What? France? And they’re not out burning cars over this?
Liberté!
Égalité
Dystopian fiction was not supposed to be a guide on what to do.
It was meant as a warning and a prophecy
Read the article. Title is clickbait. It’s only with approval from a judge. You know, alternatively they could just arrest and imprison the person, which is what every country is doing. Not saying it’s without worrying, but there’s important nuance that most are missing.
P.S.
Absolute extremist attitudes like “nobody should be able” and so on, have absolutely no place in modern society. There’s always nuance. Libertarianism doesn’t work, and laws must be enforced. It sucks, but when there are forces that want to hurt people and destabilize societies, you can’t go by the rule that everyone is a saint. The world will punish this attitude.
Yes, the world isn’t perfect, but for ducks sake, quit sensationalizing anecdotes and representing them as “this always happens”. That’s dishonest.
Can we ban clickbait
Ah yes it’s ok to violate my rights, as long as a judge approves it.
Can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not.
If you are, what do you have against warrants? If someone kidnapped your friend and kept them locked away in their house. Don’t you want there to be a way for the police to legally rescue your friend if they have evidence on where they are being held?
because warrant or not, no one should have the power to remotely turn on your camera/mic/etc without your knowledge and monitor it.
For me it’s mostly against judges. Like judges that decide that because the victim of a rape doesn’t remember the rape (because it was so horrible her brain blocked it out), the perpetrator should be free.
Or those judges that decide that there’s not enough proof that a billionaire-owned chemical factory polluted a river that most of the fish died, even though there’s only one chemical factory on the river that could have done it.
(Those both are local issues you probably haven’t heard of, though I believe you’ve probably heard about many such cases)
Would you want any of those judges give a warrant to someone to spy on you?
I live in France. The government here is using every single tool they have to prosecute radical leftists and environmentalists while ignoring the fact that more than 60 % of the police force has fascist adjacent ideals. I do not want these people spying on me, period. This is not some libertarian horseshit, trust me.
I get your opinion but you have to account for the fact that it’s not Le Pen who’s in the chair. And France is actually ranked quite high on the civil liberties. While I get your perspective, I believe that it’s exaggerated.
Our ranking is unfortunately not getting any better, just look at what is currently happening with Les soulèvements de la terre.
I understand Le Pen would be worse, I truly do. I actually voted against her in the last two elections. But imagine Le Pen in power, which is very likely to happen soon, with all those legal framework already in place. She is going to have the mother of all field days.
You absolutely can find my view to be an exaggeration. Some part of me hope it is. But I’m quite worried about our future as a country right now.
Well it’s good that you care. It’s the multitude of opinions and open discussion, what makes a democracy work.
Unfortunately we have siloes of opinions, so you’re pretty much either trying to yell in an echo chamber or at best, argue with a moderate like me. The moment you’re faced with the people leaning right, some of the rhetoric might be scary for them, and they might retract further into their own silo, where more and more extremist views are tolerated.
The key to a functioning society, is moderation in enforcement of law (so that the state continues to be the only one who is able to, and expected to exert force), and understanding of each other so that it remains an open dialog.
I’m originally from a country where society has degraded into 2 irreconcilable camps, and it got to the point where I can’t even stand my own parents because their echo chambers had lead them to extreme extremes. And I’m not the only one.
Right now what is paramount is a government that optimizes social well-being (think Finland), and the enforcement of those laws, because everyone from Putin (and the general club of autocrats) to fundamentalist fascists everywhere else, want to destabilize that right now. A prosperous democracy is a threat to all of them. Whether you like it or not, we are in the middle of an ideological war.
Well thank you for the thoughtful, respectful and engaging response.
I do not advocate for the state surrendering its authority, far from it. The problem lies, to my mind, within some very abuse prone legal frameworks that are currently being put into place. For example, in France, local “préfets” (which are unelected officials that act as local governors) have been steadily gaining more and more powers that cannot be democratically countermended, or at great expense: they can limit people’s movements, forbid demonstrations, etc.
That could be seen as a necessary measure against the rising polarization you talk about (a point on which we agree btw, 100%), but then again whenever the far right happens to be the one doing the agitating, the préfets are suspiciously slow to act.
For example, in Paris, the prefet did not forbid a neo Nazi march ending in an Aryan rock concert whereas a week before that he had forbidden multiple démonstrations against Macron’s pension reforms. And the list goes on. Our minister of the interior refused yesterday to condemn a police union campaign labelling rioters in Parisian suburbs as “pests to be eradicated”. This is not moderate.
Macron is not really a moderate. He acts like one and manages to feel like one from abroad perhaps. But here he is more and more leaning towards the exact type of authoritarian doctrin a moderate should, as you do, strive to impede. And the thing is, his actions, and the general apathy of many towards them, are reinforcing Le Pen’s chances come 2027. And that scares me.
Unfortunately extremely true… This guy calling an clickbait…
Whataboutism is a hell of a drug. I’m afraid people in many countries are so used to not having those freedoms that they look at us weird for trying to keep them.
i’ve even heard french say : its better to be poor and in security rather just be poor.
Its done. I dont trust society.
I’m sure the judge will say no
So? Even with a warrant, thats not a power that people should have. No one, warrant or not, should be able to remotely activate your phone/camera/etc and monitor it. The fact that power exists means smart phones are an even bigger personal safety and privacy threat than they already were… and if police can do it with a warrant, then there are gonna be people who figure out how to do it without one and for far more malicious reasons.
I don’t think you solve one problem by introducing another problem. The solution to over-criminalization is to decriminalize things. If a person is a danger to society, charge them with a crime and let a jury of their peers decide their guilt. Hacking into someone’s property so that you can spy on them is absolutely not an alternative worth entertaining.
If the good guys can do it, even by the books, imagine what the bad guys can do.
Laws must be enforced, but not by treating privacy like a wet rag.
Persinally I hope we’ll see some mainstream devices that comes with a hardware toggle for the mic and a manual privacy shutter for the cameras.
Keep in mind that privacy is really a recent concept. Human societies never had privacy before the industrial revolution. Everybody knew everybody else and what they were doing. I do want my privacy, but modern technology makes it too easy to create and grow any organization that can rival the state in power. While we do have the power to influence and control the state, we have no power over competing organizations that act like authoritarian states.
There needs to be a balance, an amount of power that the state can exercise, that’s just right for keeping it as a monopoly on violence. Absolute privacy, where the state has transparency, is taking away all the power and advantages from the state and gives them to whoever wants to challenge that state.
In other words, nuance.
Uh huh, and if a rubber stamp judge gives wiretapping permission every time the cops ask for it?
Then your problem is the judicial system, isn’t it?
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During the debate on Wednesday, the members of parliament in the camp of President Emmanuel Macron inserted an amendment limiting the use of remote spying to “when justified by the nature and seriousness of the crime” and “for a strictly proportional duration.” They noted that a judge must approve any use of the provision, while the total duration of the surveillance cannot exceed six months.
They said sensitive professions, including doctors, journalists, lawyers, judges and MPs, would not be legitimate targets.
American teacher here. I shudder to think of the spying on teachers that could conceivably take place in some states in the US if this were passed. I hope things aren’t like that for teachers in France
Ah, of course they make themselves exempt
That won’t stop the police, if there is a back door in place they will use it. People are actually naive enough to think that they won’t are amazingly naive about the way these things work
But waddaboud China?!!!???&(*&^$%? /s
Holy fuck, and this is coming from France
Is this the law saying to law enforcement that if they were already able to, they’re now allowed to? Or is it the law saying to phone manufacturers that they must make it possible?
The question is how soon before spyware software that barely hits the mark for police investigations gets turns into a tool for aspiring actors
But hey, that’s just my two cents 🤣
I guess that’s one way to get people to riot harder.
Feel like this is a point of no return regarding a government choosing to side with the elite for the upcoming calamities instead of the people.
Obviously, not a surprising choice, but I’d just think France of all places would at least hesitate a little on such a brazen attack on liberty.
This has to be at least partly because of the civil unrest. Seems to me like a certain ruling class is getting antsy about Frances past and proclivity to remove noggins…
There has been an alarming absense of noggin removal in recent history, it’s not like the evil bastards haven’t been deserving, just nobody unlifes them anymore.
Yeah but you guys still have the guillotines in storage or something though, right? Might be time to dust them off.
Macron is turning France into a dictatorship.
It bugs me that people will bitch about privacy all day but won’t do anything about it. Most people just go
But lawmakers agreed to the bill late Wednesday as Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti insisted the bill would affect only “dozens of cases a year.”
Precisely why it should not be passed! That’s not a good reason at all. It’s not worth eroding people’s rights if it only affects a few cases in my personal opinion. It shows that the law doesn’t need to exist in the first place.
Technically, any number bigger than 24 counts as “dozens” …
I always love when governments ask for powers to stop only a few cases, and act like it’s justification. Maybe, just maybe, do your job.
It’s like the Apple case for building a backdoor that makes everyone less safe to catch one criminal. They ended up not needing it anyway.
Honestly one of the worst parts is I hate how police/the government can/will abuse these abilities if given a chance, because sometimes those few cases where they could be used they could potentially be really useful.
I work in 911 dispatch, we don’t always have a totally accurate location from a cell phone, people sometimes repeatedly hang up on us, put their phone down and walk away, refuse to answer when we call back, or are too hysterical to answer any questions. Being able to put their phone on speakerphone remotely, keep them from hanging up on us, turn on their camera, etc. so we can see/hear at least some of what’s going on could be really useful sometimes to help make sure we’re sending the right kind of help to the right place. Being able to turn on a phone camera to see where a barricaded subject is in a building or room, see what kinds of weapons he has, hear what he’s saying, etc. could be really useful sometimes. Sometimes someone will butt dial us or their kid playing with their phone will call us a few dozen times in a row, and it would be kind of nice to be able to come over their phone speaker and just say “Hey, you keep calling 911, if you don’t have an emergency can you please stop?”
But cops would rather use those capabilities to harass protesters and such.
It’s a dangerous road to walk for something that would be ‘kind of nice’ in very specific situations.
I agree, but you do also have to remember that a lot of those specific situations I’d be dealing with from the dispatch end of things could very often be life-or-death for the people involved. More accurate information from us could mean getting the right amount of help to the right places faster and using it more effectively, which means lives saved.
It’s very much a double edged sword, it’s technology that could save lives, and it could be used to wrongfully deprive people of their lives and liberty. I’ve outlined some of the ways I would use it to help save lives, I’m not trying to make a judgement about whether or not that good it could do outweighs the harm it could do by being abused. It might, it might not, it’s not exactly clear-cut how the value of a handful of human lives stacks up against the rights and freedoms of the many, and in either case we’re dealing with largely hypothetical situations. My main point is to lament that these capabilities would almost certainly be abused and that because of that we may not get to use them to save lives when we otherwise could have.
I’m imagining a situation where the caller does not want it to be known that they have called emergency. Hostage situations, domestic violence, home intrusions… Last thing you want when you’re hiding in a dark cupboard from an armed stalker is your phone to start blasting at full volume and flashing lights because a well intentioned operator wanted to see through the camera.
That’s the sort of discretion we already have to use though, we have no control over what volume their ringtone may be at when we call back now, we don’t call text to 911 callers unless they confirm it’s safe for them to talk, etc.
Also… what kind of argument is that? It may be dozens a year but once it is normalized with those dozens, it will become few dozens and on and on it goes.
People always abuse these back doors. Always. To think otherwise is to be ridiculously naive
Not a general slippery slope argument, but rather, it’s clear how it makes future erosion easier.
Today: People named Joe who live at this address can be harassed freely and that’s perfectly legal. Tomorrow: It’s not so extreme! Look, see, we’ve never universally respected these rights anyway. There are cases where we legally ignored them. We’re just expanding existing rules to cover more cases.
