According to leaked documents from the Ministry of Interior the French government is considering two new pieces of legislation: a ban on free and shared Wi-Fi connections during a state of emergency, and measures to block Tor being used inside France.
Right, because the answer to people who want to attack our freedom is to restrict our freedom.
Don’t forget to ban encryption too [1]
We have never had such a bunch of digitally illiterate leaders? And as such they are pliable, suggestible by others with ill intent. Who are these players …. ?
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encryption_ban_proposal_in_the_United_…
Look at the age of french leaders, you’ll get a hint there. Then look how long they gravitated around. Look at their efficiency. Please remember France was a harsh monarchy, was colonialist, was into slavery. Some old habits do not disappear with a snap of finger. Many people are royalist and wants the democracy being taken away.
The last election of Sunday rocketed extreme right up to 30%. France was supposed to be the land of human rights. Now the left wing and right wings that have lead our country for the past 50 years into oblivion are using the extreme right’s score to wave more terror flag and FUD citizens.
France was…
So basically terrorism works.
They are scared.
They are not scared at all, they have all the protection they want. They are really happy about the situation, it grants them more and more power. But in the beginning, guess who funded the terrorism ? Who made bad decisions for half a century now ? Citizens ? Seriously…
OK, so basically you are saying: terrorism helps to scares citizens.
Yes, I guess I agree better with that.
What I would like to know is:
When is the US going to stop meddling in other countries internal politics ? Without them doing that we wouldn’t have had things like 9/11 and Paris.
Look for “United Fruit Company” to get an introduction. Provided there is an interest, the USA do not care much about local and native citizens. France do the same, what did you expect ?
I’m going out on a limb with a wild guess here: never.
France had a total ban on encryption (apart from the Military and Banks etc) for many years.
I expect that some in the Gov are wanting to return to the days of Minitel.
They are also quite adept at getting rid of their leaders. One of them is buried less than 10km away from where I am typing this (in the UK).
Look, if we don’t do what the terrorists want, then the terrorists will have won! No, wait, hang on…
As long as we all remain terrified by acts of terror, then…no, that’s not right either is it?
Uh…no I’ve got nothing. Sorry. Stay scared people.
Edited 2015-12-07 23:37 UTC
…if we get rid of all our freedom, we’ll be safe, because they’ll have no reason to attack us.
Is there anything really happening on TOR, besides people buying drugs and accessing child porn? I’m not saying there isn’t… I just don’t know what else people use it for. Is it doing any good, or are its potential uses in that regard only theoretical at this point?
If you don’t trust imperialistic national governments not to use their intelligence resources to steal your business’ proprietary information and patents for the benefit of large multinationals based in their own country, then it would be a useful communication medium.
Whistleblowers for one – citizens living in an oppressive regime for another.
Whether what you’re doing is legal or not – anonymity is still a right (in some countries), and those governments who wish to eliminate anonymity for all likely have nefarious reasons.
Is it actually being used for these purposes by more than 5 people, or is it like The Pirate Bay…. ‘but, but… you can download Linux distros too!’
Well, of it is not used for illegal purposes, then it is not safe.
Exactly.
People doing illegal things are always early adopters.
They have no problems taking a slight risk, they are already doing risky things. But they need to get ahead on the police.
Yes, it’s being used by more than 5 people for what most of us consider “legal” purposes – some countries might consider all use of Tor to be illegal…
Tor is there in case you need to protect your internet communications – for whatever reason. Just because it’s also used for many illegal uses doesn’t make it a useless tool for the rest of us when we need it.
I’m guessing you’re one of those “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” kind of people.
It makes me curious if we’ve opened up this thing that’s basically just a wretched hive of scum and villainy, with the occasional ‘legitimate’ user sprinkled here and there. I’m not even saying we should shut it down; I’d just be curious of what the ratio is.
What do you use it for? Don’t want the NSA to know how long you’ve spent watching cat videos on Youtube? (No need to be embarrassed… we’ve all been there.)
Edited 2015-12-09 01:47 UTC
Nah, latency is too high. Public Wifi’s better for that.
But…don’t you see? It’s wrong for “oppressive” regimes to ban TOR and encryption but it’s ok for oppressive..err.i mean..concerned, freedom-lovin’ regimes to do it.
Were the attackers using Tor and public WiFi to coordinate during the attacks?
“They punched me in the arm”
“Well, the obvious solution is to cut your arm off so they can’t punch it next time”
Maybe not, but future terrorists might use Tor so it needs to be banned. They might use encryption too, so that also needs to be banned.
Once Tor is banned, these terrorists might meet in houses, so those will have to be banned. They might be using their unencrypted voices in these houses, so ban voices too.
We need to send a clear message to terrorists that we will not hesitate to ban more and more things until they are defeated.
while at it, ban the internet and any type of telephony
Oh, let’s cut to the chase: ban water and all non-alcoholic drinks!
In one of the articles they did mention banning encrypted VoIP.
You can just ask Bill Gates to shut it down. Duh.
It is so easy to blame problems on things they don’t understand. This is exactly like blaming Marilyn Manson for the Columbine killings. Only idiots do this.
Little do they know they can’t stop it.
Edited 2015-12-08 08:06 UTC
If you Ban public wifi-fi, they will just use cellular data networks. Will cost a bit more, but I’m not sure cost is the driving factor of terrorism.
Presumably it’s easier to track cellular user than wifi user. Even if you can use mobile network anonymously (as in prepaid in most countries), the number can still be tracked.
Terrorism is the cheapest form of war. And war is the most high yielding form of inversion.
I’d like to see a proposal on how they’re going to attempt to ban it. It isn’t technically possible to ban unless they’re expecting everyone to self-police
Being able to actually do so isn’t the point. This is a political move. If they can ban TOR and other data encryption technologies, they can point to that and say with total honesty that everyone using such technologies are criminals and the mere use makes them suspect in criminal conspiracies. It’s a justification for immediate investigation and action whenever TOR or data encryption is used. They only need a token method of blocking TOR.
They (the French government) are simply tightening up their already draconian surveillance state without regard to the spectacularly proven fact that it’s not working to begin with. The terrorists aren’t just after killing people, they want to destroy our ways of life, and and they are succeeding.
The state has a lot of power.
Even if they can’t ban it, the ISPs will probably willfully or be forced to take measures to detect it.
This can result in a major inconvenience in the best case or they actually succeed in it.
If so, well, we have so many crap politicians all around the globe, LETS BAN THEM ALL!
Thom, for secure communications, WWW is over, Internet is over, universal protocols are over. All of This is mass media now. No, not sad, as printed media, everything had its window of chance, as a tool to connect human to human.
“They wait, all of them from high to low, and they prophesy crisis, which is to say they pray for it. They know the power of their weapon, and our fear of it, and even a small crisis is better than none. But what they especially dream of is a profound crisis, that anguished crisis of the spirit which tears us to pieces every thirty or forty years, one that will soften our hearts to the tall fierce strangers who stand outside the door and cry salvation. They are certain the door will open; they have no doubts at all that a time will come when the prevalence of devils will persuade us that freedom is best defended by surrendering it altogether.”
– Dalton Trumbo, The Time of the Toad (1969)
There are weakness inherent to all these ‘one and only true way’ philosophies. From my hart, this way of evolving, as species, is really dangerous.
Love Windows 10. Best thing since 2k Workstation.