6 ms·

France to Allow Police to Spy on People Through Phone Cameras

70 points by mikece 3y ago

hoppyhoppy2 3y ago
Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36616037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36616037
10u152 3y ago
So the people who made the law don't have to worry about this happening to them. How charming. -From the article - "Further, the law excludes certain people from surveillance, including doctors, journalists, lawyers, judges, and French legislators."
- Nasrudith 3y ago
  The fact they exclude themselves is the ultimate show of bad faith.
bsaul 3y ago
france is slowly but surely turning into an authoritarian regime. People voted against the extreme right to fight against "fascists" but it seems like it's coming anyway, disguised as a cool looking mid 40 guy.
- quadcore 3y ago
  As crazy as it sounds, I second that sentiment. France is turning fascist. Like for real. As a not entirely white guy, you have no idea the crazy stories I have to tell already and it just keep escalating.
  - akomtu 3y ago
    We're all curious. A century ago, a few years before WW2, there was a mysterious and massive spike of hard crime in Germany, then it turned authoritarian and the rest we know.
    - quadcore 3y ago
      See above comment to get an idea of what its like in 2023.
  - RugnirViking 3y ago
    I've got no idea what the other guy is insinuating but I do want to hear some of your stories. This stuff is hard to follow from abroad
    - quadcore 3y ago
      This includes cars regurlarly charging at me (yup, with various schemes, from I pass 5 cm from you to I try to kill you outright because nobody is watching), constant harassment wherever I go, some insurance director calling me home at night to insult me, post office person destroying my parcel, townhall person insulting me while getting election pass, and on and on. The frequency of it is: if i leave home, there is 50% chance something happens. Most of the time, a "sentinel" person or two just stares at me without interuption with some various degree of hatred eyes. Sometimes it's worse - though "sentinels" are very violent psychologically actually. Note a person during a strong hatred rush has eyes turn ink black. Entirely ink black with no white. Fun times.
      - akomtu 3y ago
        I have to ask, do you see the same behavior towards others around you?
        quadcore 3y ago
        No you don't.
      - Obscurity4340 3y ago
        I believe the French call it ennui, /s. Also, the black eye thing is terrifying. Those guys are in full-blown Fight mode. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - Terr_ 3y ago
        > Note a person during a strong hatred rush has eyes turn ink black. Entirely ink black with no white. Totally black sclera? Your fictional anecdote has now "jumped the shark."
  - bsaul 3y ago
    The racist behavior and hate are indeed a huge part of the problem. I believe you when you say it's escalating, however this one is relatively well known and not specific to France. My feeling is a bit broader than that : we're entering a generalization of violence at every level of the society, including the state. This last part is the one that worries me the most, because state is supposed to be a cooldown actor. What happened on the contrary, is that macron's government has decided to "show action", and "tacle the real issues of the country, without taboos". Which may have started with a good intentions, but is turning into a mess of laws turned against the people, mostly in the form of population control. To me, to most striking example was what happened during covid with lockdowns, and public shaming. And the worst is that the population generally agreed because it was "for the people's own good". Same thing is probably going to happen now. They'll strike with a new set of measures attacking public liberties, but since it'll be presented as anti-riot measures, the population will probably accept them. Note that this isn't particularely new. The US set the examples with post 9/11 laws that basically threw the constitutionnal values to the trash provided it was vaguely presented as helping fight against terrorism.
    - quadcore 3y ago
      I agree with you on the end result except I dont think any president has anything to do with that. It's little known but the president has actually little power and things move forward more or less the same regardless of who he is. My view is that we let KYC be and once you have KYC, video surveillance is just more or less the same so why not do it. And by KYC I mean KYC for the people. KYC for big accounts is justified. KYC for the average Joe, it's just surveillance. Once you have that, video is just around the corner.
- mock-possum 3y ago
  Right? Isn’t this the same France that just mentioned blacking out internet access?? Wtf guys.
happytiger 3y ago
Prediction: Suddenly most new crime laws in France will have a mandatory 10 year minimum sentence…
- coolhand2120 3y ago
  We called them a tenner.
akomtu 3y ago
France is doing everyone a favor by saying the quiet thing out loud. If previously saying your phone or your car can spy on you on demand would draw accusations of paranoia, now you can point to France.
- juanani 3y ago
  [dead]
givemeethekeys 3y ago
Hey, French citizen. Why don't you have a phone with a built in camera? You're not a criminal, are you? \s
TacticalCoder 3y ago
> French lawmakers have given French police the legal authority to spy on suspects by remotely activating cameras, microphones, and GPS location functionality on a person’s smartphone and other connected devices And, technically, how are they going to do that? Oh, wait, maybe the tech already exists, is already operational and is already used by other nation states? It may be a "feature" of all our Android and iOS smartphones. BTW if it's not I don't know how France actually plans to implement that.
engineer_22 3y ago
At least they're open about it. In the USA we pretend it's not happening
- para_parolu 3y ago
  Do you have any links for the claim? That would be interesting to learn.
tehwebguy 3y ago
If I were a lawmaker in France I would probably not do this, because I have heard of some of the history of France.
s_m_r 3y ago
Okay, but how? I didn't know there are idiots like these other than the Iranian government.
goku12 3y ago
While the headline concentrates on the camera, it's the microphone we should really worry about. Cameras are easy to conceal. But there's no way to reliably disable microphones. And the most personal and possibly incriminating information is in someone's speech. The accelerometer/gyroscope information is possibly even worse. It has been shown that speech can be reconstructed from their signal. What makes this bad is that even apps which are not authorized to access microphones are liberally given access to them. Even worse, they give additional information of a person's habits like sleep cycles, physical activity, health and driving.
pengaru 3y ago
This is incredibly surprising to me. When I visited Paris over a decade ago, I was nearly assaulted on multiple occasions by Parisians for taking photos of buildings and other interesting things. They mistook my photographing as taking photographs of them without permission, and were quite upset and adamant about it being illegal. Fortunately I'd just show them the photos on the lcd (OG canon powershot w/CF woot) and they'd chill out when they weren't in them... How their streets aren't full of burning cars and protestors fighting police over this is beyond me.

70 points by mikece 3y ago

Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36616037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36616037

So the people who made the law don't have to worry about this happening to them. How charming. -From the article - "Further, the law excludes certain people from surveillance, including doctors, journalists, lawyers, judges, and French legislators."

Nasrudith 3y ago
The fact they exclude themselves is the ultimate show of bad faith.

bsaul 3y ago

france is slowly but surely turning into an authoritarian regime. People voted against the extreme right to fight against "fascists" but it seems like it's coming anyway, disguised as a cool looking mid 40 guy.

quadcore 3y ago
As crazy as it sounds, I second that sentiment. France is turning fascist. Like for real. As a not entirely white guy, you have no idea the crazy stories I have to tell already and it just keep escalating.
- akomtu 3y ago
  We're all curious. A century ago, a few years before WW2, there was a mysterious and massive spike of hard crime in Germany, then it turned authoritarian and the rest we know.
  - quadcore 3y ago
    See above comment to get an idea of what its like in 2023.
- RugnirViking 3y ago
  I've got no idea what the other guy is insinuating but I do want to hear some of your stories. This stuff is hard to follow from abroad
  - quadcore 3y ago
    This includes cars regurlarly charging at me (yup, with various schemes, from I pass 5 cm from you to I try to kill you outright because nobody is watching), constant harassment wherever I go, some insurance director calling me home at night to insult me, post office person destroying my parcel, townhall person insulting me while getting election pass, and on and on. The frequency of it is: if i leave home, there is 50% chance something happens. Most of the time, a "sentinel" person or two just stares at me without interuption with some various degree of hatred eyes. Sometimes it's worse - though "sentinels" are very violent psychologically actually. Note a person during a strong hatred rush has eyes turn ink black. Entirely ink black with no white. Fun times.
    - akomtu 3y ago
      I have to ask, do you see the same behavior towards others around you?
      - quadcore 3y ago
        No you don't.
    - Obscurity4340 3y ago
      I believe the French call it ennui, /s. Also, the black eye thing is terrifying. Those guys are in full-blown Fight mode. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - Terr_ 3y ago
      > Note a person during a strong hatred rush has eyes turn ink black. Entirely ink black with no white. Totally black sclera? Your fictional anecdote has now "jumped the shark."
- bsaul 3y ago
  The racist behavior and hate are indeed a huge part of the problem. I believe you when you say it's escalating, however this one is relatively well known and not specific to France. My feeling is a bit broader than that : we're entering a generalization of violence at every level of the society, including the state. This last part is the one that worries me the most, because state is supposed to be a cooldown actor. What happened on the contrary, is that macron's government has decided to "show action", and "tacle the real issues of the country, without taboos". Which may have started with a good intentions, but is turning into a mess of laws turned against the people, mostly in the form of population control. To me, to most striking example was what happened during covid with lockdowns, and public shaming. And the worst is that the population generally agreed because it was "for the people's own good". Same thing is probably going to happen now. They'll strike with a new set of measures attacking public liberties, but since it'll be presented as anti-riot measures, the population will probably accept them. Note that this isn't particularely new. The US set the examples with post 9/11 laws that basically threw the constitutionnal values to the trash provided it was vaguely presented as helping fight against terrorism.
  - quadcore 3y ago
    I agree with you on the end result except I dont think any president has anything to do with that. It's little known but the president has actually little power and things move forward more or less the same regardless of who he is. My view is that we let KYC be and once you have KYC, video surveillance is just more or less the same so why not do it. And by KYC I mean KYC for the people. KYC for big accounts is justified. KYC for the average Joe, it's just surveillance. Once you have that, video is just around the corner.
mock-possum 3y ago
Right? Isn’t this the same France that just mentioned blacking out internet access?? Wtf guys.

happytiger 3y ago

Prediction: Suddenly most new crime laws in France will have a mandatory 10 year minimum sentence…

coolhand2120 3y ago
We called them a tenner.

akomtu 3y ago

France is doing everyone a favor by saying the quiet thing out loud. If previously saying your phone or your car can spy on you on demand would draw accusations of paranoia, now you can point to France.

juanani 3y ago
[dead]

givemeethekeys 3y ago

Hey, French citizen. Why don't you have a phone with a built in camera? You're not a criminal, are you? \s

TacticalCoder 3y ago

> French lawmakers have given French police the legal authority to spy on suspects by remotely activating cameras, microphones, and GPS location functionality on a person’s smartphone and other connected devices And, technically, how are they going to do that? Oh, wait, maybe the tech already exists, is already operational and is already used by other nation states? It may be a "feature" of all our Android and iOS smartphones. BTW if it's not I don't know how France actually plans to implement that.

engineer_22 3y ago

At least they're open about it. In the USA we pretend it's not happening

para_parolu 3y ago
Do you have any links for the claim? That would be interesting to learn.

tehwebguy 3y ago

If I were a lawmaker in France I would probably not do this, because I have heard of some of the history of France.

s_m_r 3y ago

Okay, but how? I didn't know there are idiots like these other than the Iranian government.

goku12 3y ago

While the headline concentrates on the camera, it's the microphone we should really worry about. Cameras are easy to conceal. But there's no way to reliably disable microphones. And the most personal and possibly incriminating information is in someone's speech. The accelerometer/gyroscope information is possibly even worse. It has been shown that speech can be reconstructed from their signal. What makes this bad is that even apps which are not authorized to access microphones are liberally given access to them. Even worse, they give additional information of a person's habits like sleep cycles, physical activity, health and driving.

pengaru 3y ago

This is incredibly surprising to me. When I visited Paris over a decade ago, I was nearly assaulted on multiple occasions by Parisians for taking photos of buildings and other interesting things. They mistook my photographing as taking photographs of them without permission, and were quite upset and adamant about it being illegal. Fortunately I'd just show them the photos on the lcd (OG canon powershot w/CF woot) and they'd chill out when they weren't in them... How their streets aren't full of burning cars and protestors fighting police over this is beyond me.