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Turkey Arrests Journalists For Using Encryption
An anonymous reader sends news that three employees of Vice News were arrested in Turkey because one of them used an encryption system on his personal computer. That particular type of encryption has been used by the terrorist organization known as the Islamic State, so the men were charged with "engaging in terrorist activity." The head of a local lawyers association said, "I find it ridiculous that they were taken into custody. I don't believe there is any accuracy to what they are charged for. To me, it seems like an attempt by the government to get international journalists away from the area of conflict." The Turkish government denied these claims: "This is an unpleasant incident, but the judiciary is moving forward with the investigation independently and, contrary to claims, the government has no role in the proceedings."
A bunch of turkeys.
Well, generally it's a good thing that we have an independent judiciary. It ensures that they don't get caught up in the mob's favorite punching bag of the moment.
The problem here is that a judiciary is only supposed to hear cases of controversy: That means there has to be two sides, and the case can't go on if there's no one to prosecute.
In other words, if what they are saying is true, this means the Turkish courts are effectively judge AND prosecutor.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
I wonder what this transgression really is.
Is it connecting https to twitter or Gmail?
Is this cellphone traffic (commonly encrypted today).
Satellite links...
Encrypted laptops to protect company data.
This is worth watching.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
My guess is that Turkey has some sort of public prosecutors office that prosecutes criminal cases and it is that office that is the other side of the court case.
These offices are generally also independent from the government precisely to prevent political interference in the legal system. (at least they are in Australia)
Not that surprising for anyone that follows Turkish politics. Erdogan isn't as bad as ISIS but he inch-by-inch is taking Turkey down the theocratic road of countries like Afghanistan. He practically had to be coerced into fighting ISIS. Very plausible he would have joined forces with ISIS to fight Kurds if it hadn't been for foreign pressure)
Most Turks you meet are super nice in person but for some unfathomable reason this crpto-fascist jerk keeps winning elections. If he keeps winning elections, Turkey is going to devolve into a theocracy like most of the rest of the middle east. Secular Atatürk was rational (especially for his era). Erdogan things he's an Ottoman sultan. Populist moron.
Wow, so now to get arrested for terrorism, all you have to do is use the same kind of thing that a terrorist has used?
I sure hope none of them wear Nikes.
The Turkish national, the fixer had the encryption software, the journalists did not. Why were the journalists arrested and charged with terrorism because the US is promoting it by routinely destroying whistle blowers and actively making changes to policy pretend laws to target all journalists in conflict zones. This to give tacit approval to less then democratic states to go after all non-'embedded' (the word is going to take on some new connotations) journalists (corporate and intelligence agency lackeys).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
"the Casio F-91W digital watch was declared to be 'the sign of al-Qaeda' and a contributing factor to continued detention of prisoners by the analysts stationed at GuantÃnamo Bay." from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
well, a well run state has separation of the part that makes the laws and the part that executes the laws.
however, turkey is right now far from being a good state.
it's entirely possible that it's their common procedure to charge anyone(and anyone who was with) they caught with encryption as a terrorist, it just happens that the reporter is the only one.
still, in case of Turkey, it's fucking ridiculous to say that the government has no role in bogus charges against people who were reporting about kurds.
erdogan is a fuckwit and the government has had a role in turkey in prosecuting and interfering with frigging police officers ffs. erdogan doesn't give a fuck about ISIS he is only worried about the kurds.
case in point first they were saying that they're being prosecuted due to association with pkk and now they've changed it to due to having a computer encrypted with same software as isis has had some computers encrypted with. wanna bet what the SW is? (it's entirely possible it's just bitlocker too, they have a proven track record into being clueless)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Isn't an encrypted population like an armed population? Computers capable of powerful of enough encryption which once classified as munitions and their export banned. So having encryption is kind of like having the right to defend yourself. Which I do not see as bad, nor should the republicans who believe in the right to bear arms.
Society use your Sciences
So their judiciary isn't part of the government?
The original statement was in Turkish, not English. So saying "government" rather than "administration" was likely just a bad translation by a journalist.
In Western law that's the reason there's a jury - to ensure independence and oversight (theoretically). That is why there is prosecution as a State representative. A judge is meant to be both impartial and, somehow, understanding at the same time - understanding does not mean lenient. It is a separate branch of the government for a reason and one has a right to a trial by their peers for that reason. The term independent judiciary is a bit of a misnomer but calling it a quasi-independent judiciary is a bit wordy.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
What encryption system I wonder. Isn't https an encryption system that is used by Islamic State?
Not so fun when your staffers are falsely accused of being terrorists in an area where the real world consequences could mean prison, or even death. Maybe your staffers over here in the US will learn not be so quick to flippantly and falsely label others as "terrorists" just because it gets you clicks and promulgates a feminist agenda.
Not encrypted? pfft...
http://pastebin.com/qjhSHxn8
It is now.
http://textmechanic.com/Encryp...
Password: ?KCO3&pS12=zNH4X
Yes, that took too much effort. Slashdot did not approve of the message. "Filter error: That's an awful long string of letters there."
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
>implying that Republicans are going to know technology or use critical thinking skills
>implying that Democrats are likely to do so (my own text) instead of the Republicans
Maybe we need to start a public campaign to explain what the importance of this is. I don't think it is a party issue. My Republican and my Democrat associates all seem inclined to believe in the need to have the freedom to encrypt our documents. I don't tend to hang around with extremists and idiots so your mileage may vary. I think most of them, with a few notable exceptions that I will not get into here, are all pretty reasonable (speaking about my associates only) and would be more accurately described as centrists who may actually vote across party lines as needed but I've never asked them how they voted unless they've volunteered the information due to a conversation we were having.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Vice produces some of the best actual reporting and investigative journalism going. Anyone that says differently is frankly an idiot.
Reading the article, it sounds like Turkey has something more like an investigating magistrate -- a cross between a prosecutor and judge. This is (or was) common in civil law jurisdictions (eg, France). Scotland has something similar: a Procurator fiscal.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
That's the British sense of the word "government", not the US sense of the word. Turkey, like many nations, has a parliamentary system.
It goes something like this. The people elect parliament, who make laws much like the US Congress. The parliament then elects or nominates two heads. One handles foreign affairs. That's the head of state. In the US, the president is head of state. The other top person forms "a government" which handles internal affairs. The US is weird in that then president is both head of state and head of government. In parliamentary systems like Turkey and the UK, they are two seperate positions. (Though sometimes the head of state now has only nominal power, if the head of government and the parliament have slowly taken more and more power).
Seperate from "the government" and parliament is the judiciary. The head of government can't fire judges.
In this type of system, as in the early US system, the head of government doesn't have nearly as much power as the US president does. Other branches can and do act independently.
if your such a fan of freedom and encryption maybe you should encrypt ur ass instead of waving it all around town?
why do you assume the RNC is the problem?
My Republican and my Democrat associates all seem inclined to believe in the need to have the freedom to encrypt our documents.
I don't tend to hang around with extremists and idiots
danger! danger! contradiction alert!
The whole first two letters of that acronym kind of exclude them from the Cool Kids Club.
maybe it's like the no homers club?
Maybe I should get my public key tattooed on my ass. I'd have to get it tattooed backwards so that I could read it in a mirror.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Turkey has a member of NATO since 1952. They joined before (West) Germany did.
Turkey is in both Asia and Europe. It can control entry to the Black Sea (which contains the Crimea).
NATO called the *North Atlantic* Treaty Organisation because the North Atlantic is what lies between Europe and North America.
Really, if you did too many 'shrooms at school, you can find out all this stuff now with about 10 minutes on Wikipedia.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
And I'm still waiting on the coffee to brew. I think I'm doing pretty well.
(And I did my share of psychoactive imagineering back in the day, but it's been at least 20 years since I've messed with anything on that level.)
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I think they may have more ego than those you mentioned. They do have some good pieces, or did. I am a bit partial to their North Korea series. I'd be interested to see if they're ever allowed to go back.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
It's much easier to be honest and type gibberish and this is Slashdot so, no matter how esoteric the subject, someone comes along and corrects me. I even retain a little bit of it while I forget everything on Wikipedia a half hour later. Thanks and enjoy your morning coffee.
Posting as AC because Slashdot is being silly. It is obviously me. I'm probably the closest thing to a real life Markov chain. I am not sure if anyone could write like me well enough (poorly enough?) to fool anyone for long.
So if i browsw Websites using SSL (something which the ISIS probably also does), i am also a terrorrist?
I guess i wont tranfer in Istanbul Airport the next time i travel.
... what's next; banning Mathematics?? Because that's exactly what encryption is.
Instead of banning the tool (which never works) how about going after the _behaviors_.
Gee, if only we had some evidence about the power of peer pressure (7. The Harvard Man)
I think you have a weird definition of government.
Government can mean many things. Colloquially, it could be all of the state and all civil servants. But in the most restrictive meaning it would just be prime minister, ministers and state secretaries. Many legal texts use the latter, most restrictive meaning.
"independent judiciary" means that the "three powers" (judiciary, legislative and executive) are independent from each other. Police (part of the executive) cannot just arrest a judge (without the plenary of all judges agreeing to it first). Parliament (legislative) cannot just fire a specific judge. Police cannot arrest members of parliament (without rest of parliament lifting his immunity first). Etc.
You wanted functional encryption to be made illegal. Turkey has just taken a bold step towards this brave stance. How does it taste to you? I bet the EU spokeswoman's comments made the pill even more delicious, since she mentioned human rights, which is something the UK government also wants to shred.
[Citation Needed]
Given that Turkey takes in more refugees than all of Europe combined, has deployed significant military forces in conjunction with US forces against ISIS, and has arrested a pile of would-be fighters passing through its territory destined to fight for either side, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you're full of shit.
Given that Turkey would have a hard timer refusing silly numbers of refugees given its geography, that the majority of US deployments to the Middle East over the last forty years have promoted Islamic extremist groups, and stopping individual fighters identified by its allies is hardly mutually exclusive with sponsoring ISIS, I'm going to go out on a limb and say your black-and-white thinking is more suited in the compsci classroom than in international affairs.
A more nuanced analysis would identify very few countries whose governments have not benefitted from ISIS as a bogeyman for fear at home and military spending abroad. The respective government response is then to either actively sponsor ISIS (Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc.) or to merely take action which reinforces violent Islamic extremism, whether by destabilising containing governments or eschewing either diplomatic approaches or final military strategies in favour of endless skirmishes.
Encryption is an inherently criminal activity: the only people who would ever think to engage in it are obviously nefarious cretins w/ something to hide.
Therefore, anyone who refuses to immediately give up their password/passphrase to Deputy Fife or Mall Cop Paul should automatically be sentenced to 20 years minimal time at hard labor.
Note that these evil terrorists also assert the following additional abominable outrages:
...among maybe a few others.
1. Right to exercise free religion, free speech, free press, free open assembly, and protests against government
2. Right to keep and bear arms and form militias
3. Right to reject occupying forces
It's high time we pass a bill to outlaw all these assaults on theology and geometry!
----
Right is right and left is wrong.
Ignatius J. Reilly
Error: NSE - No Signature Error
You must be new to the world of politics. Just because a government does something opposite of what it's being accused of doing, doesn't mean it's not doing what it's being accused of doing.
You know, the US has gone after governments all over the world, often mentioning torture being one of the reasons they're doing whatever they're doing. But whoops, it just so happens to be that the US is also actively torturing captives. With innocent people proven to have died of it. Oh my.
Bingo, spot on over Erdogan. He's a whore though, not a fw. He'll gladly sell his pop. freedoms to Islam. You are correct that he doesn't much care about ISIS although he thinks it is just potty they are taking on dolt next door.
The agreement between the U.S. and Turkey to use the bases in Turkey against ISIS is an example of the Obama/Biden foreign policy, lead through weakness and be clueless about non-U.S. agendas. It is beyond stupid for Obama to sell the Kurds out and allow Turkey to screw them over. Erdogan needed a foreign adventure to use in his campaign to be dictator for life after the party including the Kurds prevented him from winning that exalted position in the last election, and gormless Obama walked right into it. The Kurds will notice what the U.S. did to them, just as the Shia in S. Iraq noticed when G.H. Bush and the U.S. sold them out to Saddam, they never trusted the U.S. again, and helped push them into the loving arms of the Iranians who will defend Iran's interest to the last Arab.
My Republican and my Democrat associates all seem inclined to believe in the need to have the freedom to encrypt our documents.
I don't tend to hang around with extremists and idiots
danger! danger! contradiction alert!
Most Republicans and Democrats are not extremists or idiots.
It does however appear to be a requirement for those running for higher offices.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Well, generally it's a good thing that we have an independent judiciary. It ensures that they don't get caught up in the mob's favorite punching bag of the moment.
The problem here is that a judiciary is only supposed to hear cases of controversy: That means there has to be two sides, and the case can't go on if there's no one to prosecute.
In other words, if what they are saying is true, this means the Turkish courts are effectively judge AND prosecutor.
Do you mean the independent judiciary whose members are appointed by the politicians it's supposed to be independent from?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
And "the administration", in turn, is used as a shorthand to mean "the executive branch", or more precisely "the elected or appointed leadership of the executive branch". When most people say "the administration", they mean the people who have actual power of some kind, which generally doesn't include junior-level park rangers, or even junior-level FBI agents.
Turkey shuts down water plants and bans oxygen and nitrogen. Turkish government notes that terrorists are using these substances to survive.
More at 11.
and yet the EU is still entertaining the idea of admitting these clowns as full members.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Funny enough, I bought an F-91W because of this press. I was starting to realize that most of the time I was taking my phone out of my pocket, it was to check the time. Every time I did that, I was taking myself away from what I was doing for way too long, and it was one more chance to drop an expensive phone.
So: I went looking for a cheap watch. I first hunted down the F-91W because of the terrorist association press, and the Amazon reviews are awesome. It's also a common watch sold at US military PXs, so I'm surprised that it would also be a watch that could get you picked up in Afghanistan. While looking at that one, I noticed that Casio actually makes a bunch of fairly decent looking analog watches for under $15 (MQ24-1E and MQ-24-1BLK are nice). They last about two years before the battery goes out, at which point you can replace the battery or the watch, and I had bought one of each over the past several years, before settling with the F-91W.
It's a tank. I wear it during martial arts, swimming, showering... nothing seems to phase it.
Police can arrest whoever they want to. What are the judges and parliament going to do about it? The police are the ones who have guns.
Most Republicans and Democrats are not extremists or idiots.
Spending a little time around either one will cure you of that thought. And yes, that means that the majority of the American population is either an extremist or an idiot, or both. There's been plenty of studies about how ridiculously polarized Americans are these days; this isn't an unfounded claim.
In reality, their liberal MILITARY (mark that one in your record books, folks) was the crux.. but.. now they're gone.
They weren't unique that way. Egypt had the same thing going on; remember the Muslim Brotherhood won in popular elections after the Arab Spring revolution, and it was their military that had to step in and take over. Pakistan had something similar, years ago, with Musharraf and his military running the country to keep the government from being run by Islamists. Same thing with Iraq, sorta: they had Saddam running the place, with a strong military, and he more-or-less kept the peace between all the warring factions within. Same with Syria under Assad; before civil war, he kept the peace, but now different warring groups of Islamists want to take over or separate. Countries like that can't be run democratically; they need dictators or military cabals, otherwise they start resembling ISIS-land.
Turkey really isn't near the North Atlantic
It's a lot closer to the North Atlantic than it is to the South Atlantic (which is the Atlantic Ocean south of the Equator).
Police can arrest whoever they want to. What are the judges and parliament going to do about it? The police are the ones who have guns.
Technically, using their guns in such a way (i.e. overstepping their constitutional mandate) would be a coup d'État. And the only thing the judges and parliaments could do in such a case would be to call on the populace to resist. And even that is moot, if the police had the foresight to occupy the media (TV stations, ...) first (which is actually what often happens during a coup d'État). There's still the internet to get the word out, but right now, they're taking "care" of that... Mesh networks? Oops, they're taking care of that one too.
I'm not trying to impugn most democrats or republicans, I'm just suggesting you may be overestimating your friends.
NATO was formed to restrain Soviet/Communist expansion in Europe.
Turkey is a democratic nation, allied with the US and the rest of the NATO powers. It has a beautiful position on the southern flank of the Soviet Union; it controls access to the Black Sea, meaning that in case of a war they are able to stop the Soviet (now Russian) Black Sea fleet from getting out into the Med and causing trouble (that fleet was based in the Crimea, which you might have heard something about in the news recently). Moreover, Turkey actually had a border with the Soviet Union (now Armenia and Azerbaijan); that area provided useful intel from listening posts, and allowed the forward deployment of nuclear missiles. You might have learned something in history class about how the US freaked out about Soviet missiles being based in Cuba because they were so close to Washington and thus could hit us after a very short flight; missiles in eastern Turkey are about that close to Moscow and thus can hit them after a similarly short flight, and caused a similar amount of stress over there... Additionally, in case of a long war, securing access to middle eastern oil fields would be vital, while cutting off Soviet access to their oilfields in the Caucasus would be similarly vital; Turkey offers forward bases conveniently close to that whole region.
Given all of that, you're shocked that they're included just because the US and UK chose to name the alliance after their favorite body of water, rather than picking a more inclusive name like "Non-communist Countries of North America and Europe Alliance"?
Technically, the government is secular (women working in government offices are even forbidden to wear head scarves, for example), but Erdogan has been doing everything possible to uproot that. As in many countries, the cities tend to back full separation of church/temple/mosque and state, while the rural areas tend to want religion integrated into government.
As you say, for a long time the military was a strong force for secular liberalism and the standard-bearer for Ataturk's secularist reforms and even led several coups to restore secular and democratic rule. Erdogan, though, made sure early on in his administration to gut their capacity to affect policy, let alone lead a coup.
I don't think that Turkey's capacity to be a mix of Muslim culture and secular government is entirely gone, but it's certainly diminishing. If it had a stronger and more diverse economy, Tunisia might be in a position to do so, but poverty (which often breeds Islamism, just like it does Christianism) and terrorism have virtually ruled out that possibility.
In reality, their liberal MILITARY (mark that one in your record books, folks) was the crux.. but.. now they're gone.
They weren't unique that way. Egypt had the same thing going on; remember the Muslim Brotherhood won in popular elections after the Arab Spring revolution, and it was their military that had to step in and take over. Pakistan had something similar, years ago, with Musharraf and his military running the country to keep the government from being run by Islamists. Same thing with Iraq, sorta: they had Saddam running the place, with a strong military, and he more-or-less kept the peace between all the warring factions within. Same with Syria under Assad; before civil war, he kept the peace, but now different warring groups of Islamists want to take over or separate. Countries like that can't be run democratically; they need dictators or military cabals, otherwise they start resembling ISIS-land.
You're missing the point that the Turkish military are (comparatively) liberal, which is not the case with Egypt, Syria or Iraq.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I suppose "governmental entities " is somewhat all-inclusive. It's kind of hard to know what to include in all-inclusive since different nations and other political divisions are so different. Does the (all-inclusive) government of Germany include EU entities?
Saudi Arabia has two completely separate entities. You may have noticed many hospitals in the US are run by religious organizations, and often have Saint in their name. Similarly with many schools. In Saudi Arabia, the religious groups run most hospitals, schools, and other domestic services. Does that make them a government? It's not entirely clear. The house of Saud basically handles foreign affairs, so they are clearly governmental. (The house of Saud has a friendly view of the US. The religious groups in the area often do not.)
You're missing the point that the Turkish military are (comparatively) liberal, which is not the case with Egypt, Syria or Iraq.
Yes, it is. The Egyptian military is not more conservative than the Muslim Brotherhood; that's why they deposed them. Same with the other places: the autocratic regimes were more liberal (i.e., secular instead of Islamist) than their populations and the groups now vying for power there.
True but I feel I would be if I supported Turkey doing this sort of thing to them.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
No? Heh. I'll take your word for it but I thought the jury trial was optional in most of western Europe, Canada, the US, etc... Then again, now that you mention it, I don't seem to recall ever seeing a jury in, say, the UK - I've done well to avoid courts in the EU-area.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
The stupidest? Pfft... You've not read at least half of my posts then. No, no... I type far more stupid things.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
In any parliamentary republic, no matter the language used, "government" refers to the administration, i.e. the executive branch.