Liberté, Égalité, Spyware: France okays cops snooping on phones With riots rocking the country, French parliamentarians have passed a bill granting law enforcement the right to snoop on suspects via "the remote activation of an electronic device without the knowledge or consent of its owner." That's the direct (via machine translation) language used in the French Senate's version of a …
"Professions considered sensitive, including doctors, journalists, lawyers, judges and – of course – MPs can't be targeted under the law as passed by the General Assembly."
Because of course doctors, journalists, lawyers, judges and – of course – MPs are all fine upstanding citizens that would never indulge in any criminal activity
Because doctors are considered taboo, journalists and lawyers can fight back, and – of course – MPs won't shoot themselves in the feet.
Expect this snooping to become common use, since the powers that be don't really see why they shouldn't be able to use their shiny toys. Hey, they're the law, so the law doesn't apply to them, innit?
Also by "MPs" they obviously mean "our MPs", the opposition is fair game, if not a priority target (you need to know what those nasty criminals are up to at any moment)...
ok, I'll probably get thumbed down to hell by putting some clarifications since it relates to a recent event :
- Kid was illegally driving a rented car registered in Poland. ( illegally because he was too young to have a driving license )
- Kid resisted licence/ID check twice in the previous minutes by reckless driving and almost drove over people in doing that.
- Kid tried to escape a third time as seen in the video.
Side note : it's common to have Polish registered rented car for drug money laundering purpose...
( and because Car rental in France double check the driving license and it's validity, renting a Polish car is a way to dodge that )
Ok, it doesn't clear the cop from shooting the kid... But a normal person wouldn't have tried to escape 3 times, would have had a driving license, and would have had a French registered car.... even a rented one.
"it doesn't clear the cop from shooting the kid"
That right there is the only indisputable thing.
- no way the cops could be sure that the kid was too young for a license just by looking through a window
- "Kid resisted licence/ID check..." and "a normal person wouldn't have tried to escape 3 times" is ignoring the particular circumstances, which are that French cops are wildly discriminatory against black / N. African people, and "if you have nothing you hide you have nothing to fear" (a grossly corrupt statement even at face vale) has even less validity here.
"it's common to have Polish registered rented car for drug money laundering purpose" - AFAIK no drugs, money or any other illegal items were found in the car (pretty sure the French police would have trumpeted those far and wide had they been there). I also wonder how many (predominantly white) actual Poles on holiday in France are 'randomly' stopped by police. So what we have is a traffic stop that was at least partially racially profiled, and a kid who panicked, possibly because of previous nasty encounters with the cops he might have heard of or personally had.
Either way, giving police the license to shoot at moving vehicles is a recipe for disaster.
- Since he was driving dangerously prior the first try to check his license, they were entitled to perform a check. ( that should cover your two first points )
- Yes cops are discriminatory... but since that's most of the population of the area, it's hard to be undiscriminatory...unless you spend time to find the white caucasians to make an average... ( and you're going to spend a lot of time looking for them ) . And anyway as you say : if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear is quite valid. There's lots of people ( of any color and origin ) that have ID checks every day and, as they have nothing to hide, the check is performed in 30 seconds or so and everybody goes back doing what they were doing.
The point about the Polish registered car, is that German Built Sports car registered in Poland found in France are largely tied to ( lack of ) driving license evasion and/or drug trafficking.
A normal Polish person driving this kind of car in France wouldn't be found in the "bad suburbs"... And since it's a way to launder the drug money, there's no way drug would be found in the car... it would defeat the laundering process.
What we have is a traffic stop of somebody that was recklessly driving a sports car, said person resisted two times by driving away more recklessly barely avoiding several accidents along the way, and tried to resist a third attempt. As I said it doesn't clear the cop... But the kid did every wrong move that could be done.
If he had just stopped the first time, he probably would have ended up with a fine and the car being impounded... and he would still be alive.
>If he had just stopped the first time, he probably would have ended up with a fine and the car being impounded... and he would still be alive.
Lazy-ass french police, here he would have definitely still been shot, it's just they wouldn't have accidentally shot 3 bystanders
If you watch the full videos taken from the side and in front of the car, (and not the versions that the pathetic UK press have screened, which stop a second before the gunshot, so are useless to determine what happened), the car was right up a against a wall on the drivers side, so there was only room for the officer arguing with the driver next to the window, the officer with the gun had to position himself further forward leaning against the bonnet. When the driver takes off, the officer with the gun is lifted off his feet and is carried for about a meter or so before he makes his shot. With the risk of being trapped or falling between the moving car and the wall, the officer was obviously fearing for his life and entirely justified in using lethal force..
"no way the cops could be sure that the kid was too young"
Reasonable doubt is what is needed to warrant an ID check, expecting one to always "be sure" to warrant that is, well, unreasonable.
"French cops are wildly discriminatory against black / N. African people"
Even if that is true, that in no way gives you the right to resist an ID check and endanger people by doing so.
"what we have is a traffic stop that was at least partially racially profiled"
You don't know that, pure assumption.
"AFAIK no drugs, money or any other illegal items were found in the car"
That's irrelevant, cops would need to have foresight to only detain drivers and search cars that do have illegal items in them, that is again, unreasonable.
"giving police the license to shoot at moving vehicles"
If you think that police can just shoot at whatever or whomever they want, you're wrong. But them shooting at a driver that refused to stop and remain stopped 3 times and is endangering the public and the cops with his driving, that is warranted.
Why do you need it to be an unjust and racism based event so badly?
First, the disclaimers - I have only seen what has been shown in the UK press, and I am not overly familiar with the socio-political situation in some of the less salubrious parts of France. Having said that, nothing I have seen makes me think there was anything to warrant firing a gun at the young man in question. Dangerous driving - no. Not stopping - no. Maybe I have missed something (a post down-thread suggests that the police officer may have had reason to fear for his life), but this falls into my category of "reasons ordinary police officers should not be routinely armed".
I don't know all the details of the new law ( yet ).
But it's not something new in France.
French police forces have already the right to snoop on all the phone calls/SMS/MMS/Internet traffic logs after requesting and being granted it by a Judge for a criminal investigation.
Note that this right is not time limited, it's for the "duration of the investigation" when granted. ( which can last for years )
That's what we call the *Interception Légales* ( Lawful Interceptions ). [ obviously in the past there's been illegal ones, some of them performed by the resident of the Elysée Palace ]
Different thing.
Those are all actions taken by the individual and intercepted at a 3rd party.
This allows them to do covert surveillance at any location they want and at anytime.
It's like having a camera and microphone in every single location in France.Just think how many locations and interactions you have in a weekend . All those are now fair game.
I hope Apple and Google track and remove the spyware.
You just forget that in Lawful Interception, your location is also provided when it's a mobile... So the police knows where you are, in real time.
So the new part, if it follows the same rules as the Lawful Interception ones, is just that some more stuff gets intercepted.
Changing the rules compared to the Lawful Interception ones would be an issue though.
Just side note : a Mobile Network always knows where your phone is, without any need to snoop, that's an integral part of how a GSM ( 2G/3G/4G/5G ) network works, it *has to know* on which cell you are. From there knowing where you exactly are is just some maths that can be done in real time. The math part is something that has been done for more than 20 years now for emergency rescue and for Lawful Interception.
The only way to disconnect it is power off. Plane Mode is not enough
And anyway, the network will still remember your *last known location* ( aka the last cell your phone was located on ), so unless you move a few hundred Kms with your phone powered off, your probable location can still be guessed.
I checked, not even 3 swipes, for mobiles that have that "feature" just mute the system sounds. ( that's press the volume button, press the sound bar to expand it, and mute the relevant sound... and Voila, no more noisy shutter. [ tested on my work Samsung phone, my personal phone never made the noise ] )
nope. There's no such thing.
The camera apps on my phones never made sounds. and I can disable the beep on my real camera. ( I can't disable the shutter sound since it's a reflex, the sound is mechanical, but with an hybrid there's no sound ).
There's the *Droit à l'Image*, but it's very specific. Anybody can take pictures of anything ( including persons ) for a personal use. The Droit à l'Image law comes into play if you want to publish on paper and/or on Internet ( or any other medium ) your pictures, then you have to get a written authorization of each and every recognizable person.
Salesdroids at an SFR store ?
They are salesDROIDS, they recite what they are told to say, or what's written on their screen. They are hired for their ability to make people believe in what they say and to sell them the most expensive stuff... not for their ability to answer technical questions or even semi technical ones.
Note : this is valid for all the French Operators.... unless you are lucky and stumble on an old France Telecom technician that reconverted into sales in an Orange store, but those are becoming rare and are trending towards extinction.
Will they be making a law requiring phones sold in France have a backdoor allowing police to remotely activate the camera and microphone? Surely EU law could not permit such a thing at the same time they do incredibly stupid stuff in the name of "privacy" like cookie consent?
Or will the police be relying on Israeli spyware to break into the phones of those whose cameras they want to activate?
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