SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the when-you-can't-trust-your-friends dept.
The French government is looking to move officials away from popular apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram -- even if the French president likes using them.
As Facebook continues to reel from the Cambridge Analytica saga, the French government is taking precautions against the social media behemoth's WhatsApp service.
The French government is developing its own encrypted messaging service, Reuters reported Monday. The goal is to alleviate concerns about privacy breaches, which could result in the leaking of private conversations between top officials to foreign parties.
The French government's privacy concerns come amid a backlash against Facebook following a massive data leak concerning millions of users. WhatsApp, which provides encrypted messaging services, is owned by Facebook and shares user information with its parent company -- something that hasn't sat well with privacy regulators.
In December 2016, the European Union expressed concerns over Facebook's access to WhatsApp users' data. Just a month later, the popular social messaging platform was sued in German court over the issue, while French privacy watchdog CNIL warned WhatsApp in the same year to stop sharing user data with Facebook or risk a fine. Last month, Facebook agreed not to access any data from WhatsApp until its activities are considered compliant with a Europe-wide General Data Protection Regulation expected in May.
[...] While few details are available on the French-built messaging service, a ministry spokeswoman told Reuters the app is being designed by a "state-employed developer" and tested by "about 20 officials and top civil servants." It is hoped that the use of this app will become mandatory across the government by this summer before being rolled out to all French citizens, she added.
CNET has reached out to the French government for a comment.
(Score: 5, Funny) by DannyB on Tuesday April 17 2018, @09:25PM (9 children)
More countries need to create private secure versions of apps which government officials can securely use to keep data private.
The US should start with a secure private encrypted version of Twitter which the president can use.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Wednesday April 18 2018, @12:33AM (6 children)
This is for the president, yes? The standard government rate for this application 5 million dollars per device. The cost comes from the development time necessary to streamline and deduplicate the secure encrypted database. You can tell the deduplication is working because the database's, growth is rather logarithmic. In fact, the first few million entries you will not see any growth at all! Yes the database is named null. No, don't 'ls -a /dev/null' to get the database size. /dev/null is just the interface, the actual database is kept in /var/null where it should be. As you can see, the with just the base encryption it is 5GB in size. Of course it just appears to be a 5GB cat videos! That's the encryption! The tweets are encrypted by the /dev/null interface and then stenographically stored and deduplated in a cat video!
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday April 18 2018, @01:05AM (2 children)
The sad thing is, I can see you in a room with people wanting to give you lots of money for all that impressive word salad.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday April 18 2018, @07:02AM (1 child)
Would you be so kind to tell where that room with those people waiting is located?
I'll make sure to hire a limousine for DECbot to get there and deliver the presentation; nothing else in return but an entry for me with a camera and a press badge. I even promise I'll lmao in private, not during the presentation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Wednesday April 18 2018, @02:40PM
Follow up Q&A:
How are the messages transmitted?
Just like how you would normally share cat videos across the internet.
How do you retrieve the message from the video?
And what? Break the encryption?
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Wednesday April 18 2018, @04:29AM
now, translate that to proper DCL, my DECbot
;)
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday April 18 2018, @01:24PM
The best feature of this is the open-source nature of it, while having the code completely under reasonable intellectual property control measures such that it is proprietary. Also, by default the lines that are read are immediately translated to The Cloud. When processed the electrons tunneling through the system handling the data have quantum states, so the latest qubit technology can be used to ensure that the null repository has total randomization which everyone agrees is the best encryptive methodology.
While in the past we used to leverage the synergy of private/public key technology, this new quantum computing approach allows for the ability to no longer require the keys. After the null write phase your data is truly compliant with serverless architecture, taking advantage of the latest theory on how dark data is less likely to be discovered by others - it's a digital detox which can sidestep or incorporate microservice architecture as desired. It takes advantage of your ability in working with null to easily produce self-service analytics as the computational answers all work to lowest-sum technology without needing a blockchain. It is projected that we can put this into a Mobile First environment and it is well suited for all IoT environments.
Thus DECbot has given us technology that is absolutely suited for the 21st Century Managerial environment and will ultimately reduce technological support costs as the simple nature of this base is fully realized.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 18 2018, @05:35PM
Nobody is gonna mention that pipe with /dev/null on the other side? Wrong redirector man
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 18 2018, @04:23AM (1 child)
I'm sure that the best and brightest among us can come up with a scheme (well, actually one already did) that could divert an adequate portion of US tax revenue in their direction, but I think any successful scheme will have as one of its steps, "TAKE THE GOD-DAMN PHONE AWAY".
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday April 18 2018, @02:08PM
The Russians would be displeased with the phone being taken away. I mean the unsecured personal Android phone.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.