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.
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But lawmakers agreed to the bill late Wednesday as Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti insisted the bill would affect only “dozens of cases a year.”
Precisely why it should not be passed! That's not a good reason at all. It's not worth eroding people's rights if it only affects a few cases in my personal opinion. It shows that the law doesn't need to exist in the first place.
Also... what kind of argument is that? It may be dozens a year but once it is normalized with those dozens, it will become few dozens and on and on it goes.
Not a general slippery slope argument, but rather, it's clear how it makes future erosion easier.
Today: People named Joe who live at this address can be harassed freely and that's perfectly legal. Tomorrow: It's not so extreme! Look, see, we've never universally respected these rights anyway. There are cases where we legally ignored them. We're just expanding existing rules to cover more cases.
People always abuse these back doors. Always. To think otherwise is to be ridiculously naive
I always love when governments ask for powers to stop only a few cases, and act like it’s justification. Maybe, just maybe, do your job.
It's like the Apple case for building a backdoor that makes everyone less safe to catch one criminal. They ended up not needing it anyway.
Honestly one of the worst parts is I hate how police/the government can/will abuse these abilities if given a chance, because sometimes those few cases where they could be used they could potentially be really useful.
I work in 911 dispatch, we don't always have a totally accurate location from a cell phone, people sometimes repeatedly hang up on us, put their phone down and walk away, refuse to answer when we call back, or are too hysterical to answer any questions. Being able to put their phone on speakerphone remotely, keep them from hanging up on us, turn on their camera, etc. so we can see/hear at least some of what's going on could be really useful sometimes to help make sure we're sending the right kind of help to the right place. Being able to turn on a phone camera to see where a barricaded subject is in a building or room, see what kinds of weapons he has, hear what he's saying, etc. could be really useful sometimes. Sometimes someone will butt dial us or their kid playing with their phone will call us a few dozen times in a row, and it would be kind of nice to be able to come over their phone speaker and just say "Hey, you keep calling 911, if you don't have an emergency can you please stop?"
But cops would rather use those capabilities to harass protesters and such.
It's a dangerous road to walk for something that would be 'kind of nice' in very specific situations.
I agree, but you do also have to remember that a lot of those specific situations I'd be dealing with from the dispatch end of things could very often be life-or-death for the people involved. More accurate information from us could mean getting the right amount of help to the right places faster and using it more effectively, which means lives saved.
It's very much a double edged sword, it's technology that could save lives, and it could be used to wrongfully deprive people of their lives and liberty. I've outlined some of the ways I would use it to help save lives, I'm not trying to make a judgement about whether or not that good it could do outweighs the harm it could do by being abused. It might, it might not, it's not exactly clear-cut how the value of a handful of human lives stacks up against the rights and freedoms of the many, and in either case we're dealing with largely hypothetical situations. My main point is to lament that these capabilities would almost certainly be abused and that because of that we may not get to use them to save lives when we otherwise could have.
I'm imagining a situation where the caller does not want it to be known that they have called emergency. Hostage situations, domestic violence, home intrusions... Last thing you want when you're hiding in a dark cupboard from an armed stalker is your phone to start blasting at full volume and flashing lights because a well intentioned operator wanted to see through the camera.
That's the sort of discretion we already have to use though, we have no control over what volume their ringtone may be at when we call back now, we don't call text to 911 callers unless they confirm it's safe for them to talk, etc.
Technically, any number bigger than 24 counts as "dozens" ...