Mozilla flings teddy out of pram over France's 'Patriot Act' Mozilla has stated that it is deeply concerned with France's commitment to surveillance practices, as further established last week when the nation passed its very own Patriot Act. The French National Assembly voted overwhelmingly in support of the controversial Projet de loi relatif au renseignement last week. Mozilla has …
Mozilla ? The same company who ship closed-source binary blobs in their web browser to support DRM ? People still listen to them ?
It took me all of 30 seconds to disable it in this browser. They also offer alternative versions without any DRM. That way people that want to watch DRM protected content can do so or not. It's called choice.
Talking of binary blobs, how's that Flash plugin in your non-Mozilla browser doing?
Valls, Hollande and friends don't have a clue, they're passing the bill direct from the security services without understanding a thing. Why, otherwise would they mention the probes at ISPs or "algorithms" to select targets ? When was it politicians had an understanding of theses things ?
Also, every MP I've contacted (I'm french) don't have a clue either, they're just voting stupidily. I'm trying to explain to them, but to no avail.
This thing is a major democraty malfunction and we'll pay it during the next 2 decades minimum.
Anon of course ...
Compromise internet infrastructure in France and extra-territorially
Well, if France thinks it's OK to frig around with another nation's infrastructure then surely the converse applies. Do they realise that they've just announced open season on themselves, do you think? They ought to hastily retract that bit, I reckon, before things get silly. Or surrender now, I suppose...
They stuff with my infrastructure, they'll face my ban hammer.
I've noticed since I've tweaked my fail2ban rules, while China overrepresents the rest of the world by a big margin, France is up there in the cracking stakes.
My modification was to start taking into account the number of attempts from given subnets and to ban based on the number of past attempts. Hit me from one IP address and it gets banned, hit me from another IP in that subnet (up to a /16), and the subnet will get banned. Chinanet have pretty successfully firewalled themselves off using that technique, China Unicom aren't far behind and neither is Iliad Entreprises (France).
I guess they want to join the rest of the world in the data slurp of ALL users. It's almost too funny.. practically every country is slurping every user's data. What the hell are they going to do with it? Look at the pile and go "yeah... we got those bastards.... somewhere in there."?
One would have thought that they had learned from the rest of us (countries) that just because you slurped it, doesn't mean you can do anything about it. Even proper sifting takes time. Then, you've got someone worth watching and don't watch them because there's to many to watch?
I'm cynical about all this... and no, I won't apologize.
Except they aren't actually slurping data, they are slurping meta-data and that slight of hand with terminology betrays the emotional over rational objections from the anti-Patriot Act people.
Let's look again at El Reg's claims about the act:
Monitor and store user communications, metadata and Web activity about all users in France and abroad
Possibly objectively true, but precisely the sorts of things you'd want to go after for tracking international bad guys of all stripes. With adequate protections, it's actually a rational way to go about things.
Force internet service providers (and potentially other technology companies) to install “black boxes” in their networks to collect data and use algorithms to search for “suspicious patterns”
Objectively true, but actually irrelevant. Everybody, but especially ISPs install black boxes that collect data and use algorithms to search for “suspicious patterns”. We just call them anti-malware software and buy them from commercial companies.
Intercept user communications, including reading emails and tapping phones, without meaningful due process or oversight
Objectively false as there is no commonly agreed upon definition of "meaningful due process". The best objective that can be made against any of these bills is that there is not a publicly disclosed adequate process. After that it is simply assumed that the process is corrupt, which is not an objective analysis.
Compromise internet infrastructure in France and extra-territorially
Objectively false and pure speculation intended to elicit a purely emotional response.
Metadata is data. It's just a convenient horseshit term used by politicians etc. to hammer the wedge in and widen the crack. It's all bloody data and calling it something else is not going to change what it is.
"After that it is simply assumed that the process is corrupt, which is not an objective analysis."
It's certainly the way to bet given everything we know now. The various security agencies have been lying their tits off all century at least; have been gratuitously overstepping their remit; have apparently been disappearing evidence; have been targeting journalists; and have generally been indulging in shenanigans that people with that sort of power really should not get up to. It looks fucking corrupt from here.
Up to a point, you are right. That point is that those of us who are Anti-Patriot Act are that way for a reason. Once permission in any form is granted, there's stopping, there's no checks and balances. Here in the States (and I'll assume this is true elsewhere) the security agencies lie, the politicians lie. The politicos have no clue about what's going on yet, they are very ones providing "oversight"... a useless term in this case.
I view it this way... it's either all or nothing. You either slurp nothing on a mass basis or grab it all. Either way, we as a people then know exactly where we stand. This "meta-data is harmless", the weasel wording and the lack of any insight by those passing the laws and providing "oversight" is a smokescreen. I doubt that very few people outside the agencies know the full extent of what's going on.
France as a shining beacon of human-rights promotion?
I'd jump in the Rainbow Warrior and sail away from such hypocrisy, but then the French secret service agents would bomb it before I even left the harbour, killing someone on board. Then the agents would be captured by my countries authorities, but traded back to the French government in order to avoid trade sanctions of dairy and meat products into Europe...
Those shining beacons of human rights promotion?
Not sure what's worse. France or the NZ government. Both are surrender-monkey parasitic cowards.
" install “black boxes” in their networks to collect data and use algorithms to search for “suspicious patterns”
... so anyone posting anything containing, "cheese eating surrender monkeys" will probably be stopped at the border then... oops! Bang goes my shopping trip to Paris... and El Reg will probably never get off these white cliff'd shores again either I venture...
As long as supposedly democratic states are allowed to get away with this nonsense, they will. Think about the bright future that these surveillance state politicians are proposing for you and your children.
A world where mass slurping and surveillance is considered a good policy and an efficient spend of state resources.
Meanwhile, people struggle to find gainful employment, build businesses, create a future or do anything else that doesn't concord with the fears and wishes of a paranoid, parasitic minority.
The so-called less democratic world will emulate and further refine these bad practices, while the rest of our freedoms are slowly sucked into a death spiral where debate and common sense are stifled by chilling effect legislation and secret purges.
Vote while you still can, send them all packing with smarting bottoms. Otherwise, we will continue to be ruled by buffoons and power hungry fools.
Show them for what they are, thieves, and enemies of the state and freedom. They are Incompetent to rule a freedom loving nation. We will all pay dearly for this stupidity.
Where are the Rights of Man now? Shame on you, France.
A broad comment.
There seems to be an unhealthy trend to legalize things that intelligence services want to do, and to hope or assume that such legalization won't then be used in a malign way by future governments.
Surely it's far better to turn a selectively blind eye to intelligence agencies breaking a the law, provided they are still operating in the nation's interest and not using illegally obtained intelligence in any way that's outside their remit. Then should they step out of the dark grey zone in which they are supposed to operate, it's far easier for the courts to do something about it.
If I'm unclear ... for you or I to break some speed limits is justified if we are getting a seriously ill person to hospital as fast as reasonably possible. The crown prosecution service would hopefully decide that to prosecute was not in the public interest. It's not written into the law which circumstances permit what degree of aggressive driving. How could it be? You have to claim that what you were doing was illegal but to the greater public good, and if necessary let a court decide.
Hear, hear! I've always thought that I don't really much care how much the spooks spy illegally in order to do their real job, though for practical reasons I'd rather they focussed on actual targets rather than dragnets - I'm more worried if they're *allowed* to spy, because that means they can then make legitimized use of their observations for political ends beyond protecting us from random Islamists or non-random Russian presidents.
OK, that's a flippant comment, but let's look at it like this. What would happen if all telecoms infrastructure, including the Internet backbone links, were under the direct control of governments, like most of it used to be?
Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that high-speed Internet was available throughout the UK, but we were still stuck in the old days when you could pick any ISP you liked as long as it was Post Office Telephones. That was wholly owned and controlled by the government, and its employees were de facto civil servants.
Do not for one moment think that surveillance didn't go on back then. A shufti at Peter Wright's book Spycatcher reveals how things were done before that pesky competitive market thingummybob came along. Casual references to how 'the Post Office faulted the phone system' to allow MI5 to pop monitoring devices into phones can be found throughout the book. Towards the end, he even mentions the advent of computers in monitoring threats. It was all done on a wink and a nod - the Security Service operated (and for all I know still does) on the principle of the Eleventh Commandment - 'thou shalt not get caught.'
If the telecoms and Internet provider markets were still like that, you can bet the farm that surveillance and data retention would still be going on, but we just wouldn't hear about it. There'd be nothing written down, no memos to leak, no Cabinet papers to be released after thirty years, just verbal requests made and approved over afternoon tea.
That's fine if you're a government, and you're directing a government department. But it's not so easy in a competitive market, which is why legislatures are trying to introduce a legal framework for data retention - it allows them to force private companies to comply with the law. If they succeed, we're screwed, as we know full well.
But if they fail, we might see a move to nationalise telcos and ISPs. Then we'd still be screwed, but we just wouldn't know about it until Mr Plod kicked our doors down at 3 AM.
France has never been a bastion of freedom and democracy. It awarkwardly fell into a Revolution in the late 18th century because of ham fisted geopolitics by its aristocracy -- they thought they'd support the American colonies in their Independence fight as a way of sticking it to England without thinking through the possible consequences at home. This revolution rapidly turned into an Empire, that got whacked but before you could blink they're back in Empire mode. There's another revolution, that got brutally squashed and they then figured they could carry on pretty much as before, they didn't need an actual Emperor, just a few trappings of democracy. Looking at the political mess leading up to WW2, the ready acceptance of Fascism in Vichy and so on -- well, it does fit a pattern.
The French have been leading the charge for intrusiveness on the 'net for decades so there's really nothing to see here, folks.
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