A bill that would allow police in France to spy on suspects by remotely activating cameras, microphone including GPS of their phones has been passed.
from what i understand, this gives the power to monitor communications like emails / text messages. which in my opinion is fundamentally different from turning on your camera or microphone.
having said that, I haven’t read into this in depth so perhaps that was outlined previously
The NSA has a ‘product’ catalog called ANT:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANT_catalog
One example is DROPOUTJEEP, which allows near complete control over iphones, including their camera’s.
France isn’t part of FIve Eyes, but do have a secret deal with the US anyway:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lustre_(treaty)
(This is all decade old Snowden stuff, so I suspect their capabilities have expanded since then).
This being said, I assume much of what they do isn’t exactly legal, so who knows. Given some of these treaties are secret, maybe they also have secret laws.
