France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone, spy on people
France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone, spy on people
A bill that would allow police in France to spy on suspects by remotely activating cameras, microphone including GPS of their phones has been passed.
Does anyone know how this even works? Is the technology for this already in place?
Commented on this article in another thread
https://beehaw.org/comment/586170
Looks like there are caveats to this law:
You would need to be a suspect in a crime that has a punishment of 5 or more years in prison in order for the phone to be geolocated.
For video/audio you need to fall under the definition of organised crime or terrorism.
Sure, the issue is that, with no transparency, cops will use it even if they are just courios what they friends are doing. This is already known to happen in the US, where cops used it to stalk their SOs or even in extreme cases women they were starting to date.
If they already have the technology in their hands, there is no way to stop them.
After a terrorist attack, emergency state was declared (nomally used in case a war actually put the survival of the country's institutions in jeopardy). First use of the extra-powers: assign some targeted pacific climate activist at home so that there would not be a protest during the COP.
Anti-terrorism bill was passed some time ago. It was used to repress the protests against the retirement bill, literally banning anyone from carrying a saucepan in the street (ban of "noise emitting devices") during a protest.
Climate protesters have been labeled "eco-terrorist" even though they never put nor attempted to put anyone's life in danger.
France is under requests from the UN for fixing severe issues regarding right to protest, police excessive violence and systematic racism in the police force. France is taking a dire path, joining Hungaria, Turkey in authoritarism, maybe evolving to a clone of Russia, as there were hint of a will to change the constitution to let Macron run again after his second mandate.
I have 0 trust this bill is intended to be used for severe crimes. It's another attempt to control and repress.
Yep some of my friends left France in part for that reason - the government and police are becoming increasingly authoritarian and they left not wanting to wait for things to get worse. And they're just super nice, normal people but they could see the wiring on the wall. 😞
Those caveats are just to get the laws passes.
Online piracy already carries punishment up to 3 years. All it takes them is make a law that technically holds 5 years but gets pardoned in practice.
Labeling someone a terrorist can be as simple as “collective undertaking with the aim of seriously disturbing public order through intimidation” aka protesting..
I’m not aware that either iOS or Android support this.
I see two options:
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Apple and Google build requested backdoor access, which I don’t think they want to do.
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The police get physical access to the phone temporarily to install a hidden app on it. Possibly using an insider.
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Bad guys buy pre-backdoored phones from cops. See the ANOM story. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/06/fbi-sold-phones-to-organized-crime-and-read-27-million-encrypted-messages/
I have not read the bill but I’ll guess they are legalizing #2.
DROPOUTJEEP .... "A software implant for the Apple iPhone that utilizes modular mission applications to provide specific SIGINT functionality. This functionality includes the ability to remotely push/pull files from the device. SMS retrieval, contact list retrieval, voicemail, geolocation, hot mic, camera capture, cell tower location, etc. Command, control and data exfiltration can occur over SMS messaging or a GPRS data connection. All communications with the implant will be covert and encrypted."
Yeah, if this can be done remotely then all smartphones by design are very insecure devices that shouldn't be trusted to doing card transactions or entrusting with password management and two factor authentication..
I wish they would go into more detail on the how of remote activation is made. Is it a law saying it is okay to do if it becomes possible? Is this through an exploit that was found and requires physical access to the device to initiate, or is it just a setting present on all phones by default.
I've seen this news published at a few different places, and IIRC they plan to use already existing exploits. You can read a bunch about what could potentially be used on the grapheneos website, specifically on how the modem and cellular network stack is very highly privileged on android at least, and it is very likely that most cellphones are vulnerable to some kind of code injection via a stingray, for example.
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Ever hear of backdoors and a little spyware called Pegasus? Technology is already in place and NSA has been doing it since 9/11. All this spyware and it isn't even effective.
Pegasus uses exploits which are getting discovered and fixed. In theory, it’s getting harder for that model to work. Apple’s Lockdown mode defends against it for example. Very different from a sanctioned backdoor.
Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if Pegasus was being fixed. It's been around for years now. But there will still be 0 days. They're called 0 days because nobody knows about them yet.
On a related topic: anyone know if there are any cell phones that come with a physical switch to disable the camera and mic
I only know about pinephone and, liberty phone and librem 5 from purism.
Librem 5 and liberty are the same phone and are horribly overpriced. At this point I'm surprised it's not just a literal grift like the other 'murica phones people tried selling to the American right wing.
What the hell is happening over there??
People are already pissed, so why not push through a crazy privacy invading law.
What are the citizens going to do? Riot?What are the citizens going to do? Riot?
Considering this is France, you'd think those at the top would be more aware than anyone of the risks of pissing off your citizens, but looks like they've become too comfortable and are practically begging for a refresher crash course..
The Court of Justice if the EU will very likely disallow the use of this authority in the future, but it often takes time to litigate in court up to a point where an organization can proceed to the EU Court.
It's a terrible way of politicians trying to circumvent fundamental rights, even though their goal always is to prevent crime. The simply pass the bill, wait until it becomes law, start doing their business, claim victory and then complain the EU Court disallows it.
Sigh.
Fuck yea buddy, the CIA has had a backdoor to every cell phone since the first cell phone
I’m unfamiliar with evidence to support any sanctioned CIA backdoor.
Snowden.
A good starting point is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANT_catalog
For example:
DROPOUTJEEP .... "A software implant for the Apple iPhone that utilizes modular mission applications to provide specific SIGINT functionality. This functionality includes the ability to remotely push/pull files from the device. SMS retrieval, contact list retrieval, voicemail, geolocation, hot mic, camera capture, cell tower location, etc. Command, control and data exfiltration can occur over SMS messaging or a GPRS data connection. All communications with the implant will be covert and encrypted."
And here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosures_(2013%E2%80%93present)
The NSA had a program called DROPOUTJEEP according to an article in Der Spiegel. Think it came out with Snowden? Fuzy on details but you can look into it. It did include camera access but i dont think it could be installed remotely. Id be surprised if theres anything the NSA cant intercept but thats obviously what they would want us to think and Im just a guy.