X offices raided in France
apnews.com248 points by labrador 7 hours ago
248 points by labrador 7 hours ago
Honest question: What does it mean to "raid" the offices of a tech company? It's not like they have file cabinets with paper records. Are they just seizing employee workstations?
Seems like you'd want to subpoena source code or gmail history or something like that. Not much interesting in an office these days.
Gather evidence against employees, use that evidence to put them under pressure to testify against their employer or grant access to evidence.
Sabu was put under pressure by the FBI, they threatened to place his kids into foster care.
That was legal. Guess what, similar things would be legal in France.
We all forget that money is nice, but nation states have real power. Western liberal democracies just rarely use it.
The same way the president of the USA can order a Drone strike on a Taliban war lord, the president of France could order Musks plane to be escorted to Paris by 3 Fighter jets.
> We all forget that money is nice, but nation states have real power.
Interesting point. There's a top gangster who can buy anything in the prison commissary; and then there's the warden.
> We all forget that money is nice, but nation states have real power.
I remember something (probably linked from here), where the essayist was comparing Jack Ma, one of the richest men on earth, and Xi Jinping, a much lower-paid individual.
They indicated that Xi got Ma into a chokehold. I think he "disappeared" Ma for some time. Don't remember exactly how long, but it may have been over a year.
From what I hear, Ma made 1 speech critical of the government and Xi showed him his place. It was a few years, a year of total disappearance followed by slow rehab.
But China is different. Not sure most of western europe will go that far in most cases.
It's legal to just put kids in foster care for no reason but to ruin someone's life?
In France yes, if you call 119, you can push to have a baby taken from a family for no reason except that you do not like someone.
It's only then after a long investigation and a "family assistant" (that will check you every day), that you can recover your baby alone.
-> Example of such case (this man is innocent): https://www.lefigaro.fr/faits-divers/var-un-homme-se-mobilis...
Typically, ex-wife who doesn't like the ex-husband, but it can be a neighbor etc.
People who do fake reports don't get punished, as they just claim "there is a worrying situation" (signalement préoccupant) and it's difficult to prove intent.
During investigation they ask the children, but a baby cannot speak.
I can't believe theres a country out there that has recreated the DMCA but for child welfare
I mean, that's surely not as simple as you make it out to be.
I've seen that during harassment of a couple on X / YouTube.
In one YouTube live the woman claimed:
"today it's my husband to take care of him because sometimes my baby makes me angry that I want to kill him"
-> Whoops, someone talked with 119 to refer a "worrying" situation, baby removed. It's already two years.
There are some non-profit fighting against such: https://lenfanceaucoeur.org/quest-ce-que-le-placement-abusif...
That being said, it's a very small % obviously not let's not exaggerate but it's quite sneaky.
>Sabu was put under pressure by the FBI, they threatened to place his kids into foster care.
>That was legal. Guess what, similar things would be legal in France.
lawfare is... good now? Between Trump being hit with felony charges for falsifying business records (lawfare is good?) and Lisa Cook getting prosecuted for mortgage fraud (lawfare is bad?), I honestly lost track at this point.
>The same way the president of the USA can order a Drone strike on a Taliban war lord, the president of France could order Musks plane to be escorted to Paris by 3 Fighter jets.
What's even the implication here? That they're going to shoot his plane down? If there's no threat of violence, what does the French government even hope to achieve with this?
fighter jets ARE a threat of violence, and it is widely understood and acknowledged.
Again: the threat is so clear that you rarely have to execute on it.
>fighter jets ARE a threat of violence, and it is widely understood and acknowledged.
That's not a credible threat because there's approximately 0% chance France would actually follow through with it. Not even Trump would resort to murder to get rid of his domestic adversaries. As we seen the fed, the best he could muster are some spurious prosecutions. France murdering someone would put them on par with Russia or India.
> Western liberal democracies just rarely use it.
Also, they are restricted in how they use it, and defendents have rights and due process.
> Sabu was put under pressure by the FBI, they threatened to place his kids into foster care.
Though things like that can happen, which are very serious.
> defendents have rights and due process.
As they say: you can beat the rap but not the ride. If a state wants to make your life incredibly difficult for months or even years they can, the competent ones can even do it while staying (mostly) on the right side of the law.
We are not entirely sure the rule of law in America isn't already over.
People are putting a lot of weight on the midterm elections which are more or less the last line of defense besides a so far tepid response by the courts and even then consequence free defiance of court orders is now rampant.
We're really near the point of no return and a lot of people don't seem to notice.
> We're really near the point of no return and a lot of people don't seem to notice.
A lot of people are cheering it (some on this very site).
> Also, they are restricted in how they use it, and defendents have rights and due process.
It's a nice sentiment, if true. ICE is out there, right now today, ignoring both individual rights as well as due process.
> Also, they are restricted in how they use it, and defendents have rights and due process.
As we're seeing with the current US President... the government doesn't (have to) care.
In any case, CSAM is the one thing other than Islamist terrorism that will bypass a lot of restrictions on how police are supposed to operate (see e.g. Encrochat, An0m) across virtually all civilized nations. Western nations also will take anything that remotely smells like Russia as a justification.
> As we're seeing with the current US President
Well, that's particular to the US. It just shows that checks and balances are not properly implemented there, just previous presidents weren't exploiting it maliciously for their own gains.
>> they are restricted in how they use it, and defendents have rights and due process.
That due process only exists to the extent the branches of govt are independent, have co-equal power, and can hold and act upon different views of the situation.
When all branches of govt are corrupted or corrupted to serve the executive, as in autocracies, that due process exists only if the executive likes you, or accepts your bribes. That is why there is such a huge push by right-wing parties to take over the levers of power, so they can keep their power even after they would lose at the ballot box.
> We all forget that money is nice, but nation states have real power.
Elon has ICBMs, but France has warheads.
France has Ariane, which was good enough to send Jame Web Telescope to some Lagrange point with extra precision. It's all fun and and games until the French finish their cigarette, arms French Guyana and fire ze missiles.
> Sabu was put under pressure by the FBI, they threatened to place his kids into foster care.
This is pretty messed up btw.
Social work for children systems in the USA are very messed up. It is not uncommon for minority families to lose rights to parent their children for very innocuous things that would not happen to a non-oppressed class.
It is just another way for the justice/legal system to pressure families that have not been convicted / penalized under the supervision of a court.
And this isn't the only lever they use.
Every time I read crap like this I just think of Aaron Swartz.
Offline syncing of outlook could reveal a lot of emails that would otherwise be on a foreign server. A lot of people save copies of documents locally as well.
Most enterprises have fully encrypted workstations, when they don't use VM where the desktop is just a thin client that doesn't store any data. So there should be really nothing of interest in the office itself.
It sounds better in the news when you do a raid. These things are generally not done for any purpose other than to communicate a message and score political points.
Whether you are a tech company or not, there's a lot of data on computers that are physically in the office.
Except when they have encryption, which should be the standard? I mean how much data would authorities actually retrieve when most stuff is located on X servers anyways? I have my doubts.
The authorities will request the keys for local servers and will get them. As for remote ones (outside of France jurisdiction) it depends where they are and how much X wants to make their life difficult.
Musk and X don't seem to be the type to care about any laws or any compelling legal requests, especially from a foreign government. I doubt the French will get anything other than this headline.
Getting kicked out of the EU is extremely unattractive for Twitter. But the US also has extradition treaties so that’s hardly the end of how far they can escalate.
I don't think US will extradite anybody to EU. Especially not white people with strong support of the current government.
White people already extradited to the EU during the current administration would disagree. But this administration has a limited shelf life, even hypothetically just under 3 years of immunity isn’t enough for comfort.
> But this administration has a limited shelf life, even hypothetically just under 3 years of immunity isn’t enough for comfort.
Depends on how much faith you have in the current administration. Russia limits presidents to two 6-year terms, yet Putin is in power since 2000.
> don't think US will extradite anybody to EU
EU, maybe not. France? A nuclear state? Paris is properly sovereign.
> people with strong support of the current government
Also known as leverage.
Let Musk off the hook for a sweetheart trade deal. Trump has a track record of chickening out when others show strength.
> France? A nuclear state? Paris is properly sovereign.
That is true. But nukes are not magic. Explain to me how you imagine the series of events where Paris uses their nukes to get the USA to extradite Elon to Paris. Because i’m just not seeing it.