Slashdot Mirror
NYT Quietly Pulls Article Blaming Encryption In Paris Attacks
HughPickens.com writes: Inside Sources reports that the NY Times has quietly pulled a story from its website alleging the attackers used encrypted technology. The original piece, which has since been removed, can be found on the Internet Archive. It stated, "The attackers are believed to have communicated using encryption technology, according to European officials who had been briefed on the investigation but were not authorized to speak publicly. It was not clear whether the encryption was part of widely used communications tools, like WhatsApp, which the authorities have a hard time monitoring, or something more elaborate. Intelligence officials have been pressing for more leeway to counter the growing use of encryption."
A link to the NY Times article now redirects readers to a separate, general article on the attacks, which does not contain the word "encrypt." The Times later posted a second article citing an anonymous "European counterterrorism official" who was quoted saying authorities' "working assumption is that these guys were very security aware," but clarified officials "offered no evidence."
A link to the NY Times article now redirects readers to a separate, general article on the attacks, which does not contain the word "encrypt." The Times later posted a second article citing an anonymous "European counterterrorism official" who was quoted saying authorities' "working assumption is that these guys were very security aware," but clarified officials "offered no evidence."
The terrorists already assume you can read their emails and listen to their telephone calls and act accordingly. Calling for the government to easily be able to read the common man's emails and listen to their phone calls isn't going to help against terrorists one bit. All it's going to do is to help the government keep the populace in line which is more important to them than the terrorists.
They put out that it's encryption that allowed the attacks because it absolves them and their policies of any accountability plus it furthers their agenda of requiring that the government be able to intercept all communications. All without any proof of course. Most likely they will say they won't be able to comment further because of national security.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
This sort of 'reporting' is a farce, of which they really ought to be ashamed. Aside from the dubious wisdom of parroting 'unnamed intelligence sources who definitely wouldn't have any reason to be spinning the media after a dramatic and gruesome attack on their watch'; there's a pretty aching gap in even basic critical thinking if you treat 'the working assumption is that the guys were pretty security aware' as some sort of insight.
FFS, any pot dealer who has stayed out of prison for a couple of years would count as 'pretty security aware' in the vacuous "well, we didn't realize that they were up to something until they had already executed it" sense of the term. Of course some degree of care was used in orchestrating a coordinated attack involving a number of people, some of who had had run-ins with the law before. Why would you expect otherwise?
Plus, historical examples suggest that terrorists aren't complete morons about security: Al Qaeda and the Taliban both had a healthy distrust of cellphones, even before we learned what 'dirtboxing' was; and the guys who pulled the Mumbai attacks in 2008 used Blackberries specifically because BBM is way more resistant than SMS. I realize that somebody had a burning need to fill column inches; but what pitiful dreck.
The most shocking thing to me is that our (the US) security agencies seemed to be completely unaware that anything was being planned. No reports of chatter. No outwardly visible concern. Even the President was briefed that ISIS was "contained" and "under control," and he reported as much on national television days before the attack.
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And you believe Obama because????
You don't know what Obama was briefed. He's been openly trying to downplay ISIS for several years - because their existence imperils his "be nice to everyone and everyone will be nice to you" approach to international relations in a way that would make Neville "Peace for our time" Chamberlain proud.
I personally read these articles to find the name of the apps they say are "hard to monitor" and make sure I in no way ever use them. Think about this long and hard. Why would they tell "them" exactly what apps to use because they can't monitor them? They wouldn't. But.... they sure as hell would like to direct as many people as possible to use the apps that have easy access to, namely any app that appears by name in any of these articles. Hell, they even tried to blame snowden.
This article https://theintercept.com/2015/11/15/exploiting-emotions-about-paris-to-blame-snowden-distract-from-actual-culprits-who-empowered-isis/ is a pretty good discussion of what's in play. Kudos to the NYT for pulling the article. Shame they published it in the first place.
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How about this, instead:
Reporter interviewed some investigators who mentioned that the terrorists had been using encryption, and published the story including that fact. The investigators then realized that the terrorists associates might later read the article and realize that their encryption methods might now be compromised and abandon them -- so the investigators asked the newspaper to bury the article, in the hopes that the terrorists would continue using their (perhaps now compromised) encryption methods a bit longer and thereby expose themselves to capture.
I know it doesn't exactly feed the obligatory Slashdot "government is evil and wants to hack your computer" line, but it seems equally likely to me.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
If ISIS actually had 1000, or even 100, hardcore fighters who could be integrated into the refugee streams without the cat being let out of the bag somewhere along the way, then Europe is fucked no matter what.
Log in or piss off.
You are partly, but only partly right. The reason that you, me and everyone else are suspects is b'cos of political correctness. The compulsion to see Muslims as innocent, despite all the evidence to the contrary since 9/11. It started w/ the TSA in airports post 9/11, when they avoided profiling Muslims and scanned little girls and grandmothers, as opposed to Muslim men and women. The emboldening of Jihadi groups like CAIR just kept making things worse, so that every investigation's first priority was to NOT stigmatize Muslims, and that anything else came later.
Ed Snowden did a service in exposing the global surveillance regime. However, the solution to that issue is not to make it impossible for the security people, be it FBI, CIA, NSA, et al to do global wiretaps, but to proactively wiretap Muslims. That would include people who convert to Islam, since the overwhelming majority of it happens at the behest of people who have Jihadi links somewhere or the other - be it ISIS, al Qaeda, Hamas, Hizbullah, Jamait e Taghlibi, et al. B'cos converting people to Islam is step 1 in the recruitment of Jihadis in the West: they either start w/ people already Muslim, be it of Arab, Turkic, Iranian or Paki nationalities, or they start w/ people who are willing to convert to Islam and then go from there. So once someone converts to Islam, that should trigger the flags, and get the feds to start investigating.
I don't expect this to happen while Obama is around, or even if Clinton becomes president. But that's the only way to prevent another Paris attack from happening again in the West.