France Outlaws Hashed Passwords 433
An anonymous reader writes "Storing passwords as hashes instead of plain text is now illegal in France, according to a draconian new data retention law. According to the BBC, '[t]he law obliges a range of e-commerce sites, video and music services and webmail providers to keep a host of data on customers. This includes users' full names, postal addresses, telephone numbers and passwords. The data must be handed over to the authorities if demanded.' If the law survives a pending legal challenge by Google, Ebay and others, it may well keep some major services out of the country entirely."
A simple solution (Score:5, Funny)
I know a lot of people will say that these companies should block France to bully the government to repeal the law, but that really is not workable and would be against shareholder's interests.
The easiest solution is just to comply with the law. But rather than change the data structures of the backend software to accommodate one country, they should just blank out all the passwords and disable the ability to change them. It is a win for everyone then. The companies comply with the law. The police, fraud office, customs, tax and social security bodies can all access the citizens records directly without burdening the service providers.
And of course, the French people get a valuable lesson in why they should care about who can access their accounts. Let the French people decide whether this is a good idea or not at the next election!
Re:A simple solution (Score:5, Funny)
Luxembourg slowly started complying... by first publishing account details about French politicians! Always be careful what you ask for!
Oh non... (Score:4, Funny)
Mon mot de passe est une table de hachage, vous mottes insensible!
Re:well... (Score:5, Funny)