News France seeks to ban Tor, lock down public Wi-Fi

It's rather disturbing that a democratic society such as France that holds liberty, equality, and fraternity in such high regards would go down this route, these actions are something we would expect from a totalitarian state, although i guess when a state of emergency is declared that exactly what they become.

Not sure how all these new powers that governments are requesting are going to help though, it seems most incidents went undetected despite the information being freely available to the security service.

 

Well not really surprising. If you ever had to deal with governmental agencies in France then you know that there is nothing that even remotely resembles democracy, but there is plenty that is very familiar to anyone that lived in Maoist China. Can't control - ban it!

Sad but true.

 

If it's so easy to find people using Tor, what's the need to ban it?

 

No one said it was easy, like a lot of what politicians and law enforcement request little thought has gone into the how it would be done, think of it like a wish list, i wish there was world peace, i just haven't worked out how to make that happen yet.

EDIT: Apparently ToR has been blocked in China so maybe France would need to implement a great firewall of France.

 

Well clearly they don't.

How are they going to conditionally block hotspots? My phone can act as a hotspot.

 

they mean the free hotspots made available by cafes, hotels and shops etc

 

Turning Europe into Raqqa so isis will feel right at home is not the right solution.

 

Well yes, but they can't just go around to each router in each business and turn off the wifi. They would have to kill the business' connection at the ISP.

I'm not sure how that would even disrupt terrorist communication. Walkie talkies would probably work just as well or phones as was demonstrated in Paris.

Why do politicians go after the internet when it's demonstrably not the problem?

 

Because most of them [delete as appropriate]

• do not understand the internet
• do not use the internet
• only hear bad things about what happens on the internet
• cannot explicitly control what happens on the internet
• are scared of the internet

 

It is only ever about Control.

Do not do any things we can not see or hear you doing.
All privacy is officially banned, unless you are a top ranking government official.
How long before more than a 3 person meeting in public is banned?
Citizens are not allowed to question a policeman's behaviour.
Do not openly question anybody in authority or else you will be detained.

Even Mr Orwell himself, would be WTF!

 

This is not only worrisome for France of course, because once one EU country started on this road there is a high risk others will follow.
And with all those illicit 'meetings of ministers of justice' they do, completely outside of the EU system, it is especially tricky. They keep making deals there that then are forced on the population and they shield themselves from questioning voices in their own parliaments by saying 'we made a deal, we can't be the ones breaking a deal' as if it's some magical higher power outside normal democratic processes.

 

Haven't they done the same with all new media?
Rock and roll, violent film, video games, I wouldn't be surprised if they even blamed books at some point.

 

There are loads of books that are still banned in a lot of EU countries.

 

True but at least those banned books are targeted, what's being proposed in France is akin to banning the public sale of all books during the time of a 'state of emergency'

 

Such a totally brilliant idea. For if they make it awkward to use Tor then it will be 100% impossible for people to communicate in secret ever again. Freedom and liberty wins and terrorism is defeated.

Genius plan guys.
Effing genius.

*slow clap*