up if you are not
careful, and cops can do nothing. This is from a guy who went to school in
Paris, I can't imagine what's it like to be a girl.

\- some of the non-French speaking neighbourhoods are quite dangerous, even
cops would avoid going there for their own safety.

\- many people don't have ID, or use fake ID, so it's easy for criminals to
get away.

Those lawmakers might be inspired by their American counterparts, but they
definitely have some level of local support.

~~~
yodsanklai
> some of the non-French speaking neighbourhoods are quite dangerous

there are no such thing as "non-French speaking neighborhoods" in France.

~~~
analyst74
What was described to me was certain areas in the country or suburban
immigrant neighbourhoods, which I assumed to be non-French speaking.

But after some reading, it seems you are right, as people in the ghettos still
speak French, and not necessarily fresh immigrants.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_situation_in_the_French_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_situation_in_the_French_suburbs)

~~~
lloeki
May I recommend the interested reader to watch _La Haine_ [0] ("hatred") by
Mathieu Kassovitz. This movie really sets the mood, and things barely changed
since '95.

To be fair, such "ghetto" ( _la cité_ ) people† mostly don't speak "verlan"[1]
("l'envers" with reversed phonetic syllables) anymore, but both the people and
slang is usually referred to as "wesh"[2], from an arabic informal salute
interjection. It's mainly poorly syntactically and grammatically worded French
combined with limited vocabulary and heavy hand gestures and exaggerated
arabic accent borrowings (e.g Rs are more pronounced) with various word
borrowings from English or Arab.

Interestingly enough, I watched it recently in close proximity with The
Wire[3], which provided great contrast yet striking similarities, and brings
an interesting light into how we used to consider surveillance. In that
regard, things have changed a lot. An _awful_ lot, and certainly not for the
better.

† It should be noted that many people and families that live there have
adequate education levels and just live there because the rent is cheap and
they can't afford anything else.

[0]:
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113247/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113247/)

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlan)

[2]: [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wesh](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wesh)

[3]:
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0306414/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0306414/)

