France grants police power to spy on citizens through phones
VPN services and other security tools won't be able to protect people from this kind of state-surveillance. What's next for France's justice reform bill?
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27 replies
France is really at a point of breaking. This is especially sad since France was the de facto leader of libre/foss movement in Europe.
Most other countries already have these sort of laws. In the US you’d just need a warrant from a Judge - which is laughably easy, especially with FISA warrants.
The US really is not the standard any country should set for themselves
As far as I know, police cannot activate your phone's camera or microphone to spy on you in the US, even with a warrant. Do you know of something that says otherwise?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANT_catalog
Then you know wrong. The FBI has been doing it for as long as phones have had cameras.
Article from 2013, and even then it wasn’t new: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/2013/12/06/352ba174-5397-11e3-9e2c-e1d01116fd98_story.html
Thde only new thing is the technology allowing them to better spy on us.
Louis Rossman has an interesting take on this
How is this supposed to work? Won't real criminals just buy more secure devices to circumvent this surveillance?
This isn’t going to be regularly used. For the average iPhone user you’d probably need to use Pegasus, which costs something insane like US$60k per target device.
The more likey vector will be things like Ring doorbells - we already know Amazon will handover footage to Police without even requiring a warrant.
I’m not saying they won’t want to use it, but Police have limited budgets like everyone else. A quick google shows the average salary of a police office in France is US$57k. Pegasus is $60k per use. If a police department has to choose between spying on 10 phones or hiring 10 more cops, I think they’re going to choose the extra manpower almost every time.
I assume the French also gained access to stuff like DROPOUTJEEP after signing the secret Lustre treaty.
Que Macron aille se faire enculer
I can't even imagine the protests that will erupt due to this.
The average French person is tired of all the terrorist attacks and riots. Without discounting that migration does cause issues, the French are also often quite racist against their Muslim countrymen. They'll assume it'll primarily be used to target them.
I feel sorry for the normal French people. Realistically, the French get a choice in the next election. They'll likely get to choose between:
More riots
Anyone knows how they going to technically implement this?
No. They don't grant police that power. The judicial system has that power. Just like it has the power to imprison people.
Can someone explain why VPN services can't protect people from that
https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/news/252464873/Google-Triada-backdoors-were-pre-installed-on-Android-devices
Also, you're connecting to a nearby cell tower which then relays your connection to the wider web, with an exit point at your VPN provider.
If the nearby cell tower is compromised, they can try MITM attacks which might not need SSL authentication (e.g. you might have a backdoor on your device that does not require an external certificate to access it (in fact I would be surprised if it would)).
Doing this before would be illegal. Now it is legal.
MITM would break any remotely decent VPN. The article talks about being able to activate cameras and what not but offers no explanation of how. This would almost certainly require software to be installed on the target device. I don't see how this will accomplish any more than making it easier to get geolocation data.
The baseband firmware on your phone has access to all hardware resources and can be modified over the cellular connection without your cooperation or knowledge.
It can't be done by a third party without extreme effort. This requires the cell phone manufacturer to participate along with the cellular service company as well.
Sorry for the late reply but I'd just like to warn you that it doesn't take a lot of effort. It takes some time, some knowledge of programming, electronics and communication protocols and a few hundred $$$ of equipment. DIY cell phone tower