I am French and that smells bad, really bad. This is the kind of law or rules that are born in the heat of the moment; these "think 'bout the children" moments. What happened in France is really sad, but it is what it is: an act by an isolated person. This is not a repeated pattern that needs a law to solve it.
I am very far from being an extremist but I have consulted websites that are considered extremist, just because sometimes I stumble on them while browsing the internet, or just by curiosity, because I think I ought to "know my enemies". The definition of extremist is also very blurry, and will probably be abused in the future.
In all fairness, the title is misleading, if not disingenuous.
- An announce has been made by a president who's not so likely to be reelected next month. If he's kicked, his law proposals are moot.
- This president has a compulsive habit of making dramatic/populist announces right after impressive crimes made the news; he made this one a couple of hours after a terrorist has been killed in a botched arrest.
- Most of these announces are never followed through; when they are, the _Conseil Constitutionnel_ often cancels or neuters them for unconstitutionality; disproportion between the intended effect and the restrictions on freedom of speech is a legitimate cause of unconstitutionality (cf. e.g. the recently cancelled law about the Armenian genocide);
- The French parliament is in vacancy until it will be reelected, about one month after the President, so no big law can be voted right now.
It would be awful indeed if this law was enabled, but it's quite unlikely to pass.
I'm French as well and, quite frankly, I don't see anything special here. It's just business as usual as it has been for the past 5 years. It goes like this:
1) A tragic but isolated incident occurs.
2) Our dear President jumps into action, calls a press conference and, with a dramatic tone of voice, announces that he will pass a new law that will protect us all against this happening again.
3) The media happily reports this. The public is happy - our dear President is looking after us. The media however blissfully ignored the fact that, in French democracy, the President has no power whatsoever to create new laws, let alone to tell Judges who should be punished for what. There is this thing in our constitution called "separation of power" that both our President and the French media seem to be unaware of.
4) What happens next depends on the PR situation:
If another story quickly takes the top spot at the 8 o'clock news programme, the new law proposal is quietly buried by the legislators never to be heard of again.
If a new law really needs to be passed for PR purposes, a new law, comprised of nothing more than a rehash of existing laws, is passed. It's then added to the already huge pile of laws that never get enforced due to lack of resources in our judicial system. The end result is an ever growing and more and more complex set of laws containing an increasing number of redundant and useless laws, resulting in an even slower and inefficient judicial system. Maitre Eolas's blog is worth a read to get a better understanding of what actually happens with these new laws: http://www.maitre-eolas.fr/
So yes, business as usual. I'm sure there are plenty of lessons to be learned here and applied to doing PR in a startup though.
Yes, the reaction is very telling when you compare it to Norway's reaction after the Utøya massacre last summer. Perhaps the difference is that Norway's terrorist attack was by a local - but it seems to me that there is a cultural difference here in how we react to these events. Just look at the knee-jerk reaction blaming everything from rap music to computer games whenever there is a school shooting in the US. These knee-jerk laws are a huge problem for democracy.
Maybe it's my cynism's speaking but I think this is done on purpose. They know it will be easier to pass some nasty laws after these kind of awful events so they take advantage of the situation and bring up these laws they were maybe already thinking about for some times but wouldn't dare to expose. And boummm security++; democracy--; Job well done.
Actually in France it's already illegal to visit pedopornographic website. While the intention is good, it can be used as an excuse to get a citizen's browsing history, and it's hard to defend a man's right to see kiddie porn…
When I was in France recently trying to use free WiFi I was required to enter my name, address, mobile phone number, etc on several of them. I have a screenshot of one captive portal page here: https://twitter.com/#!/nelson/status/178533010302451712
"Because of January 23, 2006's law, you have to register to use our wireless service. In accordance with the anti-terrorist legislation that came into effect on 23/01/2006, we are obliged to record the identities of users. The data collected in this form will be shared with the National Commission on Data Processing and Liberties and will not be used for commercial purposes or sold to third parties without your prior consent."
I probably used 20 different WiFi nodes in France and I'd say about 4 of them tried to collect contact data like this.
Either ways, the National Commission on Data Processing and Liberties is your friend in the story (CNIL in French). They go to great length to regulate access to your data. There are several cases of national agencies being forced to collect less data thanks to them.
"From now on, any person who habitually consults websites that advocate terrorism or that call for hate and violence will be punished"
Who defines "habitually", "advocates Terrorism" "call for hate and Violence"?
These terms and phrases are so overtly broad that a person visiting Reddit could easily qualify.
If the French govt. really moves a law along these lines, they would have taken a giant step away from Freedom towards Govt. Censorship of the worst kind.
I suspect this is just some pre-election bluster from Sarko to bump up his bad numbers. If and when this gets to the Law making stage, France needs a SOPA-style movement to kill this dead.
He's probably going to use it as an excuse to suppress his Lepeniste enemies, even though they had nothing to do with it. They were pretty careful to call for the suppression of "hate" in general, not Al-Qaeda or anything that has to do with this gunman in particular. Maybe this doesn't translate well but in English, "hate" is a term of abuse for right-wing attitudes.
I am not an expert of french politics but this looks clearly as a play to the coming elections.
And as most election-driven declarations it's overly stupid, and will probably never be implemented.
This has so much conspiracy potential. It is all to familiar: Conservative politician down in the polls, "Terror" craze happening out of the blue with a superb timing for the election, that even the FT can't resist from titling "Sarkozy stands to gain most from arrest...".
There is a huge difference between saying Sarkozy might gain politically (FT title), and saying Sarkozy "timed" the shootings of 6 people which is what you implied. Or did I misunderstand?
Judging how Sarkozy seems to have dealt with former political rival Dominique Strauss-Kahn, setting him up with a "rape", it's entirely possibly. French intelligence likely had the ability to pull strings in the terrorist community and Sarkozy likely has the ability to pull strings with French intellience.
While one may agree or disagree with Sarko, I think the personal history of Mr DSK would ague against this having been a "set-up".
The CIA, MI6 and all the other covert organs can't do someone as heinous as Assad but on the other hand they can at will, just pull framed rapes and crazy whackos killing and terrorizing people to create a desired result?
It reeks of "wanting to believe" as much as a balding man with a hot partner will "want to believe" the partner is not cheating when all the signs out there are signaling cheating.
Not that I believe this was made by the French Intelligence, but why do you assume the CIA can't do Assad? Why can't they just not be interested in doing so?
I meant in a way that was not traceable back to them --or traceable back to any state secret agency. You're right, if you mean they could, using any means --such as a recognizable drone. What I mean is, if they supposedly could pull off something like this crazy guy (in this case fall guy, if we are believe the conspiracy) why would they not pull the same to get rid of a problem in the ME --who just about everyone but Russia and china want gone?
>the two men high-five each other, clap their hands, and do what looks like an extraordinary dance of celebration that lasts for three minutes.* They are then shown standing by the service door leading to 45th Street—apparently waiting for the police to arrive—where they are joined at 2:04 PM by Florian Schutz, the hotel manager.
>the duty officer at the Accor Group in Paris ... responsible that weekend for handling emergencies at Accor Group hotels, including the Sofitel in New York ... sent a bizarre e-mail to his friend Colonel Thierry Bourret, the head of an environment and public health agency, claiming credit for “bringing down” DSK
This has been debunked. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_v._Strauss-Kahn#Conspi...
"The New York Review of Books subsequently corrected one of its allegations, reporting that a "dance of celebration" between two Sofitel employees lasted 13 seconds, not the 3 minutes originally reported."
The whole article reads very conspiratorially. A whole series of stars have to align just right to pull things off --and they do, if we take the article's hints.
It's a whole lot of supposition and reading into after the fact.
>>the two men high-five each other, clap their hands...
People high-five for al sorts of reasons not related to what they are actually doing at the moment. "Hey, by the way, that date I taked to you about --yeah, it went off really well last night". That kind of unrelated stuff.
>the duty officer at the Accor Group in Paris… sent a bizarre e-mail to… the head of an environment and public health agency, claiming credit for “bringing down” DSK
Again. Anyone could claim anything. People brag about things they never did frequenlty -spec. when they find out about something they are excited about. It in and by itself is not evidence of anything conspiratorial.
This is really like a "The Globe" article. Full of supposition and innuendo --nothing concrete, but nothing quite provably wrong --just improbable.
It's unbelievable that they (whomever they are) could coordinate this whole thing in secrecy but then go on to do and say stupid things to bring things to light. It's like they're really smart and really dumb at the same time. It's an unlikely scenario --but not impossible.
To put it succinctly, when I hear people laughing, they're probably not laughing at me.
>a fake rape accusation is about as easy as it gets.
And yet, if it had really been planned, it appears they would have made lots of mistakes. I would think it would be much easier just to take someone out than it is to do this kind of alleged framing. Framing involves too many variables and too many lose ends. Taking someone out, I imagine, is a lot cleaner, from a plan execution Pov.
>It's hardly improbable. People have used sex for blackmail, intelligence gathering, and character assassination for thousands of years.
Yeah, the thing is, you are comparing two very different things. I implied that the whole series of events ending in framing, as it unfolded, was improbable --not that framing in itself was improbable. That's a strawman.
DSK had enough stuff in his closet that this kind of framing is unnecessary. I know the French are ok with politicians and their peccadilloes. He seems to have had a penchant for this behavior --moreso than say, Mitterand.
>Taking someone out, I imagine, is a lot cleaner, from a plan execution Pov.
From a plan execution pov, perhaps, but not from a political pov. Even if a smoking gun pointed to Sarkozy, many people would likely chalk it up to political roughhousing and blame DSK for getting himself in the mess by not seeing the trap. If DSK had been killed people suspected Sarkozy, people would react differently.
>I implied that the whole series of events ending in framing, as it unfolded, was improbable
In what sense? That he was charged? The legal reaction itself was quite extraordinary: an international figure denied bail, put under grand jury investigation, and in court two days after being arrested. Maximum humiliation delivered with the utmost efficiency. DSK did have a history, of course, that complemented this kind of setup. One could be relatively sure that a sexual favor offered would be well received.
>an international figure denied bail, put under grand jury investigation, and in court two days after being arrested
France does not have extradition. So if he eventually was asked to come in for trial, he could have chosen to halt extradition and France would have complied as they do not extradite. It's not that strage a stance given that.
So what if he's an international figure? He goes thru the process like any other suspect in a credible rape allegation.
Europeans are somewhat used to politicians given some extra slack when it comes to these things --but here he was just another guy who allegedly raped a maid.
Because while that part of the law is not unpredictable, the rest of the events rely on too many variables any of which could fail.
Why go thru such Goldbergian process to discredit some politician. It's overly complicated. The result of this kind of alleged "framing" isn't even guaranteed -see Berlusconi.
I just don't see how it's complicated. You find someone who'll have private physical access to DSK, pay them to offer a sex act, use the sex act to create a rape charge, and the rest takes care of itself.
On the other hand, if they had access to his communication, why not simply plant some illicit information or files on his systems. Files could be stuff like banking schemes, fraud, anything you can think of which could cause concern. Another option is to set him up as a source for leaks of some monumental kind.
If we believe his claims, his systems had been infiltrated. So why not take advantage of that?
Instead hope he finds the maid desirable (he so much agrees there was sex), hope the maid is believed and there isn't a delay in her reporting the crime and the crime being reported (forwarded to police), hope DSK does not get on the plane on time (hope he keeps his lunch appointment, hope the police do not defer to an IMF bank head, etc. It's really flimsy supposition.
It's not as though it was long term "grooming". It was very spontaneous kind of arrangement. How can any one find this probable? It's just very unlikely.
If you're paying her, she's going to report the crime promptly. If the police are slow to respond, you have her go to the press. Getting sufficient play in the press so DSK is smeared is really the end goal.
Planting banking scheme, fraud, etc. document would be another angle. Not quite as likely to grab international attention as a hotel rape, though. Sex scandals are news gold.
Whether the maid had a long-term or short-term relationship with her handler, who knows.
Here's the deal. I find the allegation that it was a set-up highly improbable. I thus don't believe it.
You choose to think it's in the realm of likely probability -we differ.
Scandal? Get some composite pictures of him on his Ipad whatever, of him having sex with dogs and Eastern European white-slave hookers. Do it in Paris.
Agreed... we see what's probable largely based on our internal models of how the world works. As the world is changing at an accelerated rate, there's going to be an even wider range of the interpretation of what is probable.
Well, this has the potential to snowball if implemented...
That said, I've always been amazed at how people can go to another country, live and work there for years and yet speak in their own language (and not understand the local one) and refer to local citizens as "they; these; those", as if they're not part of the local culture. It may be hard assimilating, but the saying "When in Rome, do as the Romans" is true - in time, you end up being a Roman.
This resentment builds up, that's how you end up with terrorists and other malevolent people...
FTA, quoting French president Nicolas Sarkozy, in the wake of the death of the guy who confessed to murdering schoolkids and soldiers: "From now on, any person who habitually consults websites that advocate terrorism or that call for hate and violence will be punished."
From Wikipedia: striking just below the knee cap with a tendon hammer produces a signal which travels back to the spinal cord and synapses (without interneurons) at the level of L4 in the spinal cord, completely independent of higher centres.
The title of this story is "Gunman dies in hail of bullets as French siege ends" and has absolutely nothing to do with the throw-away line that the submitter used.
Do not editorialize submissions on HN. This is not Digg.
"You can make up a new title if you want, but if you put gratuitous editorial spin on it, the editors may rewrite it."
"Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or adding a parenthetical remark saying how great an article is. It's implicit in submitting something that you think it's important."
France announces crackdown on people not using VPNs/TOR to access extremist websites.
In other news a lightbulb went off in the mind of yet another hacker, this time in France, who decided to devote his time to liberating the internet from the draconian control of governments and large corporations and working toward a censorship resistant infrastructure.
This is a predictable reaction from an incumbent one month away from a competitive election. It is not a failure of democracy for one arm of government to react like this - it's a failure if that populist whiplash becomes policy (or is debated seriously enough to spook).
An analogy would be October 2012, Romney is hot on Obama's heels, and a shooter goes on a rampage in Times Square. It would not be unexpected for the President to call for greater monitoring, no limits to what will be done to safeguard the American people, yada, yada. Norway's reaction was anomalous in the shooter being Norwegian and the political climate being mellower than France in an election year.
It may be temporary, but Marine Le Pen's campaign web site seems to be down at the moment. It would be easy to see her benefiting from the inevitable fervour over this loony gunman. Sarkozy would love to have a bit of that for himself, hence his seemingly-reckless statement.
Well it's just one more dumb thing said by Sarkozy. In a month he won't be president anymore, just ignore him already. I don't see the crime of "reading a website" being punished in this country any time soon.
This is no different than banning/censoring books for "extremist content". It will start with terrorism and a few months later it will expand to other topics, and we all know that's going to happen. Next in line is probably copyright infringement, because that's a favorite topic of Sarkozy.
When exactly are the upcoming elections, so French people can get rid of Sarkozy once and for all?
It's illegal in France to deny an atrocity acknowledged by the State. If the government calls something genocide or a heinous crime, it's illegal for a citizen NOT to agree. It was meant to reign in holocoust deniers, making it illegal. Then it was used as a political pawn against Turkey, viz Ottoman crimes against Armenians.
In Britain two women are in court demanding their right to wear a cross to work.
In Germany it's even illegal to salute the German flag, or borders on social taboo.
Europe .. it's fucked, but it's better than the U.S.
The law making it illegal to deny the Armenian genocide has been invalidated by the constitutional council. The decision is quite interesting actually:
- It is right to forbid denying the holocaust, as it has been recognised by an international jurisdiction (the Nuremberg court)
- But it is wrong to forbid the Armenian genocide because it has been declared a genocide directly by the French government, so it could be used to censor anything.
It seems a weird choice to me(I'm French), but it makes some sense.
(http://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/conseil-constitutionne... -- in French legalese)
Also, free speech isn't absolute even in the US, for example I think you must also have libel laws.
How can it be right to forbid denying anything whatsoever? That is thought crime pure and simple. Just because an "international jurisdiction" "recognised" it, doesn't mean a) they got it right and b) new evidence may not come up thus calling for a re-assessment of the whole thing. History is science, nothing is undeniable in science.
In Britain two women are in court demanding their right to wear a cross to work.
Presume you're talking about this ( http://www.rt.com/news/uk-bans-wearing-cross-317/ ). This touches on religion, and whether the state wants to have a very multicultural/multiethnic workplaces, the wearing of overt religious iconography from one group can hinder that.
(Tis quite funny how the UK with an established state religion can be quite secular)
In Germany it's even illegal to salute the German flag, or borders on social taboo.
Probably depends on how you salute it. ;) One thing to remember in Europe, unlike the USA, there isn't as much flag waving or similar nationalistic stuff, unless there's a sporting match on. From seeing photos of the USA it looks like it's not uncommon for private citizens to have American flags outside. Here, if there isn't a sporting match on, it's either government buildings, or far right nationaists who habitually use their national flag. So behaviours that seem OK in USA, might seem weird in EU.
Some of this silly things are due to problems europe has had in the past (like religious persecution or extreme right wing nationalism)
Usually you wont find a flag pole on private property in the cities and it's clearly far, far, far, far, far away from e.g. US levels of showing the flag, but it's hard to picture a Schrebergartenkolonie[1] without a german flag (even the wikipedia picture show one: [2]). Same is true for private properties where flag poles are more common (rural or costal regions).
I agree it's not a custom, but it's not definitely no taboo.
"The German flag, long weighted by the country's postwar reluctance about open displays of national pride, is flying again, an expression of exuberance as Germany plays host to the World Cup" [1]
There is no country which allows completely unrestricted speech. In America, the common example is "shouting fire in a crowded theatre".
All countries define a subset of speech to be harmful in certain contexts. Some countries are more or less restrictive in defining that subset, but there is absolutely a continuum.
Most European countries do not have the same interpretation of free speech as the current US interpretation.
Free Speech definitions change over time, even in the USA. For lots of the 20th century movies didn't fall under "free speech", and before then blasphemy laws were not uncommon. Regions differ with other rights aswell, the free speech rights might be weaker in EU than USA, but employee or anti-discrimination law is stronger in EU than USA say.
It probably wouldn't be considered a free speech issue since they are not targeting the speech, just those who consume it. I would imagine it's more of a privacy issue since they would have to track the browsing habits of every single person in France to make sure they are only viewing "acceptable" websites, whatever that happens to be on any given day.
If you're allowed to say what you want, but no one is allowed to listen to it, then you don't have free speech. The logical reason for free speech is communication.
But the websites' free speech would be heard, it's just the issue is punishing people for hearing it after the fact. If we were talking about shutting down the sites to prevent people from hearing it then I would agree. An example would be you standing on the corner denouncing the government and the people walking by that heard your speech being arrested simply for hearing it, while you are left alone to continue your speech.
Granted, the original statement is an idiotic one and a good indicator of the thought process of power-hungry fools who don't understand the purpose of law intended for the protection of the people.
I am very far from being an extremist but I have consulted websites that are considered extremist, just because sometimes I stumble on them while browsing the internet, or just by curiosity, because I think I ought to "know my enemies". The definition of extremist is also very blurry, and will probably be abused in the future.