Things have been popping off in France lately (yet another instance of cops being cops and killing a teenager from a minority group) and as a result, they've passed a hardcore digital surveillance law. It covers "laptops, cars and other connected objects as well as phones" and allows for "geolocation of suspects in crimes punishable by at least five years behind bars". More troubling is a provision that allows devices to be "remotely activated to record sound and images of people suspected of terror offences, as well as delinquency and organised crime". Fuck knows how they're remotely enabling the cameras and mics in people's smartphones, but I'm sure it's possible with some state level malware shit, probably exploiting vulnerabilities in the embedded computers inside devices with shitty firmware nobody has access to.
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