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.
On the subject of our respective governments' unbounded honesty, anyone knows what happened to James "Lied Under Oath" Clapper?
Remember when Saddam had some complex masterplan for building chemical and nuclear weapons? And Al Qaeda were criminal masterminds? Now it is ISIL (The Tiny Penises) that have sophisticated methods that only our authorities can figure out if you give them unlimited powers.
I feel that this terror threat is vastly over-stated. Saddam was not a really threat (a little but not that much). Al Qaeda weren't really a threat (sure they killed people, but hardly enough to roll over your way of life for), and now The Tiny Pensis are a threat (no they aren't).
To put it in perspective, the Police in the US have killed more civilians this year than The Tiny Penises have in France.
Terrorists are shitty humans, but it's not enough to give up for freedom and privacy for.
It really wouldn't be hard to use the in game functions of any military themed shooter game to set up an an attack.
Essentially, in game people are already talking about shooting people and targets, that even unencrypted it would be painfully difficult to filter through all the chats - supposing you had access to them - to figure out which players were talking about playing the game, and who would be planning something in real life.
Quite scary
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Snowden is simply today's Emmanuel Goldstein.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This war on encryption and personal privacy can't be won by the ordinary man against governments.
It's inevitable. They will get their way.
I take personal comfort in seeing a repeating cycle in history where they can only legislate once the genie is out of the bottle, and they are slow to react.
A basic lack of understanding of technology, by those in power, and technology's ability to evolve outside of their constraints means that they are really just sowing the seeds for the next big thing after the internet - it's replacement.
Peer to peer communications, not network based would be my guess.
How? I dunno, but when forced into a corner we always find a way out.