French Government May Ban Strong Encryption

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This really does nothing productive than make the public mad, and their information less secure. This was partly stirred by the Paris attack (Later revealed to be not involved), however I doubt most extremists go through the trouble of encrypting data.
A perfect example of punishing the majority for the acts of a few.
 

innocent bystander

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I hate to break it to the French (not really), but they just aren't a big enough market to influence global product development at the likes of Apple and Google. I can see any serious manufacturer just pulling out of that market rather than giving in and building in a backdoor.
 
I would hand over source code to China or India just to have a crack at billions of consumers. Secure some footing in those potential markets, help it grow, and I could ignore the whimpers of hundreds of millions easily.

Some folks like to say they have nothing to hide and don't understand all the fuss. Please invite a dozen random people on the street over to dinner, and allow them to browse through your filing cabinets and other financial documents. You might feel a little discomfort and an inability to control the situation. It's perfectly normal though, and you should just ignore it.
 

schultzter

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Except they aren't just talking about Google and Apple here. In fact they are probably irrelevant. But imagine if every piece of telecom equipment your message (voice, sms, data, etc) went through could be tapped and decrypted! They are targeting companies like Cisco that are building the backbone.

Sure, Google and Apple might not care about France and just tell people to go to Denmark to buy their Nexus or iPhone. But Cisco et al. aren't going to pull out of the market, because someone else will step in and sell French telecoms the equipment they want to build their network. Companies, especially the national telecom provider, can't and won't circumvent this law.

In fact, some enterprising handset manufacturers will step-in too, with modified version of Android that meet the French requirements just to capture the segment of the market that doesn't know and/or doesn't care but just wants a phone right now.

But honestly, any one who seriously wants to protect their communications isn't going to rely on some one else's encryption. They are going to use their own - either apps on the phone that encrypt messages which you can copy & paste or good 'ol codes and ciphers like the old days, simply transmitted via mobile phone.
 

mapesdhs

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As New Scientist recently pointed out, banning encryption means the end of online commerce. Doing business online without it simply isn't safe or viable, and preventing ordinary people from using it has all sorts of knock on consequences, eg. anonymous whistle blowers within corrupt organisations, companies, and indeed governments, also people who wish to discuss distressful issues online without revealing their identity, such as spousal abuse forums.

Worse, such measures won't make the slightest bit of difference to catching terrorists or preventing terrorist acts, certainly not any that's islamic related anyway. It's a stupid knee jerk reaction to a populist outcry which politicians don't have the guts to stand up against, despite the evidence already being available that it won't work. The problem we face is and has always been the nature of the religious dogma itself that supports and encourages violent thinking; meddling with how our information systems function will have no impact at all in that regard. It's sticking-plaster politics at its most ludcirous. As usual, western govts keep picking about the edges, rather than facing up to the inevitable near term confrontation which will occur if the wider islamic community doesn't stand up and fight for a peaceful, reformed, enlightened version of what is atm an incredibly brutal belief system (they don't because they're either too afraid to speak out or they agree with the daft ideas their faith promotes); I don't know if serious reform is remotely possible, but without a doubt, our ditching basic notions of what democratic nations are built on is not going to make any difference at all.

It's sad that a Republic such as France, given its history, would be one of the first nations to consider such silly measures.

Also, as NS stated, one cannot undo the basic math that underpins encryption, so anyone can make use of the same methods from the ground up if need be, via 3rd party tools, or their own coding.
 

Hydrotricithline

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There's also the work arounds like purchasing a phone in germany, switzerland, or Italy, then taking it back to france. Aswell this wouldn't cover the 'cloud' encrypted data. Setup a secure connection to America for example, they use 10 billion bit encryption. The french laws couldn't apply to things over seas. It's a horrible implementation/suggestion of a fix, that wouldn't even fix the problem.
 

Hydrotricithline

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Exactly; and as google and most intelligence agencies will confirm, you don't even need the content; you need the metadata.. which the french should already have,

Steward Baker (NSA) “metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life. If you have enough metadata, you don’t really need content.” ... “We kill people based on metadata.”

They don't need the content; they need the metadata, which they already have, unless their intentions are something else than which is stated, like illegally tapping phone lines for example, which in cases like the 'silk road' incident, obviously the proper way to deal with these is by court order with a judge. Not by allowing law enforcement unrestricted access to private domain.
 

3ogdy

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We shall ban the French government from existence. It was NOT the French that had to be bombed and killed and massacred, it IS the French government that needs some bombs dropped on it. We compel the French politicians to decrypt anything they may have encrypted. Including phone calls, messages - absolutely frucking everything.

Their incompetence ends up screwing their people. Such idiots MUST be hanged by law and it should happen in front of everyone.
This is such a cheap excuse, this peace of sheet government should be ashamed.
 

Matt_550

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We don't care if you kill 30 people. You have a right to be able to do that, but we do want to know how many times that Nigerian prince has contacted you.
 
In other news, France also suggested that people don't shred their personal info and tape credit card statements, tax forms and copies of their passports and drivers licenses to their front doors to make searches and identification easier.

There will also be emails sent out to the citizens that ask them for their logon info to their bank accounts so they can track spending trends. It may or may not come from the "Nigerian Free Money Association" that just needs access to your bank so they can deposit the 10,000,000 your second cousin left you when he died.
 

Effex

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The "Paris event" was a false flag anyways...

False Flag events are used all the time to justify stripping civil liberties and privacy from citizens.
 
Well, we in America should be fortunate that French politicians know more about encryption than the American politicians and actually have a plan in forcing the companies to decrypt devices when asked by the government. In America, our politicians think that all encryption is based upon a single key and once you figure out how to decrypt one thing, everything else in the world and everything moving server to server to client on the Internet can be decrypted easy as pie.

Anyway, what France is doing will probably not help them at all.
 

Adilaris

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Fingerprints should not be passwords to begin with. Once its hacked, there's no way to change it short of surgically altering your hand. : /
 


I saw in the news here in the US, that because a person had used their fingerprint as their only password, law enforcement was able to force him/her into unlocking the phone. If he or she had used a PIN or more traditional password, they would not have been allowed. That might be a weird scenario, I don't know.

Anyway, when I picked up the Galaxy S5, I thought the fingerprint thing was nifty, so I used for awhile. After I had several missed calls because that finger is my primary means for eating Chee-tohs (a crunchy snack covered in powdered cheese), I changed it back to a PIN password.
 


Flaming hot? I live off those things.
 

mapesdhs

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In the UK, one can be jailed for refusing to divulge a password. Oh what joy to have no constitution at all (anyone here who uses the phrase, "constitutional democracy", needs a smack in the chops with a mouldy fish, because it doesn't mean anything).

 

surphninja

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You can also be jailed in the states for withholding a password, but I don't know if they'd keep you indefinitely or eventually drop the charges. The sentence may be shorter than the crime you're covering up.
 
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