The French government is considering a law that would require web browsers – like Mozilla’s Firefox – to block websites chosen by the government.
So we’re gonna have to start using Tor against censorship in the so-called ‘civilised’ world as well.
Yup. My state in the US is apparently doing some nonsense with social media (think of the children!!), so I’ll probably set up a VPN for my household once it goes into effect.
Why can’t we just… not censor stuff? Investigate sites for criminal activity, but don’t block stuff you don’t like.
Wait, does France wants to be North Korea or something?
Essentially the EU does.
I’m not sure the rest of the world knows about the plans to make backdoors in encrypted communication mandatory, i. e. outlawing any form of effective encryption. They say it’s against crime but I strongly believe it is mainly about total surveillance, maybe a little bit for censorship.
The US keeps trying that, but at least so far it has failed.
There are almost certainly more backdoors than we know of publicly.
Sure, but it’s not a law on the books, that’s my point. What the NSA, FBI, or CIA do is a completely separate matter.
Sure, but it’s not a law on the books
The Patriot Act is a law
AFAIK, the Patriot Act does not forbid closing backdoors. I know there are export restrictions on certain types of encryption (not sure if that’s part of it, or a separate law), but it doesn’t prevent me or a company from encrypting data at rest or in transit, or preventing law enforcement from extracting data without a warrant.
It violates a ton of individual freedoms, but requiring backdoors is not one of them. It does pressure agencies to find or create backdoors, but it doesn’t obligate companies to create them AFAIK.
Unless I’m missing something, in which case please let me know. It was a big bill, and it has been largely reauthorized and somewhat amended since original passage.
They don’t need backdoors because privacy is not a right for USA citizens. If they want to check your activity the can do it in any moment without issues
i don’t see the problem. just don’t make your browser available in france? there’s only 3 browsers to pick from anyway, firefox, safari, or chromium-based. if everyone makes themselves unavailable in france, what is france going to do? heck, iphones only have safari. the people would be pretty quick to burn down paris (as is tradition) when the web becomes unavailable.
I strongly doubt that Google, Microsoft, Apple etc. would make their browsers unavailable in France.
I could see it. I know they all bend to China, but they also know that fighting China won’t change anything. If Google pulls Chrome and Apple pulls Safari, French citizens do actually have a path to be heard and get shit changed.
Equally important to them, plopping their dicks on the table against the French government and having it work might scare them out of curtailing their monopolies next time.
google and microsoft don’t have browsers; they are offering a repacked and rebranded chromium with proprietary features. same as vivaldi, brave, etc.
there are only three modern browsers: firefox, safari, and chromium. if these three exit france, all that’s left are custom made third party neutered firefox or chromium browsers repacked for france, and they would lag behind security updates.
You’re right that under the hood, there’s only Firefox, Safari and Chromium, but you’re overestimating the influence of Chromium here.
For one, Chromium is controlled by Google. It’s *technically* open-source, but Google decides what’s included into it.
And secondly, Chromium already has an API for blocking webpages. All these browsers could just pre-install an extension (and hide it from users), to comply with that law.
But even if it didn’t have that API, it only takes a relatively non-invasive patch to add such blocking.Chromium is usually said to exert a strong influence, because you can’t just patch things when it comes to web standards. You need to ship what’s being shipped in Chrome to enjoy compatibility with all the same webpages. And usually, what’s in Chromium is what’s being shipped in Chrome.
Firefox should just include an add-on for french-based installs that blocks those sites with explicit french instructions for how to uninstall it and a link to their petition and any public phone numbers of high profile french politicians. Effectively, they should protest the decision by making it something users can opt out of while also making sure users who don’t like it complain to the people in charge of their country.
This seems particularly concerning in France since Macron has already shown that if parliament won’t pass a law, he’ll just short circuit the process and enact it by executive fiat.
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