Paris Attacks Would Not Have Happened Without Crypto (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader writes with a story at Ars Technica, citing a Yahoo News interview, that National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers has explicitly blamed the terrorist attacks which struck Paris last November on communications backed by strong crypto. From the article: Because of encrypted communications, he said, "we did not generate the insights ahead of time. Clearly, had we known, Paris would not have happened." Rogers did not explicitly re-launch the campaign waged by FBI director James Comey to force technology companies to provide a "golden key" to encrypted communications. Rogers called encryption "foundational to our future" and added that arguing over encryption backdoors was "a waste of time." But he did say that encryption was making the job of the NSA and law enforcement more difficult. The interview comes shortly after the FBI won an order requiring Apple to provide technical means to bypass the security measures preventing them from unlocking the iPhone 5C belonging to Syed Rizwan Farook. Farook, along with his wife, are responsible for the December mass shooting in San Bernardino, California."

Comments

[Citation Needed]

[thomas.galvin]

Bullshit. The Paris attackers did not use encrypted communications.

Was this an intelligence failure? Possibly. Was it an intelligence failure due to a lack of backdoors and/or laws against cryptography? Absolutely not.

Re:Crypto?

[TigerNut]

Your goggles are on too tight... you don't have to look very far back in time to find the IRA and other Christian groups doing their thing. Remember also the Tokyo ricin attacks? That was some local cult. How about David Koresh and Jim Jones?

Re:Not this old info again

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

Actually, their lies go far deeper than that. The terrorist group involved have a glossy color magazine called Dabiq. Apparently that magazine carried an interview with the leader of the Brussels / Paris cell where he announced that he was planning to hit Paris. Several months before the attacks. I wonder if any of the secret services read the thing, it is in English.