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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.
We need to control the message by reframing the dialogue. Instead of saying that politicians want to invade our privacy (which is too obtuse for most people to understand), we need to make the argument more emotional, specific, and personal:
"Senator Dumbshit wants to make us turn over our babies' bath pictures to pedophiles, by eliminating the encryption we use to protect our families."
There are many kinds of encryption. During WWII British radio was using previously agreed phrases to activate French resistance. Can you arrest someone for sending message: "Uncle Henry is sick today" ? Where do you draw a line? What if I encode message into RAW camera image such that it does not affects how an eye see the image but otherwise has fully encoded text in the lower bits of the image pixels (text itself still encoded by cipher)? Those in many cases might be indistinguishable from normal camera noise and it will be very hard to prove that the image has a hidden message inside it and that it is breaking the law. Cameras typically have 14 bit deep RAW images and human eye only distinguishes 8 bit. So for each pixel of the image I can encode (naively) 6 bits of message and still have an image that the eye will not see the difference. Obviously the example is naive. In real life less bits with smarter algorithm would have to be used to make impossible to prove that the image has hidden message beyond noise.
It has been done before, it can be done again.
As it turns out most people are not die-hard fanatics when it comes to any religion, otherwise we would all still be polytheistic pagans instead of christians or muslims or atheists.
I propose somthing along those lines:
- Set up a permeating information campaign highlighting the evils of the muslim clergy, the suffering this teaching has brought upon the people.
- Emphasize the similarity between Islam and (englightened) christianity (yes some will want to convert them directly to atheism but that step might be way too drastic so soon. One culture shock per generation, not more). Paint it as "Islam = christianity as understood by a well meaning but illiterate merchant that was warped and twisted by the evil men that came after him" (might be not that far from the truth according to some interesting books)
- Rigorusly punish any preachers/mullahs that go against that teaching. Jail time minimum. (yeah that goes against freedom of speech. So what? Better that than having to kill every single muslim)
- Hunt down and kill all that either commit violence against converts or argue in favor of it.
- Impose harsh taxation and restriction for the building of mosques and the foundation of any islam-related societies
- Reward desirable behaviour monetarily or with other things that are valued. Places at good universities for their children migh work.
- Wait 10-30 years to see a massive reduction in all muslim activities.
(Consider this a v0.1 pre-alpha version of this guide. I am sure that there is still room for lots of improvements)
I based this completely politically incorrect guide on the experiences of the captured turks after the battle of vienna that were brought to germany and converted to christianity. Turns out that even though it was barely past the middle ages and they were soldiers of a defeated nation, no violence was used against them, just slow, steady, continous pressure and patiences. The first converted a few month after the battle, the last ones 20 years later. They were accepted into the population and allowed to marry as if they had been germans (or rather bavarians, prussians...) from the start.
Christians have killed doctor and bombed clinics where abortions were performed, that's terrorism, guess we have to ban all christianity too.... hmmmm... we may be on to something here, banning all religion...