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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.
O RLY?
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
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.
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.
police have found that the terrorists breathed air, drank water, and wore clothes in order to carry out their attacks. Police and security agencies have united in calling for these things to be banned immediately.
Of course they lie. This isn't about protecting you. Even after this revelation, watch them step up their attacks against crypto and privacy.
Hidden now in the title.
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
And from there;
https://theintercept.com/2015/...
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
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.
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
We couldn't intercept them without encryption, imagine if they had used any!
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.
It seems to me that when you're planning to blow yourself up anyway - you're probably not that worried about getting caught after the fact, and there's so much traffic going around that open communications especially if using a simple codewords for obvious trigger phrases (so say "flowers' instead of "bombs" etc...) and very likely the best the intelligence folks will do is read your comms after you've succeeded and have gone to meet your 72 Virgins....
The Digital Sorceress
So now we know for sure which are the propaganda mills in "mainstream" news. I read anti-encryption articles on at least CNN, MSN, Fox, and Infoworld. Are there any others worthy of mention in this context? They are now off my list of "reputable news" sources, though they may be useful for staying up on current events... take it with a grain of salt.
The BBC: Paris attacks: Silicon Valley in crosshairs over encryption
Some gems from the article:
"And I do think this is a time for particularly Europe, as well as here in the United States, for us to take a look and see whether or not there have been some inadvertent or intentional gaps that have been created in the ability of intelligence and security services to protect the people that they are asked to serve."
while attitudes towards creating government backdoors were "hostile", that atmosphere "could turn in the event of a terrorist attack or criminal event where strong encryption can be shown to have hindered law enforcement". Paris may just be that event.
Also, some jackwagon New York prosecutor is calling for legislation mandating phone manufactures use weak encryption and provide backdoors for law enforcement:
A New York prosecutor is calling for federal legislation to weaken smartphone encryption
It's just ridiculous. Intelligence agencies and police have unprecedented data and location tracking on nearly every person in the world and it's STILL NOT ENOUGH for them. They will never be satisfied, even if every person in the world provided them a 24/7 video feed they would demand constant brainwave scans to "protect our children". It's time to say enough is enough and remove the people in favor of a surveillance state from a position of power, either by voting them out of office or voting the people who appointed them out of office.
Enigma
effective alternatives to mass survailence and bulk data collection
Courage. The outcomes are far superior.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Sadly, Al Jazeera is one of the best sources of international news.
Learn to love Alaska
They need to explain why the massive global surveillance failed to stop the attacks and the reasons they came up with is Snowden and encryption. This is despite their own reports that showed their massive surveillance to not be effective against terrorism even before Snowden and widespread encryption. Big-Data is great for statistical analysis, if is not very useful for spear-fishing.