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ISIS Supporters Abandon U.S. Encryption Tools As Apple-FBI Fight Rages
blottsie writes: Islamic State militants and supporters are promoting strong encryption tools from outside the United States that the American government cannot touch with legislation. In the last month, Islamic State supporters have promoted security software from Finland, Romania, America, France, the Czech Republic, Canada, Panama, Germany, Switzerland, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and other nations, a Daily Dot review found. The international availability of encryption technology, of which Islamic State militants are well aware, underscores FBI Director James Comey's long-held desire to build an international legal regime to deal with the problems posed by encryption, what he calls "going dark."
Just sayin'.
In the last month, Islamic State supporters have promoted security software from Finland, Romania, America, France, the Czech Republic, Canada, Panama, Germany, Switzerland, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and other nations...
Is that "America" something other than the US?
I know there are two continents using that name, but they seem to be listing countries.
Israel's bombing of an iraq nuclear reactor basically started the weaponized nuclear program in iraq: http://972mag.com/the-myth-of-...
Same goes for politicans demanding to ban encryption because terrorists could use it. The paris terrorists didn't use encryption. But ISIS now will make sure they will use encryption from now on.
Goodbye, Slashdot. It was nice to know you.
The international availability of encryption technology, of which Islamic State militants are well aware, underscores FBI Director James Comey's long-held desire to build an international legal regime to deal with the problems posed by encryption, what he calls "going dark."
Almost all of the data the FBI is interested in was already supposed to be inaccessible to them. So maybe encryption should be called, "going legit".
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Sometimes I wish slashdot permitted embedded images, cause things like this just beg to for a nice big Nelson HA HA.
The current one is shaking his fist at a storm. Why can't we hire someone who has some common sense about technology?
You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube, encryption is here to stay--and there's nothing you can do about it.
Islamic State supporters have promoted security software from Finland, Romania, America, France, the Czech Republic, Canada, Panama, Germany, Switzerland, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and other nations, a Daily Dot review found.
For the people that love (falsely) claiming that they came up w/ the number system and zero, it's fascinating that they have to promote encryption software from the above countries - ALL non-Muslim - to protect their jihad-plotting communications from being broken into. Can't they get encryption software from Islamic paradises, like Malaysia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Emirates, Iran, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, et al? Or (gasp), even roll their own in their labs in Raqqa, Mosul, Sirte...
the entire premise seems doubtful. we are feed disinformation. wmd comes to mind.
they want to make sure 99,99% of all computers are nicely backdoored.
Then you can have the latest super duper crypto algorithm and it will be moot.
They pursue this strategy since they managed to kill off Algol in favour of C. Algol based computers were simply too hard to backdoor. And they have suckered most of our fellow programmers into their scheme.
Not to mention that they included "America" in the list. Despite America being the name of a continent (or up to 3, depending on the criteria, or lack thereof) there is only one nation that commonly goes by the name "America".
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
DUH. Did anyone not think this would happen? It's just like the argument to outlaw guns. If you do only the criminals, who don't give a crap about your laws, will have guns and law-abiding citizens will have nothing to protect themselves from the criminals, be it encryption to protect cc info from hackers or guns to protect against home invaders.
Before the big commotion between the FBI and Apple, they (the FBI) at least had a chance of breaking into a phone (made by Apple) that was used by an ISIS member (by the help of Apple, through legal means). Now the FBI has essentially shot themselves in the foot. Their demands have basically been a loud horn warning ISIS to stay away from the very technology (phones by American companies) that they could actually get access to... 'cause... well, good luck getting foreign companies to make backdoors for you.
ROT13 is still uncracked by the US government and will forever stay safe to use.
Even the worlds best encryption experts can not break ROT13.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Oh, thats right, those terrible people (the TERORISTS) that want to kill all of us for no reason. Hold on, maybe there is a reason after all. Maybe they are fed up of US,UK bombs dropping on their heads over the last decades.
Heres a thought... a logical one I think... instead of trying to monitor all communications and create a great deal of internet collateral damage, we just STOP FUCKING BOMBING OTHER COUNTRIES!!!!!!! then maybe we won't need to watch our backs all the fucking time. We'll also regain the ability to talk without 10 stooges listening and judging us at every turn.
Its funny isn't it. The very thing the west does to stop """"""TERORISM""""""" is exactly the thing that causes it. to them we are the terrorists!! And we have done are far worse to them then they have managed to do to us.
Fuck I hate idiot governments. but more so the people that are indiferent to bombing other countries.
The funny thing is all those countries listed, ISIS would love to destroy.
the US is a country spending nearly 1.4 trillion dollars per year on defense. It dwarfs the spending of the next 7 largest countries combined. Americans endured this sort of breakneck spending for 50 years under the guise that, once communism fell, we would embrace a newfound wave of peace in the west.
instead we've invented boogeymen by hook and by crook. We invented ISIS by the iraq war. We invented the iraq war by weapons of mass destruction. we invented the war on terror by 9/11. we invented 9/11 by founding and training al-quaeda. we invented al-quaeda by funding an training the mujahadeen. we invented the war in afghanistan by proxy through our desire to defeat russias communism. we invented communism as a threat through the implicit desire of our oligarchy and capital class to disarm any real objection to capitalism by any means necessary.
now we're faced with a guerilla enemy, as we were when we created most of our proxy wars in central and south america...but the rules have changed. our "wars" before were innocuous as they werent winnable or loseable, only profitable. we would fight until public opinion turned, then broker a peace deal and leave. Sometimes with oil contracts, other times with infrastructure contracts. Now with the advent of a perfect shield by which our newly created enemy can conceal their intent, we are all but on a level playing field. an actor needs no longer obtain advanced weapons or tactics to defeat us, they merely need to plan extensively.
the solution is to step back from the carter doctrine of foreign policy, and deprecate our dependency on defense economy.
Good people go to bed earlier.
ISIS supporters; Obviously you are not aware that ISIS is supplied and funded by the Obama administration.
It's also surprising that the Quran doesn't discuss any encryption algorithm. I would have expected the Jihad chapter to contain one section per century containing advice specific to that century.
just saying
> Can't they get encryption software from Islamic paradises, like Malaysia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Emirates, Iran, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, et al?
Nope. Software encryption can't overcome hardware designed weaknesses. So unless those countries start their own chip design and frabrication, they'll never truly protected.
Encryption is not security-by-obscurity.
It either works or doesn't.
If you use some laughable closed-source solutions for encryption, then you are a total moron.
It's built into your culture.
>ISIS Supporters Abandon [...]
Did they do a survey in turkey and saudi arabia?
FBI must be desperate, trying to lump people who believe in security with terrorists...
Not desperate. Just self interested and politically savvy. Accusing someone you oppose politically of being soft on or aligned with crime/terrorism is one of the oldest plays in politics. It's how we end up with absurd things like mandatory minimum and three strikes laws that do nothing to prevent crime. It's how we end up with a prison camp in Cuba, extraordinary rendition, torture, etc and the government doing nothing about it. Speak out against those things and you just feed ammo to your political enemies.
The FBI wants their job to be as easy as possible. They'll pay lip service to observing the constitution but at the end of the day they'll take making their job easier over your civil rights every time.
Its not just a loud warning horn to our enemies... It's a loud warning to all foreign companies, that data stored in the US, or protected by companies based in the US, may be intentionally weakened by our government someday in the future. It's an undisputed fact that many US based 3 letter agencies are actively seeking to break, route around, and weaken every encryption model they can, whether publicly, or secretly. This is absolutely driving away foreign business, and is going to hurt US business interests immensely in the long run, since foreign IT people can come to the same obvious conclusions on whether using broken encryption is a good idea for their business.
+1
They did. Used it, too, until Snowden announced to the world that NSA had broken it.
Best Slashdot Co
you fell for an idiot meme. almost anything is better than the popular SSL libraries. for example. We must assume these GPG and PGP hairballs are equally pwnable. Simply too complicated to be done correctly.
Given that the Russkies are stupid enough to use Linux and the Chinese stupid enough to allow billions of ARM processors in their country, I say these anglo folks can do whatever they please. This world is too stupid to realize the strategic threat of "free trade".
So they are promoting some particular encryption tools but to whom and for what purpose? It doesn't make sense to endorse these particular encryption tools for high security purposes. Actual terrorists would want to add on extra encryption from a third party and not rely on any built-in encryption from any service or software. What does make sense is for ISIS supporters to promote these particular tools to the general public for two reasons. First, the more widespread strong encryption becomes, the less likely any particular message will be flagged as suspicious simply because it is encrypted. In other words, it helps to make the really sensitive data look less conspicuous. Second, this helps to counter the possibility that potential recruits will be detected as someone who could be radicalized before ISIS even has a chance to try and recruit them. In other words, it counters the thought police approach to anti-terrorism.
Not Geography, Achmet - just rattled off a list of Muslim countries from the top of my head, most of which have enough people supportive of ISIS
Sure, you can argue that the government insisting on crippling United States industry will only make United States corporations go dark and that unbreakable encryption is certainly a capability of industry outside the United States. But you are foolish if you do. That would simply allow the government to continue to pretend this is about ISIS. Clearly it isn't, it is about the government's war against its own citizens.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
They can probably try adding that to a hadith, or a Reliance of the Traveller, or something from one of their zillion seminaries worldwide
They have Malaysia, which loves coming up w/ 'Islamic innovations' like the Proton car. So maybe they could have gotten the Malays to design and fab a chip that they could then use? Instead of relying on Infidel built chips?
Is to keep your bloody mouth shut. Most of the things that people get caught out with on comms channels are things they really did not need to blab about.
Canamerica?
So ISIS is using cryptography again? I thought that that had already been debunked.
How is it that we seem to know SO much about these people, their org charts, their daily operations... yet we can't seem to actually find any of them and instead indiscriminately bomb entire towns?
I'm gonna need some citations with reputable sources on ISIS encryption selection and deployment processes.
Can't the FBI just get the CIA to give them the security keys for the phones that they are handing out to ISIS?
I'm an American, you insensitive clod.
that the American government cannot touch. Well.
The FBI asked and American Corporation to decrypt something. It went public.
Enough details were given in the media to cause people to begin to try to think.
Including USAmericans.
So there will (hopefully) be a large class of encryptions developed that aren't commonly known.
Using techniques different from those the NSA/CIA/FBI mathematicians usually use...
Algorithms not published.
Maybe even keyless.
Good!
US acronym agencies like the CIA, NSA, FBI, IRS, etc. have had things their own way for far too long. It's made them lazy, incompetent and stupid.
Remember the Secret Service yahoos who were too busy screwing Colombian whores to do their job? They're the tip of the iceberg. Now the FBI and the rest of the lazy bastards want back doors into every phone and computer on the planet because they refuse to do the hard, slow, dangerous work of infiltrating groups like ISIS, or turning existing members into willing and unwilling spies. They imagine they can snap their fingers and corporations like Apple will just roll over. And they imagine there won't be another hero like Phil Zimmermann around the next corner.
Even worse, they believe they actually can control the whole world, and the real innovators won't simply set up beyond the reach of the US. There is a huge demand for genuinely secure computing that has nothing to do with terrorism, and everything to do with getting out from under the thumb of corrupt, evil governments in all the major multi-national trading blocs.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
India gave us 0, not Arabia.
Finding an encryption scheme that isn't already backdoor'd by the CIA.
AFAIK the US/CIA has corrupt deals with all the known for-profit crypto suppliers.
http://mediafilter.org/caq/cry...
https://www.schneier.com/blog/...
How The Snowden revelations did this or that bad thing to the economy or american security and we are just expected to believe it without proof, From the people who were revealed to be spying on us while at the same time saying to congress that they were not spying on us (Ahem! Looking at you Mr Clapper!)
Do these idiots really expect us to believe them now that they have lied to us? Really?
No, there is no continent named "America." Perhaps you are thinking of one of the TWO continents that happen to contain the WORD "America", they are:
North America
South America
"America", alone, is the standard and accepted common name of the USA.... which is why its citizens are called "Americans".
No, the Islamic State can only get good encryption technology from Israel.
Quit it with your American exceptionalism, it is wrong headed and false, America categorically is referred in a different manner by the various countries and cultures stuck with sharing that land mass with citizens of the United States of America. That is a fact, quit with the bullshit of the United States of America and it's definitions of anything being the only one there is, go away with your childish spelling and stop with any kind of claims to intellectual dominance, you numb nuts can not even manage switching to metric, lead heads (not an insult a fact, not your fault, the fault of various corrupt players and their greed, dumbing down you nation by poisoning it, mind bogglingly still to this day and still not one arrest.)
Of course if they were actually serious about terrorists, instead of just using it to implement the police state in a rich versus poor class war, they would fucking quit it with giving those terrorists a political identity to enable recruitment, this being perversely enough purposefully done by the military industrial complex to drive more fear and sell more war. They would simply call them crime gangs, with gang bosses, the crime gang would have no identity beyond being labelled as the crime gang of a particular crime boss and the various subordinate controllers. Members would not be political activist, they would simply pliable and gullible violent rapist minions, slaves to the greed of the gang bosses, nothing more than egoistic crime cults.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
translated: We're desperately afraid of ordinary people communicating privately and organizing politically, therefore we've decided to tarnish everyone we don't approve of with the terrorism moniker.
That lie is, "if you're not cheating, then you're not trying hard enough." It's the other way around because using maximum leverage all the time makes you weaker. You should only use maximum leverage when you absolutely need to. Using minimum leverage, as a matter of practice, makes you buff. But that's what they get for not thinking. NSA's same mentality.
If the strong encryption is with those overseas and other countries in America, the FBI will have to relinquish the job to CIA, heh heh. Maybe they didn't want the job in the first place and that's why they're making such a strange decision?
Please tell me there is *not* some alternative [un-American] motive here. Is this some big sympathy ploy? Surely not! Whether intentional or not, that's what it is in effect! Aren't we Americans sick of having our sympathies taken advantage of to the point that we can now overcome this kind of thing?! And that's our great weakness as a people. Instead, let's be empathetic and compassionate, but not struck down by foolish and inappropriate sympathy to the extent that we're willing to relinquish our rights! Please tell me the FBI is *not* intentionally and wittingly pulling some sort of disgusting sympathy ploy here; please tell me it's unintentional!
As it stands, it sure looks like the commis have won, if the FBI is going to treat information with the same [dis-]regard as Big Mother/Brother Russia did in the Cold War. Remember, we -- the people of the true Republic of the United States of America -- own you F.B.I. You work for us.
If you believe the lie, then all you have to do is DROP IT! and buff up.
That's true. The Arabs just transported knowledge from India & China to the Byzantine Empire, via the Silk Road. Also, a lot of the knowledge that they tout, such as al Khwarezmi (after whom the term 'Algebra' originated), was done at the cusp of the conversion of Iran from Zoroastrianism to Islam: al Khwarezmi was born Zoroastrian, and probably converted to Islam sometime in his life to avoid being bullied by the Samanids, who converted Iran to Islam. The only thing the 'scholars' of Islam came up w/ were the stupid compilations of the traditions of Mohammed - the hadiths, the tafseers and other junk that they invented. I didn't claim above that the Muslims invented 0, just that they claim to!!!
But they will never abandon U.S. Dollars
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Quite the rant. A little bit of it is actually accurate. But doesn't change the fact that the continent is not called "America" and that citizens of the USA are called "Americans".
America redirects to "United States". Feel free to read the article, too, if you like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Here is "North America": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... And as a bonus, "South America": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And also from the Wikipedia intro: "A continent is one of several very large landmasses on Earth. [...]These are (from largest in size to smallest): Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia"
I understand the end of the comment perfectly in such a light. America is America's biggest problem — Read it several possible ways:
The USA is most of Spanish-speaking countries biggest problem (because it creates a drug market and requires it to be stomped over at its production/transit places; because it imposes puppet, nondemocratic governments; because it distorts local economies; a very long etc.)
The countries in our continent are the USA's biggest problem (because of migration, lets empower Trump to fight those illegals; because of cheap hand labor, the wages are kept artificially low; because of a very long etc.)
Polysemy rules!
We were teached differently where I live. In the school, the textbooks listed Central America as a continent on its own. We also were thought different divisions of the greater land masses: Old World, New World, The Newest Wold and the Cold Continent. The Americas could be considered a single continent: America. By the way, the distinction between the continents is somewhat arbitrary: why is Europe a continent of its own and not a part of Eurasia? Or why is Europe a continent, while India is a subcontinent?
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
There is a continent called 'America': https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
ISIS is Apple biggest customer. Timmy Cook "Hearts" ISIS.
ha ha
The concept of a continent is slightly arbitrary, but they are just large, mostly separate land masses.... so there are 6 of them (or 7 if you consider Greenland to be big enough, which few people do). I have never seen ANY reference to Central America being a continent... it is not large and certainly not separate, disconnected, or a distinct physical area. North and South America are, independently, very large, and highly disconnected.
Europe is not a continent, neither is Asia. It is one land mass with no disconnect or border at all, and trying to pretend they are separate continents is purely a political/fantasy. The name for it is Eurasia. India is not a continent- but you could consider it a sub-continent because it is on a different techtonic plate. North America and South America are on different plates. Interestingly, although Central America is NOT a continent, it *is* on a separate plate (just like the Arabian area of the Eurasian Continent is on a separate plate).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And so it begins. The only folks left using broken security software will be the ones that the government is "trying to protect". All others will find or create trusted sources. First will pass the security and encryption specialty software, eventually OS market. I would really like the government to stop window licking.
You realise that this can be read outside the US where we aren't susceptible to US flavored fearmongering?
"Today's privacy violation will be brought to you by the phrase 'because ISIS.'"
Requiem for the American Dream
[...] Or (gasp), even roll their own in their labs in Raqqa, Mosul, Sirte...
Well given their 'lab' is a stinking shit-hole where they keep their camels and their women they are to busy raping both to get any work done. You know how it is.
Problem is, that tactic doesn't really work much anymore.
Like hell it doesn't. That tactic is why we have things like the Patriot Act. It's why we ended up in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's why we have this absurd and wasteful War on Drugs and the largest prison population in the world. (Hint, if our prison population is larger than China's then we are doing something wrong)
Sorry but accusations of being soft on crime are extremely effective as a political tactic. The public demonstrably falls for them each and every time and there is no evidence to the contrary.
Not on any map I have ever seen in my life. Combining the two continents of North America and South America would be just about as ridiculous and illogical as combining Africa and Eurasia.
Not everything in this world follows logic. Too many maps will show Europe and Asia as two continents. By the way, if the maps you've seen come from the US, not identifying America as a single continent is not just for the sake of logic, it's didactics; there, the country is consistently called America after all!
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
I must have not taken enough attention when or the textbooks I had did not make it clear that they treated the three Americas as subcontinents that form America. It reads so in the Portuguese language Wikipedia article on Central America: https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/América_Central.
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
You immediately repeat the exact same american exceptionlism, my view was derived from an excellent article that actually spoke to various academic from the various countries that form the 'Americas' you of course point to en.wikipedia again and again, so yeah Spanish and Portuguese are also languages from the 'Americas' as are many original nation languages. Let's be blunt history emphatically proves you wrong, because members of the original nation refereed to the land mass in their own way for tens of thousands of years (by far the majority of human occupation of that region) and racist white protestant they are not foreigners in their own land. You are just selectively using you definition as dominant because it is yours and ignoring everyone else's especially those who held their views for tens of thousands of years. So theirs don't count because you killed enough of them so that they don't count?
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
en.wikipedia is not usa.wikipedia, it is just English- the main language of many countries.
You are waaaaay over the top.