4 ms·
I am confused. Are they mandating a backdoor, or is there already a backdoor, or are they allowing the police to exploit zero days? If it is the latter, it is s
by cm2187 3y ago
I am confused. Are they mandating a backdoor, or is there already a backdoor, or are they allowing the police to exploit zero days? If it is the latter, it is sad that the authorities assume weak security as a given.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- freedomben 3y agoGovernments regularly have a steady flow of zero days to use, but once it's used it's "burned" so it's not something they throw around willy nilly. I would guess they are going to force manufacturers to play ball, and I would gues that the manufacturers will.
- tbrock 3y agoOr the manufacturers will just not sell their phones in France. Ultimately it’s the French citizens that will miss out.
- voytec 3y agoMy guess is that France will soon have followers in form of other EU states. Both left and right are contesting who can be more authoritarian these days.
- orwin 3y agoThe only left wing governments in the western world are Portugal and Spain. And PSOE is barely left-wing imho (I won't fall into the 'no true scottman' here, but I really wanted to).
- whywhywhywhy 3y agoManufacturers already throw their principles out of the window to sell in China, Russia and UAE so I don't think they'll have a problem selling in France after this either.
- berniedurfee 3y agoWhat would stop manufacturers from selling their products in France with whatever customizations are required by law?
- realusername 3y agoThey don't have any backdoor and they don't mandate ones. This is meant for using zero days legally
- notfed 3y agoOh. We've been doing that for decades in the US.
- realusername 3y agoThe US can force Google & Apple to share private information and has a unique position, France just cannot do any of that.
- tiedieconderoga 3y agoThey may have access to backdoors in the baseband firmwares. The baseband is an opaque binary blob that operates outside of the phone's main OS, and its contents are usually considered a trade secret by the manufacturer since it handles low-level hardware interactions with the main radios/etc. Personally, I would be surprised if those systems weren't compromised by agreement. It's already common to see criminals and dissidents get busted because they think that turning a phone off stops it from reporting location data.
- mcintyre1994 3y agoDo the cameras/microphones need to be controlled by the baseband? Naively they seem like they should be at a slightly higher level than the main radios, and should be controlled exclusively by the OS. I'm guessing from your comment there's some reason that's not the case though?
- michael1999 3y agoThe microphone does need to be connected to the phone. Not so much the camera.
- madeofpalk 3y agoDoes it? The OS must be able to send audio to the phone modem (bluetooth, homepod, etc), so it seems reasonable to me that it wouldn't have direct access to the microphone and that would go via OS also.
- michael1999 3y agoNot in theory, but certainly historically. Last I read, there was still an AT command channel present. Some of that IP is super old.
- tiedieconderoga 3y agoTough to say, information about the systems is restricted and hard to come by. I'm pretty sure they have hooks into audio systems for wireless emergency alerts, but could be wrong.
- michael1999 3y agoThey are already doing via exploits, or via carrier injection, but this might have been illegal given the various anti-hacking laws around. So the legislature is granting explicit permission for the police to do this.