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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."
This is like watching a Hollywood spy movie where they're astounded at how the elite criminals are using Unix!
It's an open question to me whether it's the media that is dumb, the alleged government spokespeople, or somebody is just faking it to bullshit the generally dumb public who doesn't know any better.
Here's a hint how to defeat these terrorists. Go about your daily life as if nothing happened, and don't let the government do anything different.
Then they'll lose and you won't lose either.
do your fucking job. spying on suspects
not hoovering everything from everyone and thinking a search query will give you magic intelligence. intelligence work is *work*
the encryption is not important. your gumshoe work is. get out of your fucking cubicle you lardass and find these dirtbags
and if you can't do that maybe your useless security theatre job should be axed
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Would it surprise anyone these asshats used encrypted comms? I would expect they would, but this is no reasons to have backdoors in comms equipment. All anyone has to do is create a one-time pad of words and phrases and every player has that one-time pad. Good luck breaking that.
I despise these islamic asshats and I think they should be hunted down and killed like the roaches they are, but banning encrypted comms solves nothing. What solves stuff is quietly learning about these "people" and doing what the Israelis did during their famous Sword of Gideon operation. Create utter despair and paranoia among their ranks. It's possible. I would love to see, utterly impossible as it sounds, a collaboration between, say, the Mossad, French Intelligence, and Anonymous to track and kill these roaches. One can only dream...
Have some newspeople actually stopped to think whether their sensationalist article had the potential to cause great harm to their own society?
Is it snowing in hell?
NYT has done this several times. There was even a website that tracked changes in articles (I apologize for not sourcing that now, I'm searching for it. )
how are we supposed to crack that?
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.
This begs the question of where our intelligence agencies are focusing their efforts. Are they really scouring the world for terrorist activity, or are they too busy spying on their own citizens?
We live in dark and scary times when my government knows everyone I call or email, and when, and records all of that communication, but they can't catch wind of a major terrorist attack in its planning stages.
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.
Because that is easier than blaming Merkel and like-minded leaders for self-righteously taking a position that they knew, beyond any reasonable doubt, would give ISIS incredibly easy access to their streets. The FBI director admitted that they have literally no meaningful body of information by which to screen our "refugees" for terrorist ties, and our president is likewise bringing them in anyway.
The NYT is not going to call these policies what they are: bordering on treason for the level that they endanger the host societies.
A handful of men did this attack in Europe. How many more "handfuls" of similarly capable men got through? Probably a lot. We know ISIS is threatening to do this in the US. ISIS isn't stupid. They're not going to go to the heart of Texas or Louisiana where half of the concert goers pack nothing smaller than 0.40. They're going to go to NYC, LA or Chicago. You know, "progressive" places where the average person thinks that no civilized person would "feel so inadequate" that they'd want to carry a gun. And when the police are 10 minutes away, there will be a body count identical to Paris or worse.
Not the US government's fault. If these asshats are smart, and they are, they are using one-time pads with operational info. They will use code words that mean nothing like what they intend to do. Stuff like "I'll be taking my children to the doctor tomorrow" could mean something, but if it was intercepted, would mean nothing to a listener without the context of the one-time pad.
These islamic asshats have become smarter. They learn like anyone else. This migration into Europe of mostly military-aged men is no accident. The islamic asshat leaders have already stated there are thousands of them streaming into Europe. This is an invasion, make no mistake. Europe will be majority muslim within a single generation, and nothing could be sadder. Beautiful Europe ruined by the like of muslims whose culture and outlook on life are at complete odds with democratic Europe. Everywhere these asshats go sees a dramatic increase in rapes, murder, incest, theft, you name it. Because of this migration/invasion, Europe will look like Detroit within a generation.
No, he was briefed that they were not contained. After all, if they were, why would he need to try to convince us?
You people just don't like him because you're racists.
"The attackers are believed to have transported themselves and their weapons using modern automobile technology, including (but not exclusively) internal combustion engines, air-pressurized tires and asphalted roads. They may even have used advanced public transportation technologies".
Speechless.
Are our so-called leaders *that fucking incompetent*?
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.
http://newsdiffs.org/article-h...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The Republicans illegally leaked classified documents proving Obama told the truth.
Paris Attacks Renew Call for Access to Encrypted Messages
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
And they still want to make the haystack even bigger! Everyone was "On Message" last Sunday!
Face the Nation Transcripts November 15
Interview with Michael Morell, former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency:
DICKERSON: So, just to -- so these weren't kind of a bunch of lone wolves? These are people who have a connection to a headquarters?
MORELL: It seems that way, yes.
DICKERSON: And how does that communication take place?
MORELL: So, I think what we're going to learn, we don't know for sure yet, but I think what we're going to learn is that these guys are communicating via these encrypted apps, right, the commercial encryption, which is very difficult, if not impossible, for governments to break, and the producers of which don't produce the keys necessary for law enforcement to read the encrypted messages.
A group of people who didn't want to be spied on used technology to prevent being spied on.
Bonus points for the EU official speaking on the condition of identity encryption to discuss information.
Nevermind that they have no fucking CLUE how they communicated, LET'S BLAME ENCRYPTION because it aligns with our existing (Bullshit!) policies!
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS WRONG WITH THE PSEUDO SECURITY APARATUS!?
NPR interviewed some numbskull NY police person yesterday who used the Paris attacks as an attack vector against encryption.
How many times can someone say "Going Dark"?
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Intelligence briefings to Congress say ISIS is not contained and getting stronger. This is from D. Feinstein, head of the security group in the Senate. The head of the FBI also told Congress that it is impossible to vet the Syrian refugees coming to the US.
Obama came out and gave a speech filled with lies, according to his people and other members of the DNC. They know things are going on, Obama just doesn't want to recognize that there is a problem because he would then have to deal with it.
NBC Nightly News also manufactured a story last night about the evils of encryption and its use by terrorists. It went something like this.
We have no clue how the terrorists communicated, but it's likely they used encryption like Viber and Telegram(apps) and Playstation. Be afraid of the evil chat apps. The government has got to do something about the evils of encryption or they can;t protect us and keep us safe. Encryption is teh evil.
And the NYT has a new and extensive story that absolutely "mentions" crypto.
We don't need "backdoors". What we need is a clear acknowledgment that what increasingly exists essentially amounts to a virtual fortress impenetrable by the legal mechanisms of free society, that many of those systems are developed and employed by US companies, and that US adversaries use those systems against the US and our allies, and for a discussion to start from that point.
The US has a clear and compelling interest in strong encryption, and especially in protecting US encryption systems used by our government, our citizens, and people around the world from defeat. But the assumption that the only alternatives are either universal strong encryption, or wholesale and deliberate weakening of encryption systems and/or "backdoors", is a false dichotomy.
I would imagine more than a few officials went running for their "Edward Snowden has blood on his hands" fanfiction with their tongues cartoonishly flapping out the sides of their mouths the second news of the attack broke.
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.
....
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.
Oh the terror. I read france was prepared that very day for just such an attack. Too much similarity with 911 for me.
Nevermind that both Turkey and Iraq both gave multiple warnings to France of an impending attack, sounds like Obama's fault yeah.
Nowadays encryption becoming the norm. Most sites use https when dealing with private data, and if you are looking for something more secure, there are plenty of easily accessible end-to-end encryption tools. It's pissing off government agencies BTW.
There are people who use strong encryption for their cat pictures. For terrorist to communicate without encryption is almost like wanting to be discovered and should be seen as very suspect.
Also "encrypted technology" is so wide that it is like saying that they used "vehicle technology" for movement. Watching a DVD is using encryption technology, even though it is just a totally broken DRM.
the Paris attackers had used some kind of encrypted communication
Which requires the incredibly rare high-tech skill of installing a readily available app on your smartphone.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Take your gate and go to hell.
Brennan also said the United States had strategic warning about the terrorist attack in Paris, but did not provide details, other than to say it was not a surprise.
The same subordinate status that makes it OK for the ruling class to violate citizens' privacy means it's not a big deal if they are blown up. Sheep are herded, sheep are slaughtered.
That's a self-contradictory opinion.
You're asking them to scour the internet for clues to what can happen in the future without thinking about the obvious consequences in terms of spying on their own citizens.
For one thing, the internet is not separated by nationality - I view websites that are hosted all over the world. There's nothing automatically about me in many of the gathered profiles that would suggest that I am a US citizen but perhaps my particular English word spellings in the online postings.
Personally, I think that trying to predict attacks that will happen in the future is impossible. It's much easier to figure out who did it after the fact and then find and lock them up or kill them. If we create and maintain the massive spying apparatus we'd need otherwise, we have many more problems in terms of loss of trust and freedom of speech. With the upcoming copyright and patent focus of TPP etc, combined with a massive spying apparatus, the rights of the individual vs government or corporations is under threat.
You're so angry you apparently can't even type hate. I want to cry because those Republicans hate so much.
Even the President was briefed that ISIS was "contained" and "under control" in Iraq and Syria, and he reported as much on national television days before the attack.
FTFY - If you're going to quote the president, quote the whole thing. Too many people run off at the mouth with half a quote that lacks any context. While ISIS is "contained" and "under control" in Iraq and Syria, it doesn't prevent the offshoot terrorists from launching attacks in non-combat zones far removed from the main battlefield.
Did I miss something here or are we trying to protect people from an idea that they might "misunderstand"? If we're going to ban the word encryption from discussions about security, then we're no better than those monsters in our paranoid dreams.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
NYT is not the only news outlet. CBS ran with such a story in this morning's telecast, being sure to use the words "encryption" and "encrypted" as much as possible.
The Republicans illegally leaked classified documents proving Obama told the truth.
Why would they do that? It doesn't make any sense that they would break the law to protect Obama. Liberalism is a mental disorder.
I've been watching the media coverage (and listening - NPR) on this whole encryption mudslinging by law enforcement. The media is eating it up, and while they are careful to say that the jury is out on whether or not the terrorists in Paris used encrypted communications, they are quick to say that law enforcement and intelligence agencies had no inkling that this attack was on the horizon. I will leave aside the notion that Occum's Razor can be used to evaluate the two scenarios - one where the agencies and law enforcement were simply incompetent and are now blaming this evil encryption for being caught flatfooted, vs. their premise that the terrorists MUST be using encryption now...
What is lost on all of them (agencies, law enforcement) is THAT THEY DID THIS TO THEMSELVES either way. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies have been "hoovering up" all available communications data and metadata. They demanded and got kangaroo courts (FISA - I'm looking at you) where secret search warrants are being executed. There is no regulation by the citizenry, only by government "you can trust us" types who don't understand that when the stories about this stuff break, consumers begin to demand secure communications. Every time the government executed these warrants on the communications and computer industries, they gave them both an incentive to ditch the whole cooperation thing, and finally those companies started encrypting things in a way that they did not have the ability to "listen in" because lets face it, that is a pain in the neck and takes them away from their core mission.
Now they are crying about encryption, without understanding that the ship already sailed... And they are the ones that kicked it out of the harbor.
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
Their resource constrained attention span is too short for following religious extremists. After all, the extremists are in it for the rest of their "life", not just a few months.
But they were and still are contained. He was, as usual, correct.
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.
That image too is for public consumption. American foreign policy has nothing to do with "be nice to everyone and everyone will be nice to you".
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Complain to the media directly. Ask them why they won't hold intelligence services responsible for a lack of human intelligence.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
They certainly are doing their job. It's just that their job isn't what you think it is (or even what they think it is). Their job is to expand the business of government, and spying on everyone (including innocents) is clearly a more lucrative way to expand the business of government than spying on a few select individuals. Obviously the administration costs more, but the real pot of gold is the precedent it sets for subsequent expansions of government.
I seriously doubt that any spy, agent or terrorist carries along encrypted plans. Even plans are not communicated. This has been understood for well over a thousand years of warfare. At best, there are a series of code words which are clues to events, but alone, are meaningless. Hence, if you are going to go through with a plan, you might communicate, "The match is on." But even that is suspicious. Probably something more along the lines of quoting some obscure text.
If that is true, why have French authorities repeatedly said that they expect a major attack in the months before the attack?
The easiest way to learn is to have your enemy brag about how they got you.
We've seen a lot of officials brag about how they achieved something when they brag about achieving it. But I guess they have to brag in order to justify the crap to the public.
Citizenship is almost meaningless as a determining factor in affinity for the host society. We could rubber stamp all of our illegal immigrants and call them US citizens, and at the end of the day their loyalties would rightfully be primarily with the countries they came from and continue to send remittances to support.
Look at the attackers. None of them were native-born French whose ancestors were French for centuries. They're all the sons of recent arrivals or actual refugees by way of Greece. You can't pull this shit and expect it to fool anyone who is paying attention.
The attackers may have been friends who met at Weight Watchers. Holy shit, ban Weight Watchers!
hmm no proof of that OR of the attackers using encryption.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Encryption for communication!
Bitcoin for payment!
Instant messaging for education!
Tor for recruitment!
Torrents for distribution!
Did I miss any? Probably!
[quote]widely used communications tools, like WhatsApp[/quote]
It's not exactly news that Daesh/IS/ISIS/ISIL uses Telegram for secure communication. That was confirmed months ago and it shouldn't surprise anyone that the people involved in these attacks will have used Telegram or similar tools too.
The question is, what does it matter? Encryption, like many tools, can be used for good and bad.
Want to significantly reduce re-occurrence of these atrocious events? Take away the fertile ground of disenfranchisement that draws them into religions. So far all the Paris terrorists appear to have been born and bred European citizens. People who, somewhere along the lines between birth and adulthood, lost connection with society around them and hope of a better future. People who are in some countries considered second-class citizens based on where their parents or grandparents were born. People who don't stand a chance of ever getting a decent job now or in the future. It's no coincidence that many of these thugs started of a small time criminals. They are easy prey for preachers with dubious intentions, it only takes a few months to turn some of them into a terrorist.
They can catch wind of it, they have the information. They choose to monitor citizens illegally instead.
Maybe the real question people need to be asking is not why the CIA and NSA didn't have any advanced notice of the attacks, but why they choose to ignore that information and focus their spying efforts on domestic targets?
And money, documents, connections, etc. don't scale if your goal is to move 1,000 fighters into Europe, not a squad's worth of men. It is far easier to take a battalion or two of fighters, tell them to put on dirty old clothes and mingle with a vast wave of refugees than make fake IDs, itineraries, money transfers, etc. for them. Not to mention it looks damn suspicious if you have 40 combat age arabic-speaking men milling around in an airport acting like they might or might not know each other.
> The most shocking thing to me is that our (the US) security agencies seemed to be completely unaware that anything was being planned.
Why does this shock you? Do you expect security agencies to be aware of every single time a handful of nut-jobs decide to shoot up a public place?
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
"Carlos Slim’s Late Wife Was a Member of the Most Bloodthirsty Lebanese Warlord Clan"
Carlos Slim bought the New York Times on the strength of his corrupt relations with the Mexican government that gave him monopoly on cell phone communications in that country.
Seastead this.
If they're offshoots, then they aren't contained. That's like saying that a bunch of kudzu is contained because only the offshoots have taken over the next yard.
"Hey there, we're all going to meet up in London in two weeks. Be sure to bring a sweater because it'll be cold. We're stopping at Bill's place first, then going out to eat. Maybe we'll catch a concert. How's that sound?"
Come to Paris in three days. Bring AK-47 and ammo. Akmed will provide suicide vests to attack the restaurants and concert hall. Allah Akbar!
Seriously, nobody with a brain is going to use actual encryption, that's a red flag. They'll come up with a code first, something that sounds normal. I can just see the CIA now: "Oh no, these two people say they're going to the movies! Code Red! Code Red!"
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
> If these asshats are smart, and they are, they are using one-time pads
Or communicate in person. How much electronic coordination is required to gather some small arms, and to agree on a time and place?
> there are thousands of them streaming into Europe
Not controlling immigration will be looked back upon as a profound strategic blunder, even though (as I disagree with you) there is no conscious invasion motivation on the part of the immigrants.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Clearly there's an assumption in the community that if they hadn't been using encryption, the intelligence community would have known about the attacks. Would they have known if none of the communication had ever taken place on the internet or cellular networks? It sounds like some of the attackers were actually related, so they could have just as easily discussed their plans over coffee. It's not even all that hard to meet up in person, possibly leaving the cell phone at home or handing it off to someone to run it around town for you if you're really paranoid. I'm sure it's in no way that we're complacent in the idea that things that don't happen online don't exist at all. After all, no wars were ever fought and no countries were ever invaded prior to the invention of the Internet, right? There's no possible way you could organize tens of men, much less tens of thousands of men without some sort of electronic medium. Or without your neighbors knowing.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
> MORELL: So, I think what we're going to learn, we don't know for sure yet, but I think what we're going to learn is that these guys are communicating via these encrypted apps, right, the commercial encryption, which is very difficult, if not impossible, for governments to break, and the producers of which don't produce the keys necessary for law enforcement to read the encrypted messages.
Christ, you can hear in the transcript the internal discomfort that must come with the awareness that you are being a mouthpiece.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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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Are these men disguised as women and children? Can you explain how the 750,000 refugees that the USA has taken in since 9/11 have not done anything terroristy? Do you just make shit up and post it as AC because you know that you just make shit up?
Thank you for your respectful disagreement, but I disagree with your assessment the migration is not, at least in part, planned. It is. islamic leaders have already stated they are using this a means to achieve a "legal" standing for potentially thousands of terrorists. Where islam is, there is trouble. This religion has, since its inception, been unable to get along with anyone else. To muslims, it's turn or burn. The vast majority of muslims believe in sharia law, so-called moderates or not. islam is not compatible with European or Western society in general. They want to undermine our laws with sharia. I've family in Europe, and they are always sending me links to articles about European courts agreeing to moderate sharia law disputes, or allowing parties to sort out their issues with sharia law rather than the law of the land. This is a very dangerous start.
Schools across Europe are being asked to curtail the serving of ANY pork products so as not to offend the little jihadists. It's their country, tell the muslims to shut up or go home. Ever ask yourself why islamic countries are not taking in these people? Because they know what will happen. Europe will be islamic within one generation. muslim men and women breed like rabbits. White, indigenous Europeans are not reproducing as fast, so Europe will be islamic before too long. These statements are not meant to be bigoted, but rather point out what the poltically correct will not. I've police in my family in Europe, and they have said that the immigration of muslims in the last several years is the reason for the uptick in rapes, murder, you name it. Europe will look like Detroit within on generation.
How is this shocking?
The team leader gets his general, not specific, verbal instructions from some guy in a tent in the middle of some desert wasteland. He goes back to Europe and recuits a half dozen guys.
They all manage to plan it secretly, don't tell anybody, and nobody gets busted doing something stupid, like getting pulled over with AK-47s and Semtex in the back seat.
How the fuck do you stop that with electronic surveillance?
The only thing that would seem to even put a dent in that kind of operation is going full-on totalitarianism, ie, sending in the jackboots to every house with "Mohammed" on the nameplate and turning the place upside down, hemming them into their own neighborhoods and not letting them out without checkpoints and searches.
I think everyone sees the drawbacks to such an approach. Even the people who manage to pull it off halfway decent STILL have problems and have all the other problems that go alone with such a system. The Israelis aren't 100% effective, even the goddamn Chinese can't seem to squeeze the Uighurs tight enough to shut that problem down and their playbook has rules like "if anyone objects, shoot them in the head and ship everyone they know to a gulag".
About the only country that makes it work is North Korea, and that just might be because we don't know what doesn't work there.
This migration into Europe of mostly military-aged men is no accident.... Europe will be majority muslim within a single generation...
I wish I had a nickle for every time I've read "military-aged men" over the past, what has it been? 6 months or so?
I'm trying to figure out this Narrative. So, what are you trying to suggest? I've spent a grand total of about a month in Europe so help me out. Are European women just going to give up their culture and be conquered? That doesn't seem to mesh with what I saw firsthand and also in other interactions with European women on the internet(s). Granted, I haven't spoken to any in a few years.
If I have a point here, which I'm not certain I do, is that the sheer sexism of the "military-aged men" meme gobsmacks me every time. Nobody seems able to make up their minds about whether women in developed countries are independent and equal or whether they're weak and dependent.
Then again, my answer probably lies in the glorification of victimhood as a virtue I've been seeing out of 3rd wave feminism for about the past 5 years, well, maybe more like 15-20 years, but it's certainly been a Narrative that's been pushed hard lately.
I don't know. I'll never understand it. I don't know why I try.
The TLAs always toot their horns about how effective their surveillance programs have been at stopping many attacks just like these. So yes, I expect results, since these programs are so "effective." Otherwise what the fuck are we paying their salaries for? We knew Osama was coming for us at least a decade before it happened. The conservatives blocked slick willie's attempts to hunt him down in 1998. Then we had knowledge that an attack was about to be carried out 2 months before it happened. Then the attack was carried out and it wasn't stopped. And then our glorious and omniscient leader sat with eyes glazed over, drooling from the corner of his mouth for 8 minutes when he was informed that the attack was carried out.
My point is that world governments are comprised of a bunch of incompetent idiots who need diapers and sippie cups.
'Reporter', if you don't tell me who the quote is from, I assume you made it up. What other lesson could Judith Miller teach me? No source means I can't evaluate motive or credibility, so I'll assume you made it up.
This begs the question of where our intelligence agencies are focusing their efforts.
I'd imagine that US security agencies are concentrating their efforts on... the US.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Same AC that replied down there wishing I had a nickle for every time I've read "military-aged men."
muslim men and women breed like rabbits. White, indigenous Europeans are not reproducing as fast, so Europe will be islamic before too long.
Ok, there might be something to that. The problem is that European women are well educated, use the pill, and I presume have access to abortion, and hence, as you mentioned, do not tend to have nearly as many children as Muslim women. If the "refugees" were predominantly military aged men, how would they achieve this goal in a single generation? I'd expect the gender demographics to be the other way around in order to mount a successful invasion.
Well, agree or disagree on that point, I've certainly been dismayed from the very moment I heard about the tragedy in Paris. My worst fears have been coming true in the media. It no longer seems so crazy to believe there's some kind of group out there like the Illuminati directing all of this--from TPP, TTIP, and TISA to "everybody can code!" + "we need more women coders!" + "there's a programmer shortage!" (including the Coronation of Clinton or at least how CNN's been reporting anything related to her)--from behind the scenes.
Europe will look like Detroit within on generation.
One thing here. The trouble is that nobody lives in Detroit. If you want a Muslim demographic, look to the surrounding areas like Dearborn and Livonia. (Before somebody brings this up, no, Dearborn has not enacted Sharia law. I don't know if the Muslims over there use Sharia law for civil disputes, but that's their decision in a free country, a form of arbitration, nothing more.)
Ok, one more thing. The situation in Paris has been well known for some time. It has nothing to do with refugees. It's more about discrimination against Muslims, herding them into ghettos, and young people finding they really have no options for employment. I wouldn't be surprised if any facts emerge about the attackers that they didn't have anything to do with the refugees (other than ties to Daesh).
Are they really scouring the world for terrorist activity, or are they too busy spying on their own citizens?
From Fox:
"Three of the seven Islamist suicide bombers have already been identified as French citizens, as was at least one of seven other people arrested in neighboring Belgium in connection to the deadly attacks."
So four of fourteen were, in your words, their own citizens. I can pretty much guarantee that the intelligence agencies don't really care that much about the nationality of who they spy on; they spy on everyone to try and get intelligence. But, of course, you would like them just to spy only on the "bad guys". But if they knew who the bad guys were to begin with, the wouldn't really need to do any spying now, would they?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Well these terrorists don't initially seem like the run of the mill, the I'm surprised they haven't choked on their own tongues stupid, terrorists. It seems the simplest way to not get caught before hand is simply to shut your fucking pie hole about your plans. When you do have to discuss your plans don't do them in public view but instead over secure channels, with only those who need to know the plan and not Hadji the clerk at the local halal market.
Time to offend someone
Well, of course! The Statist types always complain about encryption and anonymity (and personal weapons, BTW) making their jobs more difficult. They are sincere, and what they say is true. It is just that at normal times we can rationally resist their urging, while at the times of crisis our collective rationality weakens and we allow major freedom-infringements to happen...
Rolling them back is hard, because the things like having to present an ID or even submit to a pat-down are not too tedious and the burden never reaches a crisis level of its own, despite occasional trouble-making by some prominent figures.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The new war on Encryption. Watch it live!
love the taste, hate the texture
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.
"Brennan also said the United States had âoestrategic warningâ about the terrorist attack in Paris, but did not provide details, other than to say it was âoenot a surprise.â He said he believed the attack was planned over âoeseveral months.â
If they really had a precise they would have reported in the news article or to the relevant french department. That they use the unqualified keyword "strategic warning" is more like "somebody mentioned they wanted to attack apris a few time" and that is so vague as to be useless and probably happen for a lot of other country. The translation is more "we only had the regular gossips we catch all the time".
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
This is a crazy idea.. but hear me out for a moment. What happens if someone offers an HTTP only web browser to that region. Market it to these 'officials' and get their endorsement essentially. Push it really hard, and market the heck out of it and basically play the devil's advocate. Get some investor money from people who's 'worried'. Make big bucks, while not worrying about a security bug. ever!
... and how do you pull it?
Is "Paris Attacks" a city or a country?
The passport was a fake... but the IS terrorist used it to pose as a refugee and enter Europe. ie not only was he not a European, but he used a completely fake passport and went through all the security checkpoints which were supposed to catch him. (they still had his fingerprints on record in Greece)
http://www.wsj.com/articles/paris-stadium-attacker-entered-europe-via-greece-1447698583
Frankly, if I was going to do this, I'd simply load up a console game, or maybe even my own private minecraft server.
Chat is ubiquitous in so many forms that it's nearly impossible to monitor them all, and some of them are completely private.
Not to mention other communication technologies, such as skype, ventrilo etc.
Hell, I could simply pass the information around encoded into certain pixels of a photo, and simply share that on tumbler. (Its trivially easy to write a simple decoder/encoder to do this, and that's me thinking in 5 minutes). Even without a message hidden inside, the very presence of a specific photo could mean attack. Language is just symbology, and if you don't know my language, you won't be able to understand what I am saying. Hey, there's another thing they could do, they could simply communicate using one of many fantasy languages, or even make up their own.
Its ridiculous to think you can stop these people by preventing them from communicating. And frankly, the above examples are unlikely. It's more likely that they are communicating in the clear, but in a place you just haven't looked, like a private ventrilo server on the darknet, while they play WoW.
The way you stop terrorism is to remove the underlying root causes and fight it on an ideological basis. You have to give these people a reason NOT to kill you.
Do you really believe that preventing legitimate Syrian refugees from entering the U.S. will prevent a single existing terrorist from an organization like ISIS from entering the U.S.? Even if no Syrian citizens are permitted to enter the U.S., terrorist organizations will pick another route to enter the U.S. Fake passports are not that difficult to come by. Hell, the Syrian passport found near the body of one of the Paris suicide bombers was a fake. Serbian police arrested a man Saturday with the same passport information except for the photo. But why even bother with coming in with false passport when you can use nationals who are already in place. Federica Mogherini, the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice-President of the European Commission, stated, “Let me underline—the profile of the terrorists so far identified tells us this is an internal threat. It is all EU citizens so far. This can change with the hours, but so far it is quite clear it is an issue of internal domestic security."
It's a pity NPR has such a negative rep in my neck of the woods. If people would only listen to it, they would hear that it's clearly about as balanced as reporting can get. They frequently lob softballs at Republicans for fear of being accused of being on a witch hunt. I don't know why they bother; the average redneck can't tell the difference between Pacifica Radio and All Things Considered anyway.
You got it half-right. They deserve no "kudos" for hiding a mistake. Once upon a time, this was supposed to be "the newspaper of record", now they regularly let the text of stories morph for inscrutable reasons, without so much as a "Correction" notice appended to it.
Soooo no one has mentioned the repeal of the Smith Mundt Act in 2013 as a reason this story was floated out there then quickly gone away when the masses called FUD on it???? Hey, but I'm sure it's just "bad reporting" or "inept people in charge", which seems to happen A LOT. And no way could the whole "PS4" story be native advertising floated across thousands of media outlets. I mean, someone would really relish that kind of PR if a story could be tossed to the ethos and media outlets snag it like a piece of velcro that mentions their product over and over and over again, hitting website and all sorts of social media. I mean "who" would do that????
This is asymmetric warfare. The main body of ISIS is in Iraq and Syria. Kill off the main body, the offshoots will die off.
If I were running a terrorist organization, I'd order everyone to communicate everything. "Go to the place for the thing at 3 p.m." would be sent to everyone when you want someone to pick up your dry cleaning. The wheat can't be plucked from the chaff when all there is is chaff. When you want something done right, and a bit more secret, you do it in person. They can record 100% of your electronic communications and still have nothing.
Not controlling immigration will be looked back upon as a profound strategic blunder, even though (as I disagree with you) there is no conscious invasion motivation on the part of the immigrants.
So far, every terrorist I've seen identified was born a French Citizen (well the first 2 were, I don't follow such things in super-great detail. I can wait until they know something to read reports with more detail). Though, there was one "mastermind" suspected who was born a Belgian citizen.
So this isn't about immigration unless we are talking about the French Algerians, oppressed for 200 years. But is unrelated to today's immigration issues.
Learn to love Alaska
I live in the NYC area, listening to news radio stations out of NYC, so this got equal airplay to the unattributed "security agency" quotes about "going dark". There was also a lot of official amazement at the degree of coordination and planning involved. Somehow it doesn't seem any more complicated than a bunch of friends getting together for a movie, even before the existence of cellphones - certainly not as complex as many flash-mob events. "The attacks were totally synchronized!" - like, ever hear of wearing a watch? All you have to do to avoid online detection is NOT WRITE ONLINE, just converse by phone, and keep the topic general.
1: Stop all international travel/flights into/out of the U.S.
2: Reopen travel only to those who have been fully vetted by the country of departure
3: Consider it an act of war by any country where the person was vetted if that person then performs a terrorist action
4: The instant response by the U.S. to such an act of war is to bomb the offending country's capital and leader
This makes the duty of vetting someone to be taken very seriously as the punishment for failure goes straight to the top.
This will obviously stop funsy trips, which also has the added benefit of limiting disease transmission.
Important travel can still happen, but it will take an effort. Only those who really need to either come into this country or go to another country (the vetting must happen both ways) will do so.
Let foreign countries fight their own battles, UNLESS they make the request and are providing most of the ground troops. Other countries certainly helped us during our revolutionary war, but they didn't fight the battle for us.
-- XYZZY --
In the same sense as 'guns kill people', encryption did it! ...so ...lets have encryption advertised in every single film and have the encryption lobby pay for laws.
Woohoo! Free communication with family members without some creepy NSA freak reading all our private messages is just around the corner. Let's legislate!!
Requiem for the American Dream
There's been a lot of crap doing the rounds of the press about these matters. Between court warrants, coordinating humans and coordinating hardware it's a non-trivial thing to organize just a single raid. Here we've seen 180-odd raids over the weekend, recovering weapons including a bazooka, and another 120-odd raids in the time since. There can be no doubt that intelligence and police services have been well aware of the participants for some time and have been dragging their feet on it until now.
Actually, in /., quote works. The trick is to remember where to insert /quote.
Never let a crisis go to waste!
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
full-on totalitarianism
Or full on social shaming -- at least that were the USA appears to be headed.
Really, too much Monday quarterbacking in this article with ./'s CS encryption experts here...
Why would they divulge such information ?
Especially if France doesn't play the game like the US wants. What better way to take them under your wing than to let them experience the world without the protection of someone like the US ?
This is asymmetric warfare. The main body of ISIS is in Iraq and Syria. Kill off the main body, the offshoots will die off.
Not quite. It has more the earmarks of an infectious disease. How many terrorist org. heads/leaders has the US claimed to have killed since 9/11? Others take their place. Propaganda/religious 'infection' leads to 'self-radicalizing' operatives in new areas.
"I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humansW^W^violent religious fanatics do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resourceW^W^opposing society, culture, government, and religion is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beingsW^W^violent religious fanatics are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we...are the cure."
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
If so, we are ready....
Arduino Enigma Machine Simulator http://arduinoenigma.blogspot.com
Please please don't take our encryption away, or our guns in the USA. Without guns, a few asshats WITH ILLEGAL GUNS could take out like, I dunno, 160 people in no time...
It was removed because it was a story produced out of whole cloth by the anti-encryption politicians in Europe. And when the story was given scrutiny that was an obvious choice. "Encryption" is the next boogie man. It will be treated like "Terrorism and Child Porn" .... mean it will grant extra-constitutional powers to the government that are totally illegal... but who wants to support Child Pornographers and Terrorists?
Yes because the NYTimes and other main stream media don't cover the real problem. Who is financing ISIS?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sihKTN4QLfA
At the G20 Putin provided lists of people in 40 countries, including some of the G20, who are financing ISIS. He also provided satellite images showing miles and miles of tankers at the refineries controlled by ISIS. THEN the USA bombed some. Why didn't the USA bomb them over the last year+? Don't give me the "didn't want civilian casualties" BS. 90% of the USA's drone strike victims are civilians.
Why has the main stream media not covered that?
I think we should do a variation of what George Carlin suggested in his death penalty skit. Start executing the financiers and bankers who are supporting ISIS.
If you're not from my caste/religion, you're non-human to me; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
Expel Brahmin From Your Country; http://wh.gov/iyhMK
Casteism