The US federal government has been doing this since the 00's. Snowden exposed them and the public responded with hatred towards Snowden. Unfortunately the average citizen just doesn't seem to care.
I don’t think the majority of people KNOW what Snowden was even trying to tell them. I remember when this came out and the news media was clutching their pearls over the act of leaking information rather than discussing the contents. I’m still learning about what was contained in those leaks to this day. It is so heavily propagandized that we need a new word for it.
That’s an erroneous understanding of our era. The younger generations are gods at liking and commenting on social networks, but they just don’t care about privacy. They flock like birds to litteral spyware just for a quick meme fix.
Not everything you think is wrong has to do exclusively with boomers.
Everyone causally saying the government can just do it with Pegasus is ignoring the fact that Pegasus itself is an exploit. It is a hack, to breach your personal device. If I used the same methods to get into a bank’s systems it would be a violation of the law. Same if I created this software and gave it to you for the same purpose. Ask yourselves why it would be permissible to sell this software then commercially? And, why is it permissible for the government to use it to hack your own devices. Let’s not just brush over this discussion like it’s nothing.
Nobody ignores the fact that government is doing something illegal when the conversation about their rampant spying happens. You may just be late to the party. We all know it's illegal, unethical, and immoral. It basically comes down to this:
What are you going to do about it?
We're living in objectively dystopian times. Our government does illegal shit literally all the time and gets away with it.
While this news article is, apparently, not trustworthy, in general, France could demand every phone sold in the country include some kind of spyware. Many sellers already add a lot of programs by default anyway, so this would be how I image it might be implemented.
Given that 7 people were recently arrested for using privacy respecting tools like the Signal messenger and Protonmail, removing that bloatware/spyware might then be cause enough to arrest you. After all, only terrorists want to have privacy, right?
At least they have the decency to tell you they are doing it.
In the US it took Snowden to leak this to the public that the government has been doing it for ages behind their backs.
Huge wealth gap. Poor people are treated like shit. They're are hungry and angry. Historically, the French are quick to protest and the rich are doing what they can to stop it. I believe we're getting a glimpse of what is going to happen all over the world soon.
I can't even reconize my country values for the past few months and yet it's only the beginning for the current government, we still have 4 years to go with Macron. Who knows what ideas they hold for the future.
A Google search for "France phone camera" only gives this posted link and dailymail.co.uk article, both of which are not really trustworthy sources, IMO.
So I'm gonna go with "this is very possibly fake news".
nearly half of computer-related engineers/developers/technicians/analyst who refuse to believe that this and other similar programs that snowden revealed on purely ideological grounds is a huge source of fuel for my misanthropy; the fact that they tend to be the most successful and/or well paid in my field (software development) is a several fold bigger source.
from what i understand, this gives the power to monitor communications like emails / text messages. which in my opinion is fundamentally different from turning on your camera or microphone.
having said that, I haven't read into this in depth so perhaps that was outlined previously
There is something to be said for bringing your phone to protests so you can livestream them to the world when the authorities use heavy-handed, violent tactics to stop them.
In all honesty, it would probably be best to have a dedicated device for that situation as well so that if they choose to search it then all they will get is the footage from the event.
Edut: Didn't scroll down to see you suggested the same thing!
While I agree that filming is important, it’s also important to remember that between the J6ers being dumb fucksticks and their social media site being absolute dogshit, a lot of them were caught because EXIF data wasn’t scrubbed. Having one’s phone with you could end up being the thing that gets you prosecuted.