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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
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?
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.
"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.
In the USA, "treason" is defined in the Constitution, and has a very narrow meaning. Do keep that in mind when tossing the word about.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Paris Attacks Renew Call for Access to Encrypted Messages
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
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.
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.
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
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.
How do you fit the fact that all of the identified attackers so far are european nationals into your narrative?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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!
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)
ISIS would have access to their streets whether or not refugees were accepted; what, you think an ISIS terrorist is going to take his chances going across the Mediterranean in a swamped, sinking refugee boat? They've got the money, documents, and connections needed to take a plane and rent an apartment like any normal person. He'll be wearing a nice suit, carrying quality luggage, and probably show a student visa or EU passport or something.
The main problem with the refugees is that if, rather than integrating and educating them, they dump them into refugee ghettos and don't provide them with decent opportunities then in 30 years there will be a whole new crop of "home grown" converts to whatever extremist cult is popular at that time.
The only long-term solutions to extremism are integration, education and wealth. Period.
Log in or piss off.
"BOO!" - you poor frightened people in the "home of the brave" unwilling to stand up and defend your freedom from your own government. Your grand experiment is dissolving into a surveillance/police state. A least in Europe there are many who will defend freedom .....even if bad things can happen. Because they know bad things WILL happen in a police state.
As you can see above, Americans these days have been frightened into valuing safety over an open society. I believe this is by design, but reasonable people can disagree.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Exactly. In March 2011, a month after the Japanese Fukushima tsunami, there was a NYTimes article critical of Japan's leadership during the disaster. However, after re-reading it 8 hours post-original online publication, I noticed that it had become watered down and so I inquired to the NYTimes public editor about the discrepancy. I received the following response a month later from the Office of the Public Editor:
"To answer your question, yes, stories can be edited if they are part of the continuous news cycle. Mr. Brisbane [NYT public editor at the time] asked assistant managing editor Jim Roberts to address this in one of his first letters columns: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10... ... Hopefully Roberts’ response gives you some more info on how The Times processes material as part of the continuous news cycle. It seems that this article was constantly being updated with new information due to the changing nature of events right after the tsunami."
I tried to find the article just now, originally entitled "Flaws in Japan's Leadership Deepen Sense of Crisis," (March 16, 2011) only to find that even the title had been altered to the less damning "Dearth of Candor from Japan's Leadership," and the even weaker "In Tokyo, a Dearth of Candor" for the print edition. I always suspected that someone in the JST time zone made a last minute call in those critical hours between online print and hard copy, lots of "new information" right there.
"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.
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.
You are aware that since the beginning of Syrian crisis there have been 200,000 refugees in Germany alone and millions overall. From what we know, 8 men were involved in the attacks. Of those 8, the latest information I have is that we are not sure even IF any of them were refugees. But let's go with your argument from ignorance.
A handful of men did this attack in Europe. How many more "handfuls" of similarly capable men got through? Probably a lot.
So you admit a "handful" of people did this but then are willing to extrapolate to all of the refugees. I see. And handful of Christians have bombed abortion clinics in the US. Should we round up all the Christians and imprison them as well? Who knows what those Christians are planning.
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.
And yet that didn't save a military base in Texas. Or do you remember Fort Hood shooting(s). There were 2. One in 2009 and one in 2014. The one in 2009 was even done by a Muslim.
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.
They might go to places with higher population density. As for 10 minute away, I don't know if you've actually lived in these cities.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
> 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.
It's kinda important though when a large number of politicians are demanding we stop letting refugees in because somehow that'll somehow stop terrorism.
And it's especially important when actually the terror group we're worried about, ISIL, would have its power bolstered by such an action - a sizable number of the refugees the politicians are talking about banning are trying to escape from ISIL.
Pinning terrorism on "refugees" and then whispering "although not necessarily these refugees" is probably not a helpful thing to say right now, in that it's likely to result in support for bad policies.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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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And when the police are 10 minutes away, there will be a body count identical to Paris or worse.
This attack killed 129 people [1], but let's get some perspective. France has a traffic-related death rate of 4.9 per 100,000 per year [2], and Paris has a population of 2.24 million [3]. A naive estimate suggests that roughly 110 people die a traffic-related death in Paris every year. That's comparable to the death toll resulting from this attack.
ISIS could commit an attack like this in Paris every single year and it wouldn't be significantly worse than the death caused by motorists. Let's keep some perspective, please. While this attack was despicable, it doesn't represent anything like an existential threat. Giving ISIS "incredibly easy access to their streets" is not significantly more dangerous than allowing people to drive cars. "Bordering on treason" may sound like a level-headed analysis of the situation to some, but I question how accurate it is.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Yes, look at the attackers. None of them came with the recent wave of refugees (the one Syrian passport found has since been identified as a fake). So closing the borders now accomplishes - pretty much nothing.
We need to figure out why there are people living in our countries that hate those same countries so much they are willing to die just for the joy of expressing their hatred.
We didn't and we let it foster, that is our first fault.
Our second fault was not facing the problem, believing too much in a peaceful co-existence and multi-cultural society to not see that some parts of the same want to fucking kill us.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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.
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.
You know your definition with "ancestors...for centuries" describes just about every European-descended person in North America short of the few with family lines back to before the American Revolution, right?
The whole point of having a path to becoming a citizen (any country) is flushed down the toilet with your post.
Speaking about the U.S., until you amend the Constitution -- too fucking bad. That is the system we have and your whining about it is counterproductive.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
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.
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.
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
Gun safety rules demand strict "muzzle discipline." A gun must be kept pointed away from anyone, regardless of being holstered, safety on, round in chamber, etc. So if someone asked me to take off a CCW because somehow my movement was making it point at them, I'd do it, or find a better way to holster so the gun doesn't point at people when I'm doing whatever. Yes, it's extremely unlikely to go off. But with safety issues, there is also the consequence side of the equation. The consequence of a gun accident is unacceptable.