Being french, I am quite certain that this is a lesser news to french people than PRISM was to americans.
Read the comments (if you can read french), and you'll notice that the reactions are all a sarcastic combination of "not surprised at all" and "that darn government probably didn't even get this right".
To sum up the differences:
- PRISM was legal. That said, in France, legal coherency is a joke. Laws conflict with each other, and even when voted, they may not be applied.
- There is an implied contract in the US that the government won't spy on citizens. Nobody believes that in France.
- As a result of the above, the people behind this "revelation" won't even be sued.
- French people tend to use services from abroad (mostly american, sweden and german), so the government doesn't have much leverage to get information from companies. I doubt they broke TLS. They do have a huge understanding with ISPs, however. Incidentally, ISPs are severely distrusted by their users.
All in all, our democracy is even worse than yours. Yes, that is possible.
Being french too, when I first read about PRISM, I thought the american people would fight it fiercly. I just read about the french equivalent and I know the french people will never try to fight it.
Legal or not, it's our liberty they're taking away from us.
The people of the USA and France now feel powerless against our respective governments. We gave our votes to the executioners of our liberty.
Read the comments (if you can read french), and you'll notice that the reactions are all a sarcastic combination of "not surprised at all" and "that darn government probably didn't even get this right".
To sum up the differences:
- PRISM was legal. That said, in France, legal coherency is a joke. Laws conflict with each other, and even when voted, they may not be applied.
- There is an implied contract in the US that the government won't spy on citizens. Nobody believes that in France.
- As a result of the above, the people behind this "revelation" won't even be sued.
- French people tend to use services from abroad (mostly american, sweden and german), so the government doesn't have much leverage to get information from companies. I doubt they broke TLS. They do have a huge understanding with ISPs, however. Incidentally, ISPs are severely distrusted by their users.
All in all, our democracy is even worse than yours. Yes, that is possible.