“Emergency” Measures May Be Written Into the French Constitution:
Since last month’s attacks, there have been some 2,500 police raids, and nearly a thousand people have been arrested or detained. French local and national press are now full of reports of questionable police raids. So outrageous were some cases that the French Interior Ministry had to send a letter to all prefects reminding them to “abide by the law.”
The state of emergency, which was initially supposed to mitigate the threat posed by Islamic terrorism, has been used to target environmental and political activists who have nothing to do with radical Islam, let alone terrorism. Several heavily armed police officers stormed the home of produce farmers in rural France, and Le Monde reported that at least 24 people closely involved with protests around COP21, the Paris climate conference, were placed under house arrest. This includes a member of the legal team of Coalition Climat 21, a well-established gathering of more than 130 organizations and NGOs. The French Human Rights League said the minister of the interior was confusing terrorism with normal civic activities and concluded, “The state of emergency is a danger to civil liberties.”
Yet rather than be regarded as a temporary measure for extraordinary circumstances, the government’s ability to declare an extended state of emergency may soon be written into the constitution.
France will not ban Wi-Fi or Tor, prime minister says:
In the weeks after the deadly attacks in Paris, France has been in a perpetual state of emergency. Le Monde reported an internal law enforcement document proposing to restrict freedom of Internet access ostensibly as a way to fight terrorism.
“A ban of Wi-Fi is not a course of action envisaged,” Valls responded on Wednesday. Nor is he in favor of a ban on Tor, which encrypts and masks users’ identifying data, the Connexion reported.
“Internet is a freedom, is an extraordinary means of communication between people, it is a benefit to the economy,” Valls added.
Even so, the global response to Paris involves lawmakers in Europe and the United States calling for new legislation on technology.
Source: dailydot.com
The main problem with such a ban on Tor is that it wouldn’t achieve a whole lot. Would-be terrorists could still access Tor from outside the country, and if they manage to access Tor from within France I doubt they’re concerned about being arrested for illegal use of the network. There is evidence to suggest that the recent Paris attacks were planned via unencrypted channels, too: the Bataclan “go” message was sent in the clear via SMS.
On the other hand, criminalising and/or blocking Tor might affect many other legitimate users of the network, such as whistleblowers, journalists, and anyone else who wants to surf the Web privately.
Source: Ars Technica
The phrase “the terrorists are going dark” has come back in vogue after the Paris attacks, referring to assertions that encryption is somehow enabling the communication of future attackers to go undetected. But the public is being presented with a false choice: either we allow law enforcement unfettered access to digital communications, or we let the terrorists win. As always, it is not that simple.
It is true that much of the world’s communication has shifted away from easy-to-intercept text messages and phone calls, to mobile apps, such as WhatsApp, Apple Messages, and Telegram, which provide free worldwide communications and improved privacy and security. Some apps have even added end-to-end “sealed envelope” encryption, putting message contents out of reach of both law enforcement and the service providers themselves.
Even so, there is still a great deal of data available that is not fully encrypted or even encrypted at all—data that allows for the kind of digital detective capabilities that law enforcement seek to catch the bad guys.
Source: technologyreview.com
Most of the men who carried out the Paris attacks were already on the radar of intelligence officials in France and Belgium, where several of the attackers lived only hundreds of yards from the main police station, in a neighborhood known as a haven for extremists. As one French counterterrorism expert and former defense official said, this shows that “our intelligence is actually pretty good, but our ability to act on it is limited by the sheer numbers.” In other words, the problem in this case was not a lack of data, but a failure to act on information authorities already had.
In fact, indiscriminate bulk data sweeps have not been useful. In the more than two years since the N.S.A.’s data collection programs became known to the public, the intelligence community has failed to show that the phone program has thwarted a terrorist attack. Yet for years intelligence officials and members of Congress repeatedly misled the public by claiming that it was effective.
Source: The New York Times
After the Paris attacks, France enacts sweeping legislation limiting fundamental freedoms:
It was 21h32 on November 13th when time stopped in France and around the world as Paris was attacked in its heart. One hundred and thirty people were killed while enjoying dinners with friends, celebrating birthdays, and dancing at a concert. The French government, with the support of most of the population and political groups, rapidly declared a state of emergency that was initially scheduled to last 12 days. This drastic measure, not used since World War II, altered the normal balance of powers in France, giving more discretion to the President and the government.
The following week, as the police and military forces were tracking the perpetrators of the attacks, people around the world sent messages showing their support for the people of Paris, and France was moved by an unprecedented rush of solidarity. Since several suspects remained at large, the President requested that the parliament extend the state of emergency to three months, and modify the French law on the state of emergency, which dates from 1955. Parliament granted both requests with limited opposition, despite the absence of justification for the changes, and despite the fact that the modifications created new measures extending surveillance powers and limiting freedoms. More radical changes could come as the French have government has chosen this difficult period to consider modifying the Constitution, which would officially shift France from the Fifth to the Sixth Republic.
Source: accessnow.org
Despite the intelligence community’s attempts to blame NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden for the tragic attacks in Paris on Friday, the NSA’s mass surveillance programs do not have a track record — before or after Snowden — of identifying or thwarting actual large-scale terrorist plots.
CIA Director John Brennan asserted on Monday that “many of these terrorist operations are uncovered and thwarted before they’re able to be carried out,” and lamented the post-Snowden “handwringing” that has made that job more difficult.
But the reason there haven’t been any large-scale terror attacks by ISIS in the U.S. is not because they were averted by the intelligence community, but because — with the possible exception of one that was foiled by local police — none were actually planned.
Source: theintercept.com