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Spanish Judge Cites Use of Secure Email As a Potential Terrorist Indicator
An anonymous reader writes Is it possible that using secure email services can be construed as an indicator of being a terrorist? Although it's a ridiculous notion that using secure email implies criminal activities, a judge cited that reason to partially justify arrests in Spain. In December, as part of "an anti-terrorist initiative" Operation Pandora, over 400 cops raided 14 houses and social centers in Spain. They seized computers, books, and leaflets and arrested 11 people. Four were released under surveillance, but seven were "accused of undefined terrorism" and held in a Madrid prison. This led to "tens of thousands" participating in protests. As terrorism is alleged "without specifying concrete criminal acts," the attorney for those seven "anarchists" denounced the lack of transparency.
First Cameron, now this judge. What's going on? You used to be cool.
Since governments tap and read everything; if they can't read it, according to them you must be hiding something.
If you are hiding something, you don't trust the government.
If you don't trust the government, you must be a terrorist.
Other people have nothing to hide in their eyes.
Will all potentially dangerous terrorists use secure mail: Yes, thanks to Snowden, they know that unsecured electronic communication will get them identified.
Do other people use secure mail: Yes, some of us have our reasons.
Do most people use secure mail: No. Most people don't care enough.
Does using secure mail automatically make one a terrorist in the eyes of a spanish judge: No, but it does let him quickly winnow out those who might need another look.
Is this a bullshit story: Yup, click-bait right up there with Timothy's usual confusion of correlation & causation.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
While we're at it, whispering is also highly suspicious and should be illegal.
This place must have an above average number of terrorists...
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
...because we do provide secure (as encrypted in the transport, network and the storage layer) . Spanish judges. You have to love them how people that know the law know few things about technology.
Why would you think judges are any different?
1. Fund some hot headed people and wait for results.
2. Claim that secure email is bad and more surveillance is needed over countries.
3. ?
4. Profit
Oh, wow, I never expected this!!! *bite*
I have no idea who you are or what you said. Sorry.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
And that's how politicians work. Doing everything to avoid being held responsible when a terrorist strikes. And apparently, judges work the same way. Someone I know works very closely with several Dutch ministers and he confirms that decisions are often based on emotion, not on logic and common sense. It is exactly THIS what makes terrorist strikes so dangerous.
It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
when encryption is outlawed only outlaws will have encryption
Can you show the original comment(s) where you called it?
A bad deficiency we still are having is that the mail traffic between mail exchange servers is typically unencrypted. Makes e-mail quite easy to spy by the gubbermentz.
I fucking called it and you ridiculed me
Welcome to Slashdot. You must be new here. Please learn not to begin comments in subject lines, HTH, HAND.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yes, because if I start sending letters with envelopes it's more suspicious and worthy of scrutiny than if I send postcards.
I wonder, clearly the FBI has been involved because the story points out that the FBI raided Riseups servers in the US. I wonder therefore if the FBI via their NSA counterpart actually datamined Amazons purchase history. i.e. this:
"The seven prisoners are accused of undefined “terrorism”. According to the prosecutor, the evidence against them includes finding numerous copies of a book called “Against Democracy”, written by the “Grupos Anarquistas Coordinados” (“Coordinated Anarchist Groups”, GAC), in the raided buildings. The GAC is an anarchist organisation, active since 2012, which the Spanish state is trying to paint as a “terrorist” network."
Suppose FBI datamined Amazon to select a group who had bought this book, and hands the list to the Spanish who then arrest them, find this book, and then cite it as evidence. When in reality they knew it would be there and this confirmation evidence is actually nothing of the sort.
Parallel construction again. The judge is told one version of events, when the reality is another. I'm sure they will get a search warrant, which will then 'find' whatever evidence they started from, letting them then introduce it as further 'confirmation'.
Terrorists are sending unencrypted emails which are specifically made to look like spam.
Among characteristics of captured terrorists, what are things that they had in common? Gosh, one of those is use of encryption. You think it's a coincidence that encryption is regarded as a weapon?
"it's a ridiculous notion that using secure email implies criminal activities"
Yes, true. However, criminal activities are frequently found using encryption. How can I explain this...hmm. OK, you know how Millenials consider you automatically suspicious unless they can look you up on facebook or linkedin? Yeah, it's like that. You might be a great person, but having this characteristic is associated with reprehensibility of some kind.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/uk-te...
UK terror threat: Theresa May warns of 'highly likely' attack as she backs 'snoopers' charter'
the US had a near monopoly on stupid public officials.
THE SPANISH INQUISITION!
FTA:
According to the prosecutor, the evidence against them includes finding numerous copies of a book called “Against Democracy”...
By the Spanish judge's logic, closing the curtains in your house and owning a copy of Mein Kampf would also cause him to view you as a potential Nazi.
Perhaps those who control the police are the only ones who are allowed to be "against democracy"...
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Lots of anti government traffic on /. since the Snodwen leak. Thwarting sleeper cells will require use of domestic and international spy agencies. They will get some things wrong but they will help identify and arrest sleeper cells. In the end the spooks will rue the day.
I doubt if a judge is actually so clueless as to believe something like this. But if he only cared about fooling journalists, then I could see it being used as a pretext
Is it possible that using secure email services can be construed as an indicator of being a terrorist?
When the question is posed like that, no. But it has been taken out of a context, and it is similar to saying 'is carrying a crowbar really a sign that you are going to burgle a house?' - you may be on the way home from the shop, intending to break some timber apart. On the other hand, if it is about 2AM and you are in a residential area far from your home, friends or family, and you can't offer a plausible explanation - perhaps it is reasonable to suspect that you are a burglar.
Terrorists look just like everybody else, at least until they blow themselves up or start shooting at the defenceless, so we have to use a complex set of indicators to try to guess who is likely to be plotting attacks; unfortunately they don't all use emails on 'terror.org' or whatever. If a number of factors come together, then perhaps using strongly encrypted email is worrying - you may have something legitimate to hide, but most people don't bother with encryption if they are just writing to their mum.
Every time there is some little incident of terrorism the public starts soiling their panties and begging politicians to do something. Frankly I find it disgusting. Frankly one's chances of being hurt by an act of terror in the US are so small that it approaches zero risk. Size limits the amount of risk. Other than emotion the US is so large that it would take a huge number of terrorists to do great enough harm to make us capitulate to any demands. Hitler found out quickly that terrorism brings forth retaliation capable of destroying a nation. The Arab nations had best sober up as at some point they will be seriously squashed if they do not hunt down terrorists in their own nations. Hitler dreamed of taking over the US and Canada. So how many German soldiers would it take to have one soldier per square mile covering Canada and the US? That soldier would make one heck of a target and trying to supply him with food, water and bullets would be impossible.
And this proves once again that everything is orchestrated by the governments. ISIS doesn't really exists. Neither does Al Qaeda. These groups are there by the government. It's the excuse to control us. Declarations like the ones from David Cameron, and this one from this judge, are intolerable and we must fight. This is the third war. The war between civilians and our goverments. It has already began. Act or die.
Everyone must rebel against the local government. Kill all your politicians. Let's rip the law, religions, and every other form of control.
Is it possible that using secure email services can be construed as an indicator of being a terrorist?
Take the experiment of drawing a random person. Define two events
If P(T|X) (probability of the person is a terrorist given he uses encryption) is larger than P(T) (probability of the person being a terrorist using no other evidence), I'd call the fact of using encryption an indicator of being a terrorist.
Any objections?
Of course the "indication strength" might be low. But I think the fact of using encryption increases my belief in someone being a terrorist. And taken together with other observations this might be enough to take according action.
didn't we just see a report from the NSA that the people who bombed the World Trade Centre didn't use encryption but instead used obfuscation - sending their messages to each other with subjects that would *deliberately* trigger SPAM filters, such as "Buy Viagra Online"?
Spain was a totalitarian, far-right dictatorship all the way to the 70's. The traditions live on, just like they do with the disciples of Elisabeth I and Oliver Cromwell.
TFS asks "it possible that using secure email services can be construed as an indicator of being a terrorist? ", then proceeds to say the police found multiple copies of the anarchist group's books in their houses. So yes, the leads they used DID identify the people they were looking for.
The more interesting question is "how much evidence is sufficient to justify an arrest?"
In the US, standing on the corner of MLK Blvd at night is a VERY strong indicator that one is a crack dealer (if male) or prostitute (if female). It is not, however, sufficient evidence to justify an arrest.
Good policing will involve looking at the totality of many indicators to highlight suspects, then further investigation to determine whether or not the initial indicators were correct. As an example:
A guy stands on the same street corner in the crack district for several hours.
Cars pull up, he leans into the car for a few minutes, pulls something out of his pocket, then the car pulls away.
After watching this for some time, police drive up to ask him what he's doing out there all night.
He runs away as soon as he sees police.
At this point we have several indicators - we "know" he's selling crack; with enough confidence that if we wanted to buy crack, we'd go talk to him. Now is the time for police to look into it further, so:
The next night, one of the police officers drives up in an unmarked car, not wearing his uniform.
The officer hands the guy a $20 bill without saying anything.
The guy hands the officer some crack.
Now it's time to arrest the guy.
First, we saw a number of indicators, which let the police know WHO they should have a look at.
Next, it was time to see about getting hard evidence one way or the other.
That's essentially how we train local and state police to keep an eye out for indications of possible terrorist activity. If it's hot out and someone is wearing a heavy trenchcoat to a large 4th of July event while walking purposely toward the center of the crowd rather than socialing like everyone else, watch them for a minute. If they walk over to a table and pull something from under their coat and put it under the table, have look. If they walk quickly away from the item they just put under the table ...
None of these indicators by themselves justify immediate arrest, they DO justify taking a closer look.
That already came out of some investigations in the EU recently. Other terrorists may just send pictures of Skippy after using steganography.
Lots of anti government traffic on /. since the Snodwen leak. Thwarting sleeper cells will require use of domestic and international spy agencies. They will get some things wrong but they will help identify and arrest sleeper cells. In the end the spooks will rue the day.
I once had a government ask me what "I was hiding from", and why do we need all the heavy crypto, and secrecy, and why we don't post with our real names.
I smiled and asked him if transparency was so open, why does the government classify things, and why don't Federal Agents publish their names publicly on their websites?
Guess who's killed more random innocent people? I'm simply a man with an opinion, no army, and no weapons.
I know a guy, a small scale criminal. Upopn suggesting to use something secure for communication (Tor + pidgin with OTR) he dismissed it immediately, fearing that then he would come under surveillance.
He was right, as Snowden revelations have shown.
If you arrest everyone in the world, you will no doubt detain a few "terrorists", drug dealers, pedofiles, and politicians...
It's interesting that the Suspicious Terrorist Encrypted Email System they were using was RiseUp.Net - it's a popular service aimed at providing secure communications for political activists.
The Average college student couldn't even tell you when WWII started, much less tell you any details.
They believe Nazi is another name for Republicans and Hitler is a cartoon character.
"MLK Blvd"? Really? You had to say that?
And most of the people I see hanging out on MLK Blvd at night are either waiting for a bus, or walking from a restaurant to the parking place they were lucky enough to find (in the businessy areas), or they're hanging out with friends near home (in the more residential parts.)
Successful candidates are co-opted by the oligarchy. Or eliminated, in various ways.
If you deny the essential neutering of democracy by money and the many manipulations (psychological, economic, and yes - criminal) it enables you are the one who does not understand or accept reality.
Racist? Do you think only black people go to MLK to buy crack? You're mistaken as to the facts. The white hookers are there too.
It's unfortunate that so many cities have chosen to rename Crack Blvd to MLK Blvd, but they have.
Dear three-letter agencies of the world,
I'm using SSH and SFTP because it's 20-fucking-15.
Can you guys do something useful and torture the tools who still use telnet and FTP?
Thanks.
I noticed you said you are "European". I'm curious, if you don't mind my asking. How old are you? Did your parents call themselves European, or did they say French/German/Belgian etc.?
Seems to be that cybercrimes defrauding people are a pretty significant threat to the everyday person and secure mail is a good way to protect yourself from that threat.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
..even if it tries hard to show as one.
This is a clear example of no power separation between politics and judges.
"Riseup provides online communication tools for people and groups working on liberatory social change"
Translation: we provide encrypted email for people trying to overthrow governments.
Do you lock your front door? You might be a terrorist.