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France Says Fight Against Messaging Encryption Needs Worldwide Initiative (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader shares a Reuters report: Messaging encryption, widely used by Islamist extremists to plan attacks, needs to be fought at international level, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Thursday, and he wants Germany to help him promote a global initiative. He meets his German counterpart, Thomas de Maiziere, on Aug. 23 in Paris and they will discuss a European initiative with a view to launching an international action plan, Cazeneuve said. French intelligence services are struggling to intercept messages from Islamist extremists who increasingly switch from mainstream social media to encrypted messaging services, with Islamic State being a big user of such apps, including Telegram. "Many messages relating to the execution of terror attacks are sent using encryption; it is a central issue in the fight against terrorism," Cazeneuve told reporters after a government meeting on security. "France will make proposals. I have sent a number of them to my Germany colleague," he said.

28 of 446 comments (clear)

  1. Just like trying to ban guns by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    People will just make their own.

    1. Re: Just like trying to ban guns by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The difference is if you make encryption illegal and someone uses their own, you can arrest them. This basically ensures the only ones using encryption will be part of ISIS and makes it much easier to track them. Now actually figuring out what is actually encrypted (when they start using non traditional methods) will be difficult.

    2. Re:Just like trying to ban guns by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      90% of the time its not a home made gun... Almost all the time sounds like a fair description of 90%. so that other 10% fits nicely in almost never

    3. Re:Just like trying to ban guns by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Almost all the time sounds like a fair description of 90%. so that other 10% fits nicely in almost never

      NO, those two things are NOT the same.

      If 10% is the same as "almost never", then surely you wouldn't mind being shot only 10% of the time, right?

      FFS, you're as brain-dead as servicescope_minor.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
  2. Widely Used!!!! by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 5, Insightful

    >Messaging encryption, widely used by Islamist extremists to plan attacks

    And much more widely used by spouses to talk to their spouses to remind them to pick up milk from the supermarket because the bottle is almost empty.

    --
    I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    1. Re:Widely Used!!!! by silas_moeckel · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Lets see.
      So that network it goes through can not sell my need for milk and eggs to advertisers.
      So that things that do need to be encrypted do not stand out.
      Because in some places the things you talk with your spouse about have a semi privilege.
      I want to insure it's realy my wife not somebody impersonating her.

      That's just for starters.

      --
      No sir I dont like it.
    2. Re:Widely Used!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But there is nothing illegal about buying milk... so why does this message need to be encrypted?

      Unless the government does not like that brand of milk...

      Because that's no one else's fucking business, that's why.

    3. Re:Widely Used!!!! by Kohath · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Because, if you know when a guy's at the supermarket instead of at home, you can exploit that knowledge to do things at his house during that time.

  3. France ruled by idiots... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's re-word this a bit.

    We know for a fact that most of the Terror attacks were planned "in the clear". Most are at a loss on how to use encryption or have the tools needed to make use of encryption.

    Next, everyone using the internet for anything uses encryption, everyone. be it SSL, TLS, SSH, PGP, GPG, whatever.

    What France is trying to say (and what the US and Britain as well intend) is to get people riled up over encryption so that they can make it illegal for EVERYONE to use if it doesn't have a "back-door" or "golden-key".

    This would cause a complete failure for security / encryption and safety worldwide. Secure communications between traffic-control and air-towers would be subject to attack. Subway and Train communications that control track switching and timing would be vulnerable.

    Identity theft would go through the roof, the stock market would crash, dogs and cats living together, mass-hysteria!!

    But, then again, that is what the "Terrorists" want. And our governments are rolling over, exposing their soft, bloated underbellies to ISIS.

  4. My fat white ass... by clonehappy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...that this is about terrorism. FFS we have the best military intelligence in the world, and we can't stop a rag-tag bunch of third-world "militants"? Bull. Shit.

    Every time the elites want more control over the populace or want to ban something, they trot out their wholly-owned and operated subsidiary ISIL (or whatever they're called this week, Taliban, Al-Qaeda, etc.) to demonize the freedom du jure and everyone bends over. Banning encryption is not "central to defeating terrorism", banning encryption is "central to defeating personal liberty".

    These Reuters/AP/wire reports always read properly when you replace terrorism with liberty or freedom anyway. Liberty must be stopped. Freedom is running rampant. Liberty is at odds with modern society. The actual terrorist acts could be stopped if governments wanted them to stop, but they don't want them to, they want to exacerbate them in the name of stopping freedom.

    1. Re:My fat white ass... by npslider · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It is the goal of ISIS and all who agree with them to do one thing:

      BAN FREEDOM and impose strict controls over everyone.

      We are literally doing the job for them. ISIS and Co. can't kill us all, and they don't have to. We are doing it to ourselves.

  5. What have we become? by npslider · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We must ban all people from meeting in groups without authorized monitoring... they could be plotting evil.

    We must ban the use of paper, it leaves no lasting evidence after it's destroyed.

    We must monitor everything and everyone, everywhere.

    Big brother is the only way to stop terror. It is necessary, it is the only moral thing to do. We must make it a world law, all offenders will be punished.

    With these wise and urgently needed social advances..finally the populace will be safe, and under control.

  6. Re:Straw Man. False Dichotomy. by npslider · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Those that plan to do evil WILL ALWAYS find a way to communicate, plan unnoticed, and not get caught.

    Short of plugging every mind into a unified collective where all thoughts are known to all, this will continue to be true.

  7. I agree, we need a worldwide initiative by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Although the worldwide initiative I have in mind involves a purging of clueless, imbecilic politicians...

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  8. If you do nothing wrong, then yak yak yak by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    We have populace where they think that if you do nothing wrong, then you have nothing to worry about. The trouble is that they are ignorant of the law and don't realize that if a prosecutor were to look closely at anyone's life, they will find something that they are doing that is illegal. The people have waaayyyy too much confidence in authority.

    So, there will always be support for these dragnet operations to get the "bad guy" because everyone else thinks that they are the good guy.

  9. Islam is the problem, not encryption by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We blame terrorism on encryption because we don't want to admit the real problem. The same is often true for gun control, especially recently. Why do people get offended when I say that Islam is evil? Why is this considered bigotry?

    Islam isn't a race or an ethnicity. It's a religious belief. Specifically, it's a belief that Allah is the only god, Mohammed is his prophet, and the Qur'an is the literal word of god. We wouldn't call Christianity a race, so why would we act like Islam is a race? A large number of Muslims are either Arabs or Persians, which are two different ethnicities.

    Not all religions or beliefs are equal. Would the belief that the Earth is flat be equally as valid as believing that the Earth is round? Is a belief that the moon landings were faked as valid as believing that they really happened? Is it equally as valid to believe that humans aren't causing global warming as it is to believe that humans are causing a lot of the warming? In each case, one belief is obviously right and another is wrong. And then there are religions like Scientology, which is clearly a scheme to profit rather than a sincerely developed belief. Again, it is not to be taken seriously.

    While religions are never supported by testing hypotheses, they can still be judged on how they teach believers to act. Islam clearly teaches that non-believers should be given the choice to either convert or die. This is stated in the Qur'an and echoed in present day Islamic teaching. It is also clearly wrong. A significant portion of Muslims genuinely believe they need to kill non-believers. This is not true of Christianity, which teaches to love your neighbor and love your enemy. Even the most perverted forms of Christianity such as the Westboro Baptist Church don't believe in killing people. They are perverted, no doubt, but they stick to offensive speech and claim that their god is punishing people for sins, usually homosexuality. They are perverted, but unlike Islam, they're not killing anyone.

    Virtually all Christians are taught that if they committed acts of terror like what is frequently done by Muslims, they would get an instant one way ticket to hell. Islam could discourage terrorism by teaching the same thing, but instead they teach that it results in a trip to heaven where they get 72 virgins. Unlike Christianity, Islam clearly condones violence and terrorism.

    Why, then, do we pretend that Christianity and Islam are equally valid and call anyone who objects a bigot? Islam is objectively worse than Christianity. It is a belief system that needs to cease to exist. Some beliefs are so harmful that they need to be eradicated. Islam is at the top of the list.

    1. Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      I would say history shows that repressing a religion is the worst way to bring about a change in behavior. Stick to the facts and punish individuals for their actions. The more violence we put into the world the more violence we will get in return.

    2. Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption by amicusNYCL · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It is a belief system that needs to cease to exist.

      How do you suggest we achieve that? Do you think we should just go ahead and kill 25% of the world's population? Would you suggest that the way to counter an ideology that believes in "convert or die" is to tell all of them that they need to either stop believing or die? What would that make us? Otherwise, what do you think is the best way to go about getting a couple billion people to abandon their beliefs that are over a millennium old, beliefs which form the foundation for the power structures in their countries, beliefs that people would rather fight and kill you over to preserve the power structure instead of abandon? And, for that matter, why stop at Islam? It seems like religion has been holding back real global progress, why not a push to take religion in general out of society?

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    3. Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption by fustakrakich · · Score: 3, Insightful

      25% is not nearly enough. Make it about 80%, pus or minus...

      Leave the religious bullshit outside the door. If you want to stop the terrorists, you have to at least reduce their pay

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    4. Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption by Captain+Splendid · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Woo! Genocide! Go on, turn in your human card, you don't need it anymore.

      --
      Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
    5. Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption by unixisc · · Score: 4, Insightful

      'Cease to exist' doesn't automatically imply genocide. If the bulk of the world's 1.6B Muslims stopped believing in Islam and switched to anything else - be it Atheism, Christianity, Scientology, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, et al, we'd all be better off. After the Soviet Union was defeated, Communism almost ceased to exist - if one recognizes that Chinese Communism is just one party rule, nothing more, nothing less, and that the ones in North Korea, Cuba & Venezuela are statistically insignificant.

      Islam can be stamped out the same way that Nazism was stamped out after WWII. Normally, we wouldn't tell people anywhere what to believe. But when a belief system advocates hatred and violence against its non members, it goes beyond a simple argument about rights, and gets into that libertarian cliché about 'Your rights end where mine begin'. And it's not even like Muslims are geographically contained anywhere, the way Taoists or Shintos or Rastafarians are: they are all over the world. So it's perfectly valid to start dictating what they can believe if they don't want to be either incarcerated or expelled or otherwise ostracized

    6. Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption by geek · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Woo! Genocide! Go on, turn in your human card, you don't need it anymore.

      How is self defense genocide? They have clearly stated they wish to irradicate western civilization. There is simply no rational basis to allow them to do so. I'd be happy to let them live in their shithole and kill each other from now until doomsday but fuckwits like you seem hell bent on importing them into every civilized country on Earth where they can enact their evil on the innocent. Truth be told I would have no problem adding you to the 25% also.

    7. Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption by Captain+Splendid · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How is self defense genocide?

      I see nothing in your post pertaining to self defense. All you did was to state your support for mass killing, and then in your reply to me, you literally doubled down.

      They have clearly stated they wish to irradicate western civilization.

      Well yes, this is to be expected from terrorist fucktards, not from supposedly college-educated middle aged white males such as yourself.

      There is simply no rational basis to allow them to do so.

      Just as there's no rational basis to perform even worse atrocities as a preventative measure.

      but fuckwits like you seem hell bent on importing them into every civilized country on Earth

      And now you've jumped to straight assumptions. Truth be told, I'm relatively agnostic on immigration in general (which to you probably makes me just as bad as who you thought I was, correct?)

      Truth be told I would have no problem adding you to the 25% also.

      Oh, looks like I was being kind to you. Apparently your worldview is twisted enough that I'm worth being added to the mass grave because I'm insufficiently compliant to that very idea in the first place. Stay classy.

      --
      Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
    8. Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption by FranklinWebber · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not that I'm advocating what "geek" did, but it sounds less like genocide and more like ideocide (or "meme"-o-cide?).

    9. Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption by lgw · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Christianity has a New Testament, and a Reformation, is the thing. Theocracies of all stripes have done horrors, but then that's true of most forms of government, and I think is more about government than religion. But if you look at the rules and advice actually contained in scripture, there's a reason that "Old Testament" is slang for harsh and unyielding. And Islam only has an Old Testament, full of "put the infidel to the sword", without the moderating influence of a Scripture 2.0 full of needed patches about how being nice to people is really desirable.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    10. Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not Islam in general, but the death cult interpretation of it being pushed by the Saudis. Read up on the story of Sayyid Kutb, the influential Egyptian imam who also pushed this movement along and as an aside, founded the Muslim Brotherhood. You'll find out why the Egyptian military had to round them up and shoot them to avoid the fate of Syria and Iraq.

  10. ...ignorance by XSportSeeker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I imagine a call for banning clueless politicians who are always framing encryption under the terrorism threat agenda would be way more benefitial to the world.

  11. Why stop there by Tukz · · Score: 2, Insightful

    We need to BAN all types of vehicles, they are widely used by Terrorists!
    We want to avoid another Nice, we need to address this on a global level.

    In fact, replace "vehicles" with just about anything. Phones. Terrorists use those too. A lot.

    --
    - Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -