Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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

Posted by timothy on from the don't-you-love-children? dept.

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."

12 of 521 comments (clear)

  1. Not this old info again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They keep trying, however the true fact remains no encryption was used by these terrorists.

    1. Re:Not this old info again by alphatel · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They keep trying, however the true fact remains no encryption was used by these terrorists.

      Nor would it have helped prevent 9/11. Encryption is nothing. Intelligence and cooperation are everything.

      --
      When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
    2. Re:Not this old info again by Thud457 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      liar caught lying again.

      Hey NSA, &other FED LEOs - don't destroy the infrastructure of the world economy with your abject incompetence. You can't even effectively make use of the encrypted data you already collect.

      --

      the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

    3. Re:Not this old info again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's beside the point anyway. It doesn't fucking matter. If they had used encryption, would we start falling over ourselves to give the government back doors? No. The discussion shouldn't be about whether or not they used encryption. Part of me thinks that they keep repeating this shit over and over so that when we do get an attack in which the attackers use encryption (yeah, I'm intentionally avoiding all forms of the word "terror"), that will already be the frame of the discussion and we'll have to backpedal to get back to the "it doesn't fucking matter" that we should have been stressing in the first place.

    4. Re:Not this old info again by d4fseeker · · Score: 5, Insightful

      While I do agree with you, it's basically the same point underneath. Proving that attacks without encryption could not be stopped shows that encryption does not really matter in the first place. And as such we've landed on your standpoint. What some political dimwits are not getting is that no trained attacker would be stupid enough to make the information publicly available. Be it through encryption, obscurity or just by having the plans drain in the sea of useless information surrounding it... there are always methods of getting something done in secrecy.

  2. Wait... by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I thought the reason the French police were able to find the attacker's apartments, accomplices, and so on very quickly was because the attackers used regular unencrypted methods of communication, such as SMS?

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:Wait... by Feral+Nerd · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes, and indeed the referenced article says that we had two months of warning and did a drone strike to take out the command and control operation (or, more likely, some goat herders). And that wasn't enough to prevent the attack. If there's a lesson here, it's that this is an asymmetrical problem, and fixing it is going to require addressing underlying causes, not throwing cash and civil liberties on the bonfire in a futile attempt to even things up.

      But it's so much easier to throw cash, guns and draconian prison sentences at a problem than tackling the root cause? I mean, just take one look at how successful the war on drugs has been!!!

  3. Bollocks by some+old+guy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Mohammed Atta et al weren't using encrypted communications, just AOL and flip phones. Yet the TLA's totally screwed the pooch on 9/11.

    A .125 batter can't keep blaming the bat forever.

    --
    Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
  4. Headline by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Paris Attacks Would Not Have Happened Without Crypto

    That should really have been put in quotes to make it clear that this is what some guy is saying, and not anything remotely approaching a fact.

    And even if technically true, the implications behind the making of the statement should probably be taken with a pinch of salt.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  5. Re:Crypto? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The Paris attacks wouldn't have happened wihtout fanatism, extremist religions, guns, cars, street, stupidity, breathing, reproduction, the big bang and maybe good wine.

  6. Re:Crypto? by ganjadude · · Score: 5, Insightful

    pretty sure it was islam in this case.... lets stop pretending that christians, buddists and hindus are out there blowing up buildings and mass shooting people (in the name of their religion) on a literal daily basis

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
  7. It will happen by Sloppy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It will happen someday, though.

    A terrorist will buy a set of Star Trek steak knives over eBay and they'll use HTTPS to transmit their eBay password. A future terrorist will lock the door of their house (why are these people even allowed to have locks, anyway?) and his wife will plaintext email him, "Did you lock the house? Remember, we're going to that party right after work tonight," and he'll say "quit telling all the snoops on the Internet which days our house has no one home," and they'll start encrypting their personal conversations. And that'll be that: they'll be encryption users too, just like the rest of us.

    Some day, a terrorist is going to use a motor vehicle to travel from their home to the site of their terror.

    Some day, a terrorist will use an alarm clock, instead of the sun, to get up at the correct time.

    We need to face the facts: technology is bad. Anything that empowers humanity, can be used by humanity in the service of bad things. Power is bad. Capability is bad. Failing to starve when the gods wants you to starve is bad, and being immune to smallpox is bad and is why the gods have to invent new ones, like AIDS. It's time to end this nonsense of technology, and go back up into the trees. Because the apes in the trees never do anything bad to one another.

    The reason I know that apes never try to harm one another, is because I carefully cultivate shocking ignorance about anthro-- er I mean -- zoology -- no, wait -- I mean biology since plants also do ev-- no wait: game theory. Well, I mean, statistics. I try to remain ignorance of mathematics and everything which stands upon or can be modelled by mathematics.

    And you can too. Join me in giving a fuck about whether or not bad people use the same technology as good people.

    --
    As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.