4 ms·

Disclosure: I'm French. The EFF is complaining that we are lowering what amounts to be the Human Rights, and they are right. However the EFF hasn't succeeded i

by tajen 11y ago

Disclosure: I'm French. The EFF is complaining that we are lowering what amounts to be the Human Rights, and they are right. However the EFF hasn't succeeded in taming the US standard. What may be happening here is pressure for an international agreement. We'll only have leverage to make a deal with the US if we (the rest of the world) practice the same disrespectful spy acts against innocent American citizen. Then we can agree on stopping our activities in a bilateral or UN agreement. Of course what is funny about threats from my country is that we are quite powerless. We don't have the world's Facebook records, neither do we manage the world's largest email. With this kind of law, chances are we won't. I, for one, host my email neither in France nor in US. For this threat to be leveraged against US, a lot of other countries have to do the same, until there's a major uprising against surveillance methods. The world has changed. 20 years ago, the right to not be searched when traveling within a country was enough to protect most citizen. Now all citizen cross boarders once a year or use remote Internet websites, which in both cases dismisses their rights as citizen. We need a global protection against unwarranted searches.

dannyobrien 11y ago
Hi, I'm the author of the piece. What you describe, while astute, isn't what's going on here, because at the level these agreements are being made, the French intelligence services don't care that the NSA is spying on French nationals. There's no negotiation to be made: they simply want to maintain their existing capacity, but have been required to give it legal cover by the greater recent visibility of mass surveillance. In fact, among intelligence services of putative allies, having another friendly nation spy on your nationals grants you a potential advantage, since it means you can bypass domestic restrictions by simply trading intel with them. (It's also one of the reasons why bilateral agreements would be undermined, and difficult to initiate. They would also preserve the idea that some classes of innocent users are fair game for mass surveillance, while others deserve protection.) France's surveillance advantage comes from its access to submarine cables rather than local servers. That's the information it will be collecting, and potentially trading with others. Much of the problem here, I'd note, comes from not separating the defensive and offensive components of the intelligence services. Whatever you belief is the proportionate level of surveillance of a population, it's clear that an institution whose job was to protect the assets and personal data of a nation's population would have a very different attitude to letting others spy on its comma traffic than one which was primarily concerned with aggressively investigating other nations. Politicians are therefore hearing policy proposals from only one side of a debate. That's why they think that backdoors would help and not harm national security, and why they think spying on the rest of the world without oversight won't erode their own citizens' privacy.
- mtgx 11y ago
  I agree. The NSA/US gov could care less that France will spy on its citizens. For all we know they may already have a deal to do exactly that to bypass some of NSA's own restrictions of spying on Americans. I think it's already known they do that with the GCHQ. And they make European countries spy on each other, too, while they promise them not to spy on them themselves, but then get the data from others. Sweden spies on Germany, Germany spies on Sweden - and NSA gets all of that data. From everything they've said and done so far, it's also clear the NSA would rather maintain the status quo of an insecure Internet and insecure computers, backdoored encryption and whatnot, even if the US has the "most" to lose, as long as they can use that insecurity to spy on others, too. They much rather prefer this scenario than if say 99% of the global population were all using end-to-end encryption and let's say Qubes OS. This seems exactly backwards for a national "security" agency, especially with all of their recent calls for increased "cybersecurity", but there you go.
  - happyscrappy 11y ago
    The NSA makes the Swedes spy on the Germans? Is there any way they can get control of their country back? And why would they even need to when Germany is littered with US military bases?
- belorn 11y ago
  In part I agree fully with the notion that nation trade intel in order to bypass domestic restrictions, but state sponsored industry espionage has also recently seen an increase (if you go by number of news article). In that race you need your own system to hack, grab and steal, as it would not make sense for the US to sell information if they already got a national actor that wants it.
bigbugbag 11y ago
It seems you're lacking some info about what's going on here. Benjamin Bayart has a simple explanation that you can listen to in this thinkerview video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01gGuXRKH5I&t=23m https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01gGuXRKH5I&t=23m
- bigbugbag 11y ago
  Not sure why the downvotes. allow me to add some context: the woman is axelle lemaire[1] current Minister for Digital Affairs, the man is Benjamin Bayart[2] was president of the oldest french isp still active today, french data network, for 15 years, now president of ffdn the federation of non profit grass root french ISPs, member of la quadrature du net[3] and active defender of internet freedom who fought against the stupid laws. They're both invited to discuss the not yet passed at the time law "loi renseignement" that created the legal frame for this spying. In the video the minister states that every other "significant democracies" are doing it (passing or discussing spying laws) and asks why is it happening now to which Benjamin Bayart offers an explanation: as the USofA is backpedaling on the patriot act and spying, the countries that profited from swapping info with the US got afraid they's risk losing their source of info and launched an effort to do it themselves (or more likely give a legal framing to a practice already in place). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axelle_Lemaire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axelle_Lemaire [2]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Bayart https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Bayart (sorry no english wikipedia on him at the moment) [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Quadrature_du_Net https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Quadrature_du_Net
netcan 11y ago
I dunno, if France (or any country) was interested in tactics for curtailing NSA spying on French citizens, there are other, more effective options. For example, they could make it illegal for a company to make available the private communications of French residents to any third party, explicitly sovereign intelligence agencies. I think this would put Facebook, Google and such into a catch 22 and pressure for an agreement would come from companies like these. Imagine Facebook being prosecuted in France for complying with an NSA directive. It would be especially effective if done as part of a big case/effort where sovereign intelligence agencies included rivalrous countries (Russia, US, China) that don't like to be compared to one another.
- caskance 11y ago
  Sure, why not. France already seems dead set on making sure Google can't do business there.
  - chopin 11y ago
    I think it is fair that any company lives by the rules of a country it wishes to make business in. I don't like the idea that companies whether they be foreign or not set the rules of the game. This is up to politics whether companies like this or not. Therefore, as a European I would welcome any ruling which forbids transfer of personal data outside the realm of the jurisdiction I am living under. This might be uncomfortable for Google or Facebook but I think especially the handling of personal data is more important as whether it is convenient for them to do business here.
    - happyscrappy 11y ago
      I think he means that the French are insisting that Google not only censor the search results for Frenchmen, but also for Americans. That is never going to fly.
    - caskance 11y ago
      The problem is that the internet has muddied what it means to do business in a country. If a Frenchman does a Google search, is that really Google doing business in France? Or even more ridiculously, what if I, who am not French, search for information about a French business or citizen? France seems to think it should have some power in these situations. That's not a reasonable demand. I sincerely hope Google refuses to bend just to see if France has the balls to try and enforce their dumb laws. Maybe they will set up their own national search engine "froogle" that will refuse to perform searches for 12 hours every week because it's on strike.
eveningcoffee 11y ago
I have seen this kind of argument a lot. First Chinese start doing something that goes against human rights. Then US notices it and thinks, well the Chinese are getting away with it, perhaps if we keep it really well in secret, we can also do this on larger scale. Then Russia will also start doing it in more open and receives the blame but does not care. Then it hits the fan for the US and Russians start pointing that see, Americans are also doing it. Now everyone wants to do it (well, most of them are doing it already).
- caskance 11y ago
  It truly amazes me that someone can say with a straight face that the Chinese started this.
  - eveningcoffee 11y ago
    Smoke and mirrors.
  - azinman2 11y ago
    It was a hypothetical example, not specific to spying.
marcosdumay 11y ago
Well, you seem to have got some pieces that you didn't assembly. International treaties are toothless. It's not only France that is powerless, everybody is. So, it does not matter what a treaty you get out of this, the US will keep spying on your people. What France loses with this law is the credibility to create companies that offer "no spying" as a feature. That may be important on the future, or may not. In exchange for that, France is getting the capacity to spy on its own people by entering in agreements with other countries.
- tobltobs 11y ago
  France lost the credibility for "no spying" companies already: http://www.zdnet.com/article/tech-firms-threaten-exodus-over-french-mass-surveillance-plans/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/tech-firms-threaten-exodus-over...

by tajen 11y ago

dannyobrien 11y ago

Hi, I'm the author of the piece. What you describe, while astute, isn't what's going on here, because at the level these agreements are being made, the French intelligence services don't care that the NSA is spying on French nationals. There's no negotiation to be made: they simply want to maintain their existing capacity, but have been required to give it legal cover by the greater recent visibility of mass surveillance. In fact, among intelligence services of putative allies, having another friendly nation spy on your nationals grants you a potential advantage, since it means you can bypass domestic restrictions by simply trading intel with them. (It's also one of the reasons why bilateral agreements would be undermined, and difficult to initiate. They would also preserve the idea that some classes of innocent users are fair game for mass surveillance, while others deserve protection.) France's surveillance advantage comes from its access to submarine cables rather than local servers. That's the information it will be collecting, and potentially trading with others. Much of the problem here, I'd note, comes from not separating the defensive and offensive components of the intelligence services. Whatever you belief is the proportionate level of surveillance of a population, it's clear that an institution whose job was to protect the assets and personal data of a nation's population would have a very different attitude to letting others spy on its comma traffic than one which was primarily concerned with aggressively investigating other nations. Politicians are therefore hearing policy proposals from only one side of a debate. That's why they think that backdoors would help and not harm national security, and why they think spying on the rest of the world without oversight won't erode their own citizens' privacy.

mtgx 11y ago
I agree. The NSA/US gov could care less that France will spy on its citizens. For all we know they may already have a deal to do exactly that to bypass some of NSA's own restrictions of spying on Americans. I think it's already known they do that with the GCHQ. And they make European countries spy on each other, too, while they promise them not to spy on them themselves, but then get the data from others. Sweden spies on Germany, Germany spies on Sweden - and NSA gets all of that data. From everything they've said and done so far, it's also clear the NSA would rather maintain the status quo of an insecure Internet and insecure computers, backdoored encryption and whatnot, even if the US has the "most" to lose, as long as they can use that insecurity to spy on others, too. They much rather prefer this scenario than if say 99% of the global population were all using end-to-end encryption and let's say Qubes OS. This seems exactly backwards for a national "security" agency, especially with all of their recent calls for increased "cybersecurity", but there you go.
- happyscrappy 11y ago
  The NSA makes the Swedes spy on the Germans? Is there any way they can get control of their country back? And why would they even need to when Germany is littered with US military bases?
belorn 11y ago
In part I agree fully with the notion that nation trade intel in order to bypass domestic restrictions, but state sponsored industry espionage has also recently seen an increase (if you go by number of news article). In that race you need your own system to hack, grab and steal, as it would not make sense for the US to sell information if they already got a national actor that wants it.

bigbugbag 11y ago

It seems you're lacking some info about what's going on here. Benjamin Bayart has a simple explanation that you can listen to in this thinkerview video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01gGuXRKH5I&t=23m https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01gGuXRKH5I&t=23m

bigbugbag 11y ago
Not sure why the downvotes. allow me to add some context: the woman is axelle lemaire[1] current Minister for Digital Affairs, the man is Benjamin Bayart[2] was president of the oldest french isp still active today, french data network, for 15 years, now president of ffdn the federation of non profit grass root french ISPs, member of la quadrature du net[3] and active defender of internet freedom who fought against the stupid laws. They're both invited to discuss the not yet passed at the time law "loi renseignement" that created the legal frame for this spying. In the video the minister states that every other "significant democracies" are doing it (passing or discussing spying laws) and asks why is it happening now to which Benjamin Bayart offers an explanation: as the USofA is backpedaling on the patriot act and spying, the countries that profited from swapping info with the US got afraid they's risk losing their source of info and launched an effort to do it themselves (or more likely give a legal framing to a practice already in place). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axelle_Lemaire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axelle_Lemaire [2]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Bayart https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Bayart (sorry no english wikipedia on him at the moment) [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Quadrature_du_Net https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Quadrature_du_Net

netcan 11y ago

I dunno, if France (or any country) was interested in tactics for curtailing NSA spying on French citizens, there are other, more effective options. For example, they could make it illegal for a company to make available the private communications of French residents to any third party, explicitly sovereign intelligence agencies. I think this would put Facebook, Google and such into a catch 22 and pressure for an agreement would come from companies like these. Imagine Facebook being prosecuted in France for complying with an NSA directive. It would be especially effective if done as part of a big case/effort where sovereign intelligence agencies included rivalrous countries (Russia, US, China) that don't like to be compared to one another.

caskance 11y ago
Sure, why not. France already seems dead set on making sure Google can't do business there.
- chopin 11y ago
  I think it is fair that any company lives by the rules of a country it wishes to make business in. I don't like the idea that companies whether they be foreign or not set the rules of the game. This is up to politics whether companies like this or not. Therefore, as a European I would welcome any ruling which forbids transfer of personal data outside the realm of the jurisdiction I am living under. This might be uncomfortable for Google or Facebook but I think especially the handling of personal data is more important as whether it is convenient for them to do business here.
  - happyscrappy 11y ago
    I think he means that the French are insisting that Google not only censor the search results for Frenchmen, but also for Americans. That is never going to fly.
  - caskance 11y ago
    The problem is that the internet has muddied what it means to do business in a country. If a Frenchman does a Google search, is that really Google doing business in France? Or even more ridiculously, what if I, who am not French, search for information about a French business or citizen? France seems to think it should have some power in these situations. That's not a reasonable demand. I sincerely hope Google refuses to bend just to see if France has the balls to try and enforce their dumb laws. Maybe they will set up their own national search engine "froogle" that will refuse to perform searches for 12 hours every week because it's on strike.

eveningcoffee 11y ago

I have seen this kind of argument a lot. First Chinese start doing something that goes against human rights. Then US notices it and thinks, well the Chinese are getting away with it, perhaps if we keep it really well in secret, we can also do this on larger scale. Then Russia will also start doing it in more open and receives the blame but does not care. Then it hits the fan for the US and Russians start pointing that see, Americans are also doing it. Now everyone wants to do it (well, most of them are doing it already).

caskance 11y ago
It truly amazes me that someone can say with a straight face that the Chinese started this.
- eveningcoffee 11y ago
  Smoke and mirrors.
- azinman2 11y ago
  It was a hypothetical example, not specific to spying.

marcosdumay 11y ago

Well, you seem to have got some pieces that you didn't assembly. International treaties are toothless. It's not only France that is powerless, everybody is. So, it does not matter what a treaty you get out of this, the US will keep spying on your people. What France loses with this law is the credibility to create companies that offer "no spying" as a feature. That may be important on the future, or may not. In exchange for that, France is getting the capacity to spy on its own people by entering in agreements with other countries.

tobltobs 11y ago
France lost the credibility for "no spying" companies already: http://www.zdnet.com/article/tech-firms-threaten-exodus-over-french-mass-surveillance-plans/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/tech-firms-threaten-exodus-over...