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Police Find Paris Attackers Coordinate Via Unencrypted SMS (techdirt.com)
schwit1 writes: In the wake of the tragic events in Paris last week encryption has continued to be a useful bogeyman for those with a voracious appetite for surveillance expansion. Like clockwork, numerous reports were quickly circulated suggesting that the terrorists used incredibly sophisticated encryption techniques, despite no evidence by investigators that this was the case. These reports varied in the amount of hallucination involved, the New York Times even having to pull one such report offline. Other claims the attackers had used encrypted Playstation 4 communications also wound up being bunk.
Because terrorists use SMS we should monitor all SMS traffic. Because they use phones we should record all conversations. Because they use the Internet we should monitor all traffic. Because they drive cars, fly planes, and buy things at grocery stores.. we should monitor those too. In fact since terrorists use essentially everything non-terrorists use... then we should monitor everything. Put camera's in washroom stalls just in case the terrorists find a way to use them. Force people to wear microphones just in case they are terrorists. If you have done nothing wrong what do you have to worry about? Are you some kind of terrorist sympathizer? Let me mark down your objections on my suspect review and no fly list.
Only monitoring everything will free us from the threat of tyranny once and for all. Complete and total control of everything by government officials is true freedom.
Of course they lie. This isn't about protecting you. Even after this revelation, watch them step up their attacks against crypto and privacy.
The logic of authoritarians:
Thanks to Snowden's revelations, terrorists started using unbreakable encryption!!!!!!!
Right. Except they didn't.
That was pre-Snowden. Terrorists didn't know about encryption before that.
Right again. Except they did.
So, you see-- Snowden has "blood on his hands" for making terrorists aware of encryption, which they knew about for decades, so they could use it, which they didn't. And thank goodness for that, because if they had used encryption, the attacks might have been successful, which they were.
Got it.
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Quite scary
Not really. It's far scarier to consider life in a panopticon where two people couldn't say something privately to eachother without the goverment listening to the conversation.
Sadly, Al Jazeera is one of the best sources of international news.
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