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From:   Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date:   Mon, 30 Sep 2019 14:37:44 -0700
Message-ID: <CAHk-=wj=377rsWmvrK_MvL6yamTisj5SWFQZsQH+rjeic8_suA@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: France didn't want GSM encryption
To:     Marc Gonzalez <marc.w.gonzalez@free.fr>
Cc:     Pascal Van Leeuwen <pvanleeuwen@verimatrix.com>,
        Linux Crypto Mailing List <linux-crypto@vger.kernel.org>,
        Linux ARM <linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org>
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On Mon, Sep 30, 2019 at 4:14 AM Marc Gonzalez <marc.w.gonzalez@free.fr> wrote:
>
> Two statements above have raised at least one of my eyebrows.
>
> 1) France has laws that require backdoors.

No. But France has a long history on being bad on encryption policies.
They've gotten better, thankfully.

France was one of the countries that had laws against strong
encryption back in the 90s. It got better in the early 2000s, but
there's a long history - and still a push - for some very questionable
practices.

It was just a couple of years ago that the had discussions about
mandatory backdoors for encryption in France. Look it up.

Are there other countries that have worse track records? Yes. And in
the west, the US (and Australia) have had similar issues.

But when it comes to Western Europe, France has been a particular
problem spot. And I wanted to point out that it's not always the
obvious problem countries (ie Middle East, China) that everybody
points to.

> 2) France did not want GSM encryption.

I'm pretty sure that France had the encryption bit off at least during the 90's.

GSM A5/1 isn't great, but as part of the spec there is also A5/0. No,
it's not used in the West any more.

France was also at least at one time considered a hotbed of industrial
espionage by other European countries. And the US.

You can try to google for it, but you won't find all that much from
the bad old days. You can find _some_ stuff still..

  https://apnews.com/4206823c63d58fd956f26fd5efc9a777

but basically French intelligence agencies have been accused of
extensive industrial espionage for French companies over the years.

Anyway, I'm not trying to point to France as some kind of "worst of
the worst". I literally picked it as an example because people
generally _don't_ think of Western European countries as having
encryption issues, and don't generally associate them with industrial
espionage. But there really is a history even there.

            Linus