Revelations On the French Big Brother 98
Wrath0fb0b writes "Days after President François Hollande sternly told the United States to stop spying on its allies, the newspaper Le Monde disclosed on Thursday that France has its own large program of data collection, which sweeps up nearly all the data transmissions, including telephone calls, e-mails and social media activity, that come in and out of France. The report notes that 'our email messages, SMS messages, itemized phone bills and connections to FaceBook and Twitter are then stored for years.' For those Slashdot readers that grok Français, you can read the original at Le Monde or the translated version from LM."
I'm not French (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, you know, spying on you own people and spying on other countries are two different things.
Here in the United States, spying on your own is generally held to be distasteful, and very often illegal. But while we project our own ideas of law on other countries, often they have no such squeamishness about domestic spying.
As to American spying on it's own:
* First the Obama Administration said "Weâ(TM)re not doing this."
* Than they said "Weâ(TM)re doing it to ferret out Terrorists!"
* And now they justify what Snowden and others have revealed by saying "Well, EVERYONE ELSE is doing itâ¦"
As an American, while in an abstract way I care what the French are doing to their people, my opinions are really only applicable to my own country - in other words, as far as NSA spying, what the French are doing is not relevant.
Re:I'm not French (Score:5, Interesting)
Completely ridiculous. French politicians are soo afraid of the public that they voted global amnesty laws forgiving the whole lot of themselves for the corruption they used to finance their political parties -- without having most of them get voted out of office in the subsequent elections.
French politicians have coined phrases like "I was responsible for the deaths of hundreds in continuing to use contaminated blood, but I'm not guily of breaking any laws".
Only the ignorant believe that politics in France is any different than anywhere else.
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What amused me most was all the people declaring they were going to emigrate to Europe because of the domestic spying. I really do have some stupid fellow countrymen.
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What amused me most was all the people declaring they were going to emigrate to Europe because of the domestic spying.
Canada isn't in Europe.
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I'm sure they spy on their citizens too.
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Nah, they let the US do it for them & then ask for results when they want them. Plausible deniability y'know...
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It's no shock if UK, France and Russia are as bad as the US, but that still leaves a lot of countries in Europe that might be less inclined to spy on their own citizens, starting with Germany, who do not wish to bring back the STASI.
Europe is not a country - who are you calling stupid again?
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Derp... You think any one of them doesn't do similar? If you don't know about it, they're hiding it well.
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The government has always kept a close eye, within its capabilities, upon its people, those who reside within and those they interact with (and often their allies, too.) There's just more ability to keep track because we do so much more digitally these days. If you really want privacy, go over and talk to your friends (unless they work for the NSA, CIA, FBI, NKVD, MI-6, CAGEY BEE, etc.)
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Well, you could start by using a fucking browser with a spell-check built in. Or copy/paste from Word into notepad before pasting into Slashdot text edit box. Your post is utterly annoying to read.
Re:I'm not French (Score:4, Informative)
I thought that, too, but in this case Le Monde called this program "perfectly illegal" [arstechnica.com]. I'm inclined to believe its editors understand French law better than I (an American) do.
Re:I'm not French (Score:5, Informative)
Well, it is politically interesting in France. There is a large movement there to have more openness (called "transparency") in what the government and congress do and how they reach these conclusions. It was a proposition of the runner up to the presidential elections 6 years ago to put video tapes of the council of minister as public records. It was a proposal by Segolene Royal, supported by the socialist party, in order to cleanse public politics. Now we have Francois Hollande as president who was supported by the socialist party; and he was strongly advocating against prism a week ago.
There are in France many law that restrict what you can or can not store about people in databases (would they be public or private). This is supposed to be taken care of by the CNIL (National Comitee for Internet and Liberty). CNIL is supposed to be the one that prevents electronic wiretaping and electronic spying... But in the recent years the role of CNIL has weaken a lot.
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The I in CNIL stands for Informatique, not Internet. Informatique encompasses anything related to automated manipulation of data, aka Computer Sciences in its broader sense.
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* And now they justify what Snowden and others have revealed by saying "Well, EVERYONE ELSE is doing it
Is it just me or does this sound like you're saying Le Monde is conspiring with the US government?
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s an American, while in an abstract way I care what the French are doing to their people, my opinions are really only applicable to my own country - in other words, as far as NSA spying, what the French are doing is not relevant.
When the French spy on US citizens and feed it to the NSA, how is that different, or some how not relevant? I'm sure the NSA returns the favor. Each side claiming they are protecting their citizens from the Rest of the World.
Perhaps we as Americans, still clinging desperately to tatters of our Constitution, which, in our hearts, we know is already a joke, have a harder time than the rest of the world getting our head around one single question:
Where did this entire Ide
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When the French spy on US citizens and feed it to the NSA, how is that different [than the US spying on its own citizens]
In a practical sense, it's not different. In a legal sense that the Executive Branch can use for justification "in the court of law", it's an important distinction.
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As an American, while in an abstract way I care what the French are doing to their people, my opinions are really only applicable to my own country - in other words, as far as NSA spying, what the French are doing is not relevant.
I supposed it's relevent to French people, but since when have Americans cared what French people think? Shavano (Would you like some Freedom Fries with that?)
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The problem is, like in the US, I've not seen any large political party in any country say they wanted to get rid of this. So you'll have to behead all people in government to get rid of this.
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There is some hope that this whole surveillance may start crumbling because the French are much more likely to take it more seriously, fish out that old, trusted and may be a little rusted Guillotine to behead Hollande.
I have to disappoint you: I currently live in France, and the revelation about the French state spying on its citizens get hardly any airtime. No one cares here. They are too busy with good-old-fashioned politics with faces attached to issues.
Speak French? (Score:1)
What is French for "only a fool would be remotely surprised that any technologically advanced nation would be collecting this data"?
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So, idiots are surprised from afar, are they? Google translate doesn't get the nuances right.
Seul un idiot pourrait être un tant soit peu surpris que tous les pays avancés espionnent leur populations.
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Translating his and yours back to English gives these two sentences.
Only a fool would be surprised that any remote technologically advanced nation is the collection of these data.
Only a fool would be a little bit surprised that all developed countries spy on their populations.
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Of course, doing a dumb word to word substitution from English into French & then back again will give a closer match to the original than a translation where one uses expressions that better convey the meaning. But hey, if mind you do not like Yoda you wish to speak, by all means, stick with the substitutions & ignore the snickering from those who actually speak both languages.
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No, I like yours better, and it is actually a coherent sentence. The other translation/retranslation is slightly off at the end.
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Your hovercraft is full of .. what?
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"What is French for "only a fool would be remotely surprised that any technologically advanced nation would be collecting this data"?"
Seul un pauvre con serait quelque peu surpris, qu'une Grande Nation, possédant une technologie avancée, collecte ces données.
Re:Speak French? (Score:5, Funny)
What is French for "only a fool would be remotely surprised that any technologically advanced nation would be collecting this data"?
Le proper Nelsoning: "Le ha-ha!"
Interesting irony there (Score:3)
Though not quite as interesting as when the article was posted yesterday [slashdot.org].
Rob
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What I'm surprised at is that neither time was Minitel mentioned. France has been monitoring communications for a long, long time, and I thought everyone was OK with it.
Tinfoil time (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah, that would just be paranoid.
Re:Tinfoil time (Score:5, Insightful)
Except for, you know, the public. The general public had no idea how ridiculous the surveillance was. I think everyone assumed there was some surveillance going on... but capturing everything? Really? At the tune of 80 billion a year? That money could go towards curing cancer or heart disease and they'd save a lot more lives than they ever will preventing the occasional terrorist attack, and it's doubtful they've actually prevented anything give that in most cases the perpetrators couldn't even find weapons or explosives without the undercover FBI agents offering to sell them the stuff.
It's also telling the as soon as a government starts complaining about what the US is doing, their own surveillance programs are revealed. The US is clearly involved in a heavy game of public distraction. The medias pretty much dropped this story, likely at their request, and can conveniently cover what all the other countries are doing. It's staggering that these actions are being presented in any way that is even remotely considered acceptable. All of this is completely unconstitutional, government officials including the president (past and present) should be facing prison time.
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Except for, you know, the public. The general public had no idea how ridiculous the surveillance was. I think everyone assumed there was some surveillance going on... but capturing everything? Really? At the tune of 80 billion a year? That money could go towards curing cancer or heart disease and they'd save a lot more lives than they ever will preventing the occasional terrorist attack, and it's doubtful they've actually prevented anything give that in most cases the perpetrators couldn't even find weapons or explosives without the undercover FBI agents offering to sell them the stuff.
Emphasis mine
I wonder if the justification, "But think of the *insert behavior you're discouraging here* we stopped with this!" was brought over from the MPAA/RIAA side of things first, or if they've simply got someone inside the NSA trying to find the pirates for them.
Re: Tinfoil time (Score:1)
it's weird - now the leak happened, suddenly we find out everyone knew it was happening and no one ought to be surprised. I wonder why everyone waited until now to make a fuss...
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are you dumb or naive?
there is a book about how the NSA tapped the transatlantic fiber cable over a decade ago to snoop on communications. in the days of microwave WAN's the NSA used to be able to listen to everyone's phone calls
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At the tune of 80 billion a year? That money could go towards curing cancer or heart disease and they'd save a lot more lives than they ever will preventing the occasional terrorist attack
So, having conned taxpayers out of 80 billion a year, the military-industrial complex would just voluntarily hand it over to an actual productive sector of the economy for a constructive purpose?
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Except for, you know, the public. The general public had no idea how ridiculous the surveillance was. I think everyone assumed there was some surveillance going on... but capturing everything? Really? At the tune of 80 billion a year? That money could go towards curing cancer or heart disease and they'd save a lot more lives than they ever will preventing the occasional terrorist attack, and it's doubtful they've actually prevented anything give that in most cases the perpetrators couldn't even find weapons or explosives without the undercover FBI agents offering to sell them the stuff.
It's also telling the as soon as a government starts complaining about what the US is doing, their own surveillance programs are revealed. The US is clearly involved in a heavy game of public distraction. The medias pretty much dropped this story, likely at their request, and can conveniently cover what all the other countries are doing. It's staggering that these actions are being presented in any way that is even remotely considered acceptable. All of this is completely unconstitutional, government officials including the president (past and present) should be facing prison time.
Come on, the NSA have just about complete access to the internet backbone, they were building datacenters and not even hiding it. There has been a wikipedia article on the one in Utah since 2011 and you could follow it's progress on Google maps courtesy of the NSA it self [gov1.info]. Your tax dollars at work. What did everybody think the NSA is doing with facilities like this? It's not hard, 1+1=2, massive datacenter + complete access to internet backbone = massive SIGINT operation.
Re:Tinfoil time (Score:5, Insightful)
It's almost as if every country of note is running massive internet surveillance programs
Maybe that's why Snowden is having such a hard time finding asylum. Everyone's doing it, nobody wants it public knowledge.
En Français .. Espion! (Score:4, Funny)
Where we get Espionage from. Seems almost like they invented it, non?
Spy program? I told them we already got one, it's verra nice!
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Well, the French did give the US the Statue of Liberty. Maybe it is stuffed full of spy gear? Maybe nobody bothered to check it back then . . . ?
Maybe French Intelligence services have been spying on all those immigrants back then, and all those tourists right now!
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Guillaume: Il est en Place ?
Bertrand: Oui!
Guillaume: Ce qui maintenant ?
Bertrand: Nous attendre.
Guillaume: Pour quoi?
Bertrand (frotter les mains): Pour nos hommes à sauter et attaquer!
Guillaume: que les hommes ?
Bertrand: Oh mon dieu...
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What an unhelpful reply.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that many words have deep histories stretching back to antiquity. I believe the point however, is that the word 'espionage', as with a rather amazing percentage of other modern English words, comes from French - probably during the period of Norman administration when French was the language of governance. And I suspect that part of the reason the English has supplanted French as a lingua franca, is that it readily adopted those French words
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Classifying people based on their nationality? You really are German, aren't you?
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En soviétique France, le fromage sent-vous!
Oh nooonn (Score:1)
Mon Dieu de la Baguette!!!!!!
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It won't affect our sociograms one bit, so go ahead.
Princess Bride (Score:2)
"Sacre bleu. You are trying to unlawfully obtain the data we have rightfully stolen!"
I only want to know one thing... (Score:3)
... what is everyone talking about that is so important for government to know about?
Or is this just a part of a manipulation of the people feedback loop where government controlled media is the other part?
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... what is everyone talking about that is so important for government to know about?
They want to know where to get cheap Viagra!
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It'll be great for catching the Keystone Terrorists though. Every time some pathetic idiot posts on facebook about how he wants to blow up a building, Homeland Security (or their French counterparts) can swoop in for an arrest. Then simply boast to the public of another terrorist attack successfully aveted.
Everyone is spying on everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
petaoctets (Score:2)
Chapeau! Got to praise the French for defending their language against foreign bytes ...
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'Octet' seems to be gaining popularity of late, but I don't like it one bit (pun not intended). We have too many words derived from byte (e.g. megabyte) for it to take on anything other than the common meaning.
Likely scenario (Score:2)
France: "Hey, that is unacceptable you must stop"
USA: "Shut up France, we highly recommend you that"
France: "YOU HAVE TO STOP!!! THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE"
USA: "NSA, could you give us some juicy information about France so they don't bitch about it so loud?"
NSA: "Oh yes, here you are."
Existence to Corruption. (Score:2, Insightful)
The fact that one exists results in the need for at least two. "Green peace" type folks may think that this can be "rioted" out of existance however then, only bad men will have guns. What is better is to advocate more effective and honest control and oversight of the use of these facilities. The key is anti-corruption through civilized morals. Where there is no moral backbone within society then there is no effective ability to even comprehend effective oversight and it quickly the world turns to dog-e
Small differences (Score:5, Insightful)
So this is a mostly unilateral war, and you could see the monitoring that could do some other countries mostly as self-defense.
The point is that people from all the world should care about what the US is doing (because affects everyone) while French (and a small fraction of other countries) people should care also about what they government do. Also, I don't see France putting in jail or doing a massive international manhunt for the people working for Le Monde, violating every international treaty and convention doing so, as US is doing (and forcing their allies to do) with Assange and Snowden, we are just past the point of absolute corruption, and seeing the first hints of what is coming in the next years.
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Don't kid yourself. Of course the richest and possibly most technically advanced nation also as the biggest and most technically advance tech spying program.
But don't doubt for once instant that every Nation of any aspirations is doing this kind of stuff. No intelligence agency on the planet, none, zero, has any qualms about spying on anyone through the Internet (outside some extremely close allies with information sharing agreements). Local laws may protect their own citizens a little bit, but that is a
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Pushing it as "the new normal" dont make it justifiable, is like saying that is right that your operating system must have a blue screen every hour or widespread virus and you must keep buying it because sometimes other operating systems could have them rarely. Doing it, while putting civilians for decades [slashdot.org] or even centuries [vice.com] is just yelling that you don't care about what is fair or not, you just do what you want, you are the biggest bully in the neightbourhood after all.
So keep defending the big bully, with
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But I am not pushing it as the new normal but stating that it is in fact the old normal with new technology. Nations are doing to new data services exactly what they have been doing to old data services. And I am sure it has been my turn all along.
I imagine that in theory there would be a way to objectively measure which country is the biggest bully in espionage. But it is kind of hard to measure since so much of it is secret. Doesn't China load spyware on computers that come through customs? Doesn't
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Is not about countries, is about governments, specially the ones that claim that are elected by the people. The key there is trust.
I administer servers (in particular, mail and proxy ones, to talk about the easiest ones where you can harm privacy) from almost 20 years. In all that time i had access to all the mails of all the people on those servers. When i was hired for that job, i've been trusted with that access, and was up to me to deserve or not that trust, regardless if anyone ever discover that i pe
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I administer mail servers also and every time the subject comes up I warn everyone that the communications on the server can and likely will be searched by some disclosure request. I also warn them not to take laptops to other countries, I warn them about attaching security systems to the corporate network. Frankly I am a giant pill.
I too try to do my job in a trustworthy manner.
I guess I don't really trust any government, or company or independent hacker. Or maybe I trust them to do exactly what I think
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Having 500k to 5m people [salon.com] that can access all information stored in your servers you feel safe? You may trust one or 2 people you know, but that amount of apples should have more than a few bad apples, and knowing how the environment rots the apple, that number could be pretty high. And that access could be used to do ip theft (REAL ip theft, as in copyrighting, patenting, trademarking or whatever thing you discussed in private and that you wont be able to use anymore), blackmailing (from up top to lower bot
Cabinet Noir (Score:2)
From the country that brought us the Cabinet Noir, this is surprising how?
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But if you videotape your neighbor having sex, and he videotapes you videotaping him, it changes the dynamic.
What do you expect? (Score:2)
Catch-22 (Score:1)
Mr. Hollande is 'Caught Red Handed.' Will Mr. Hollande resign now that the peoples of France know well that he is a lair and thief and worse.
The espionage technologies of USA, France and UK are acts of crimes against humanity.
But look at Mr. Bon KI Moon! Mr. Snowden showed Mr. Moon that the offices and apartments of Mr. Moon are bugged with video recording and sound devices and his cell phone and office phone and apartment phones are bugged. NSA is watching him anywhere on the planet 23/7/365.
How many child
Show me show you (Score:3)
You show me someone who says their country does not spy on its citizens, and I'll show you a fool. And you show me someone who says their country does not spy on other countries, and I'll show you another fool.
Governments have been spying on their own citizens since the day "governments" were born. And that first government started spying on other governments the day the second one was born nearby.
Does this make it right? No, of course not. Two wrongs, as they say, do not make a right (but three rights make a left). But I'm getting a bit tired of all this "My country is better than yours because it doesn't spy" bullshit. Grow up. Your country spies just like mine does.
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Governments have been spying on their own citizens since the day "governments" were born.
Some of their own citizens some of the time sure. All of them all of the time? No.
Your country spies just like mine does.
Maybe. Maybe not. I'm sure it spies. I'm certainly not sure it spies as much as yours does.
Dup, intent (Score:2)