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.

Comments

Just like trying to ban guns

[Anonymous Coward]

People will just make their own.

Re: Just like trying to ban guns

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Just like trying to ban guns

[Salgak1]

. . . or they'll steg it inside a picture, and post the picture to social media. Or they'll use a word code with a one-time pad. Or any of a number of other techniques.

I've heard stories of alleged terrorists communicating within a MMORPG, or via a private TeamSpeak or Ventrilo server.

There are multiple ways to hide information. There's no way to stop them all, and no way to stop ANY if free speech is the law of the land.

Re:Just like trying to ban guns

[Salgak1]

Home-made guns almost never happen? Like the 10% of captured guns in Australia ??

And if you're talking improvised firearms, it's even easier. Hell, there are videos on YouTube showing you how. . .

Re: Just like trying to ban guns

[John Allsup]

You cannot make a gun with only 300 lines combined of JavaScript, HTML and php (given cryptojs). You can make a barebones secure messaging system requiring only a standard Lamp stack that easily. I did one out of boredom in about two hours, most of that looking up APIs, the result of which I dumped at http://pgen.chalisque.org/ssms... - too easy.

Re: Just like trying to ban guns

[Anonymous Coward]

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 you know anyone trying to communicate sensitive information we have other laws already inplace requiring us to protect..

like financial transiactions, exchange of personal information or trade secrets etc.

Re:Just like trying to ban guns

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Only if you forget that "almost never" and "statistically significant" are mutually exclusive.

Re:Just like trying to ban guns

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost all the time I make it to work safe and sound. Only 1 out of 10 time I get beaten to a pulp by robber.

Re: Just like trying to ban guns

[jacekm]

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.

Re:Just like trying to ban guns

[Travis Mansbridge]

Text communications, regardless of platform, unless encrypted, are sent over the line in plain readable form by anyone to whom the traffic is visible (such as others on the network, the ISP or the NSA). This is basically for efficiency's sake, why add or change the data when you can just send it bitwise as-is? But it makes all standard communication over the internet insecure in this basic manner, which is why encryption is critical for any personal communication among free people. The real kicker is even a crummy ISIS programmer can almost certainly come up with some decently strong encryption without any backdoors, but legislators probably can't understand this.

Re:Just like trying to ban guns

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

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.

Re:Just like trying to ban guns

[johanw]

Except that encryption is already pre-made. The funny thing is even that Silence, a fork of TextSecure that focusses on SMS encryption, is developed partly in France. You just need the apk, no accounts or servers.

Re:Just like trying to ban guns

[danbob999]

That why the US have the lowest gun murder rate of the developed world. Oh wait...

Re:Just like trying to ban guns

[davester666]

Just give your mom your lunch money when you go upstairs, and she won't beat you up so much...

Re: Just like trying to ban guns

[Anonymous Coward]

"The pigeons are on the lawn."

Just did it...

Re: Just like trying to ban guns

[Mister Transistor]

The use of phrases is called a code. That is a very simple verbal form of a cipher. Read up on the basics of codes and ciphers and you have a lot of the basic information you need on encryption.

The other process you are describing is also well known, it's called "steganography". There are already algorithms written to not only encode data that way, but also to detect patterns of encoded data in an image. Read up on "stegbreak".

Re:Just like trying to ban guns

[Darinbob]

Knives are forbidden in prison. And yet...

Re:Just like trying to ban guns

[ooloorie]

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

Let's disregard your misuse of the term "almost all the time", the simple fact is that 10% home made guns shows that making guns is easy. The only reason the percentage isn't higher is because manufactured guns are easy to get, even illegally. If any government tries to crack down more, it won't reduce the number of guns, it will simply increase the percentage of home made guns.

Re: Just like trying to ban guns

[prograsm]

You cannot make a gun with only 300 lines combined of JavaScript, HTML and php

Challenge accepted! Seriously, if an AR receiver is acceptable (legally defined as "a gun") this is completely do-able. ARs are simple boxes with a few holes in the right place and another box threaded on top. It gets even simpler if single-shot is OK as then I don't need a buffer tower or magazine well, so it's literally a box with like 8 holes. I know I can do this in a dozen or so lines of OpenSCAD, and I think I can do it in Javascript/HTML/PHP

Re:Just like trying to ban guns

[johanw]

The official story was they were having too many issues with it. However, I more believe Moxie just wanted to get rid of sms. When I check the issue list there are not many sms related issues and most of those that remained were solved by Silence so they could just import them.

Re: Just like trying to ban guns

[lgw]

Steganography isn't perfect - thus far it seems you can always statistically distinguish between "random" bits in images, sound files, etc, from "random"-seeming encrypted data. There's no proof that this is necessarily true, however, so it may be lack of public-sector work in the area.

If the goal is to send encrypted messages without going to jail for it, methods like you describe could work in a nation with jury trials and presumption of innocence, as the complex technical arguments and probabilities would likely fall flat with a jury. You'd still likely get raided, however, and if you were involved in something nefarious the physical evidence might be laying around. Plus the raid itself is fairly strong punishment for what should be a non-crime.

Mostly, if you don't want to draw government attention, the best bet is to comunicate in ways that don't themselves draw attention (like constantly send RAW files back and forth) online (where it's easy to search everyone). I don't want to give suggestions, but it's not complicated.

Re:Just like trying to ban guns

[cayenne8]

Well, it is pretty easy to BUY 80% Lowers for different firearms, they usually come with a jig to slap on it, drill out the last little bits, and Voila, you now have a fire arm with NO REGISTRATION or serial number required and you can build the rest from readily available parts....

Perfectly legal...Example Here...

Re:Just like trying to ban guns

[diesalesmandie]

Only if you forget that "almost never" and "statistically significant" are mutually exclusive.

Not necessarily, statistical significant is however you define it to be

Re:Just like trying to ban guns

[srmalloy]

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

"Here, stick your head through this hole. Just ignore the heavy blade in the slide above the hole; it almost never drops when someone sticks their head in it."

If there's a one in ten chance that the blade will fall and cut your head off when you stick your head in the hole, I don't think that you'd feel that "almost never" was an accurate description of the probability.

Re: Just like trying to ban guns

[lgw]

I don't think the legal fiction of which part is the "gun" part is that relevant here, but here's a great photo documentary of making an AK47 from a shovel. (Somewhere there's an entertaining write-up by the guy who did it, but I can't find that link.)

The barrel is the hard part to source, really, the upper and lower receiver pieces I could totally believe you could do in a small amount of code - the AK is as simple as you can really make it.

Re:Just like trying to ban guns

[david_thornley]

Would 0.1% be reasonable as "almost never"? If I got shot on 0.1% of the days I've lived, I'd be full of holes.

Re: Just like trying to ban guns

[david_thornley]

I actually doubt that. 300 lines of gcode would be plenty to start with one of those almost-pre-made receivers and do it the rest of the way.

Re: Just like trying to ban guns

[david_thornley]

The legal fiction is important. I haven't tried this, but apparently I can buy a lot of things that aren't legally guns and easily make a gun with a few metalworking tools. That means I can get one with no official investigation or official registration or any interaction with any government.

Re: Just like trying to ban guns

[lgw]

The crackdown on that has started. You can no longer host a workshop where you explain to people how to do it, and let them use your tools with your guidance. I miss the good old days when we were a constitutional republic.

Re: Just like trying to ban guns

[thegarbz]

I would welcome being shot at by a home made gun far more than a well made store bought gun. That's a key difference. Quality firearms are not bash together types and typically require skills. Encryption on the other hand is well published mathematics. It's not hard to get it pretty much perfect.

Re: Just like trying to ban guns

[turbidostato]

"There are many kinds of encryption."

So what? Law is not about technology, but about definitions.

"Where do you draw a line?"

You basically don't need it. France has a long standing tradition on what Foucault described at Discipline and Punish to be alike a panopticon: this is the kind of "crimes" you put in place for "just in case" scenarios. You generally don't prosecute them but, by being vague and very difficult to avoid one way or another, you throw them at whomever you like, be it political dissent or someone you want to punish beyond what you have at hand. In you example, for instance, you don't ban saying "Uncle Henry is sick today" but add an "encryption" charge on top of whatever you have to the person you are after.

"What if I encode message into RAW camera image such that it does not affects how an eye see"

That's completly different. You just ban steganography along any other cryptography. You don't think the only way to "see" if a file comes with a hidden payload is to use your naked eye, do you?

"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."

The only way to truly hide a message so it looks like noise is by using a one time pad. But we are talking about state power here, remember? https://xkcd.com/538/

Re: Just like trying to ban guns

[turbidostato]

"thus far it seems you can always statistically distinguish between "random" bits in images, sound files, etc, from "random"-seeming encrypted data. There's no proof that this is necessarily true, however, so it may be lack of public-sector work in the area."

In the words of Dr Strangelove, it is not only possible, it is essential! err... trivial.

There's no magic in the bits being interspersed among other info. Just think of the message alone: can you imagine a way to obscure a text so it's resistant to statistical analysis? If you don't, google for "one-time pad encryption" and about the "there is no proof" part, google "Claude Shannon".

Re:Just like trying to ban guns

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Would 0.1% be reasonable as "almost never"?

Not if we're talking about getting shot.

-

If I got shot on 0.1% of the days I've lived, I'd be full of holes.

Obviously.

Re: Just like trying to ban guns

[lgw]

The noise bits in images, sound, etc, aren't random in the same way that encrypted bits are, is the thing. They're both "random" in an informal sense, sure, but there are lots of different random distributions.

Re: Just like trying to ban guns

[rtb61]

Gees dude why make it so complicated, you are sending encrypted messages not the encyclopaedia Britannica. Simply code the message using computer to send it in clear. Type in your message and have your computer convert that message into normal empty chatter, however the arrangement of words and sentences is the code, it can be stupendously complex, adding in spelling errors, grammatical faults, names et al, but that empty message can be descrambled into a real message, quite a complex program but it can work. When it comes to distributing larger amounts of data, simply attach the web location for that data download and access that data via an alternate device.

Next up just to create chaos for fun, target foreign governments agents, authorities and politicians with suspect messaging and communications, you know questionable sources, questionable content, links to offshore bank accounts they can almost access. You really do want them to waste much more time spying upon themselves then they do spying upon you and computer networks are really, really, good at generating tons of data, keep in mind you don't have to keep a copy of the data you send but they have to and you can really, really, flood out their systems.

The whole thing stinks of lazy investigations, the computers will do their work for them but you can bet the terrorists will not cooperate and simply as they already do, rely on direct person to person communications and memory card transfers and more investigatory officers turn into donut munching lard arses unwilling to leave their air-conditioned offices, the ability to investigate that will collapse.

Re: Just like trying to ban guns

[turbidostato]

"The noise bits in images, sound, etc, aren't random in the same way that encrypted bits are, is the thing."

How do you know?

I bet you know because some algorithmical distribution (i.e.: they are not *really* random). But then again, a truly random one-time pad produces a truly random crypted message (i.e.: white noise) while an algorithmically distributed one-time pad will produce -you guess, and algorithmically seemingly-random distribution too.

Re: Just like trying to ban guns

[lgw]

A one-time pad is a long as the message. If you have a method to securely send the one-time pad, why not use it to send the message instead?

The point, however, is that the low-order bits in images and sounds aren't as uniformly random as encrypted data. Now, you could generate a one-time pad using the same sort of data you're trying to hide in, and that can sometimes work, but there's that practical difficulty mentioned above. If you just want to send short, simple messages, use a code instead of a cypher.

Re:Just like trying to ban guns

[lsatenstein]

Yes they will
Five years ago, a university project created a AES app that took user's speech, and transmitted it encrypted. At the other end, it was decoded.
The speech app was slightly choppy, but it worked quite well. For the demo, if the user spoke, and had a short sentence, for example, the data block was sent out appended with the end-of-block indicator.

So if you intercept the phone call, it will be in the clear, but the speech text transmitted would be gibberish.

Re: Just like trying to ban guns

[Agripa]

When the US was considering making unauthorized encryption unlawful, Ron Rivest came up with chaffing and winnowing.

Re:Just like trying to ban guns

[Agripa]

That is why the US has the lowest knife and blunt object murder rate in the developed world. Oh, wait ...

Re: Just like trying to ban guns

[RockDoctor]

The other process you are describing is also well known, it's called "steganography". There are already algorithms written to not only encode data that way, but also to detect patterns of encoded data in an image. Read up on "stegbreak".

Which might work if you were to restrict yourself to, for example, image files. There are a myriad of other non-human-readable data formats available, and any half-way competent person could choose a different format to encode their data into.

Of course, if you make the assumption that your potential terrorist is an incompetent idiot, run by incompetent idiots with no hint of competence all up and down the command and control chain, then you might be safe to just deal with JPEGs. But if you assume that there is at least one competent person in the chain ...

Oh, both ends of the channel need an "ensteg" and "desteg" tool pair. So, someone, somewhere needs the competence to design and install those, and to arrange for them to be used.

Personally, I'd probably go for audio files, just because there are so many more common file formats to use. "Hey man, we did a new dub-jam mix of that set from last Friday's gig. See attached OGG. I can send you a FLAC if you want to re-edit it yourself."

Re: Just like trying to ban guns

[RockDoctor]

A one-time pad is a long as the message. If you have a method to securely send the one-time pad, why not use it to send the message instead?

Distribute the one-time pad publicly years before you need it, just call it something else.

Remember the "Insurance" file that Wikileaks distributed some years ago? I'll bet that large stretches of that are statistically indistinguishable from random, so if you wanted an unobtrusive one-time-pad, then taking a section of that from one point to another would be trivial.

Steganography is hiding a message in a place that people wouldn't look for it - the Classic example being tattooing your message on a slave's scalp, before letting his hair grow out and sending him off with the message. And deeper steganography would be that the message (by a previously agreed code) is in the fact that you sent slave Stavros, not slave Dimitrios. Not that Stavros or Dimitrios know this, or that they both have Aunt Hera's keftides recipe tattooed on their scalp.

Re:Just like trying to ban guns

[cayenne8]

Serial numbers are hammered in, so filing or sanding them flat out does nothing - deformation runs deep and it is very easy to read "erased" serial on x-ray machine. Hammering a new one over the old one also doesn't erase the old one either.

But, there is NO serial number generated for, nor required for a 80% lower. You don't need one to legally buy it, nor to DIY finishing it and you can legally own a non serial number firearm, like the AR or whatever....

Re: Just like trying to ban guns

[peawormsworth]

The most difficult communication to intercept is the one where two people talk privately in person.

If they are really serious about fighting terror, then direct person to person private conversation should be banned. Of course, free and open conversation can be conducted in the presence of an observer.

Re: Just like trying to ban guns

[turbidostato]

"A one-time pad is a long as the message. If you have a method to securely send the one-time pad, why not use it to send the message instead?"

Because that's not the goal of steganography (which is what we are talking about here). While you can successfully cypher a message with a one-time pad, there's still the fact that the message has been sent (humm... what the hell are doing these two arch-enemies of me talking together?). Steganography hides the fact that there has been an information exchange at all.

Widely Used!!!!

[TechyImmigrant]

>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.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[npslider]

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...

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[silas_moeckel]

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.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's not your business that they're buying milk. Being a legal or illegal activity has nothing to do with it.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[NatasRevol]

Because of the right to privacy?

ie fuck off

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[keltor]

Why? Let's spell it out ... F R E E D O M

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[Austerity Empowers]

You have given away that you are going to the supermarket and that you are going to buy milk. This can be used and/or exploited in a number of ways you may not wish, and in some cases may actually be dangerous (if say, you recently won the lottery).

It really doesn't matter, if you are a private and paranoid person, you should have the ability to keep your shit private. I don't particularly want to live in such a paranoid society that we let the government do whatever it wishes just because terrorists. Let's not forget that terrorists may be a good thing in some cases, it's just that most of the western world doesn't give two shits about Islam or its religion that these particular types aren't well liked.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[dreamchaser]

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...

It shouldn't matter one bit why someone wants their messages about groceries to be encrypted. It's called freedom. You should try it.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[npslider]

My point exactly. My sarcastic remarks above describe the twisted logic the powers have used to convince people they do not need privacy...

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[Kohath]

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.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[wardrich86]

And also by government officials to keep their messages secret. Did the Government just confirm that they are also Islamist extremists? :O

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[DarkOx]

Because it does not logically end there. As soon as some terrorist disseminates a plan through an online game, the comments section on an Amazon product page, writing stuff in notepad over and RDP session, whatever; the list of things which can't be encrypted or must be backdoored will grow. Pretty soon it will be more or less impossible for regular people to have authentication, and integrity to say nothing of privacy in any kind of digital communication or transaction. I don't think its hyperbolic to say that if these morons get their way we will literally roll back every economic gain the Internet has afforded over a time.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[Just Some Guy]

Because sometimes "buying milk" is pillow talk between spouses and that's no one's damn business except for me and my wife. There's not a convenient "keep this private" vs "OH SURE GO AHEAD AND READ THIS ONE" toggle, so I opt for keeping all my interactions private.

I value messaging privacy for the same reason I have a door on my bathroom. I'm not doing anything illegal in either case, but damned if I want someone observing me while I use them.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[TheGratefulNet]

BINGO!

give that man a virtual cigar or beer.

info leaking is info leakage. even simple things may betray you.

the proper way to deal with modern life: you have to convince me WHY I should have to give you about about me. its not the other way around; anyone asking 'why NOT give me that info?' is an evil sonofabitch and does not deserve the time of day, in fact.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[TheGratefulNet]

hahaha!

right you are.

that should be a common battle cry.

oh, mr. gov - if you think the right of citizens to have privacy in comms is wrong, you go first, you asswipe SOB! lets see all your pillow talk and all your chatter, first. lets do that for, oh, say 5 years. lets see if anything bad happens in this testcase.

but you go first, since you are SO SURE its good for the world and society.

wait - what's that? you don't think 'little people' rules apply to you?

ah, you have just shown your hand.

go fuck yourself.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[npslider]

I agree with you 100% I was making a point above. In the spirit of the topic at hand, here is the "Man's" answer to you: (Tongue in cheek)

Lets see. So that network it goes through can not sell my need for milk and eggs to advertisers.

But, you will miss out on good, money saving deals!

So that things that do need to be encrypted do not stand out.

Encryption is used by criminals, law abiding citizens do not need it. Its for the greater good.

Because in some places the things you talk with your spouse about have a semi privilege.

Talk at home.

I want to insure it's realy my wife not somebody impersonating her.

That's just for starters.

You can't tell how she communicates?

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[npslider]

When the car's not in the driveway and the lights are out... it's likely I am not home. ;)

I do have my attack cat though. He will protect... his food bowl.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[npslider]

Agreed! I close my bathroom door and use end to end encryption. Sometimes, at the same time!

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[npslider]

The Internet has done so much to give "the little man" a voice, in a world where mass media was an unchallenged king. We loose that, we loose a lot more than just economic gain - we drive, very quickly into a new dark age.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[npslider]

I use WhatsApp... to communicate securely what I want on my Subway sandwich. I'm not worried my decision to not add spinach will land me in jail for violating "Eating Healthy" laws (well at least not yet), but I enjoy knowing there is some measure of privacy present.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[RavenLrD20k]

There is nothing illegal about me checking my bank account or credit card accounts online either.

But I'll be damned if I have those account numbers and financial information running around in plain text between me and the bank.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[npslider]

A new amendment coming to a dictatorship near you:

You have the right to remain silent, because encryption is illegal. Anything you communicate will be used for the State's benefit and our corporate handlers, and to your detriment.

Good day citizen.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[npslider]

Sadly we have seen far to many secure transmission exploits, and nearly every government and Dark Net for sale site has all that info and more already.
(perhaps that is slightly exaggerated)

But, yes. I will not send that kind of data unencrypted any more than I will yell it across a crowded room.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[The-Ixian]

He will protect... his food bowl.

We all protect our food bowls...

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[npslider]

In Soviet America, the Serf's business is the State's business.

What is this individualistic concept of "your"? We are all one. Comrade.

It's for the greater good. The needs of the many (protecting the children) outweigh the needs of the Serf.

Re: Widely Used!!!!

[npslider]

Exactly. How dare we buy milk from "unapproved" sources!

There are deep pockets that need to be filled, mansions to be bought.

The rich are hurting. They come first.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[npslider]

I guess I will return to my hand written shopping list and paying with cash. :)

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[whathappenedtomonday]

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

Air, food and water, widely used by Islamist extremists to power their brains! When, oh when will politicians stop being so lackadaisical?!

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[npslider]

Did I mention he is a Russian Blue? (A wonderful cat breed BTW)

I'm sure with his connections with the Russian Feline Mob, he will remain, well fed.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[Kohath]

But you could come home any time. Unless you have errands to run after work.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[npslider]

Just go old fashioned:

1. Camp out in an inconspicuous black sedan for a week
2. Determine the daily habits of the target
3. Strike at optimum time
4. Profit!!
5. Repeat.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[geek]

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...

You mean like this milk? http://www.washingtontimes.com...

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[unixisc]

I want to insure it's realy my wife not somebody impersonating her.

Why does it have to be your wife - why can't it be somebody impersonating her? If somebody impersonating your wife wants to get into your pants, she will be the one stuck w/ it for 9 months and beyond, not you

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[unixisc]

Make ALL information PUBLICLY available EVERYWHERE. NOTHING being SECRET from ANYBODY. People will automatically tune out and have to struggle for the info they're ACTUALLY interested in

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[BitterOak]

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...

There's nothing illegal about pooping, so why don't you leave the bathroom door open and let everyone watch?

Re: Widely Used!!!!

[unixisc]

Actually, that's precisely the Libertarian argument to minimize the size & scope of government. The government should be like the OS of a computer - a microkernel, if you will. Just do what's basic - protect the citizens from both internal and external threats, and do nothing else. Licensing contractors, or subsidizing farms are none of their business. Those are functions of the userland of society - like standards organizations and so on

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[wardrich86]

If you only hide the messages that contain secrets, you make it easier for them to cherry pick which messages need to be investigated.

Re: Widely Used!!!!

[npslider]

Or get the ugliest, meanest, guard dog you can find.

Re: Widely Used!!!!

[npslider]

I'm going to tear down my walls tonight, find those cameras, and flush them down the toilet - after I use it.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

You don't?

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[silas_moeckel]

And she will be the one filing for child support and raking you over the coals.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[kheldan]

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

Listen, you: It's got nothing WHATSOEVER to do with the content, it is the PRINCIPLE of the thing that matters here. You, I, and everyone else should be free from being surveilled, spied on, or monitored in any way, shape, or fomr. PERIOD. Or would you enjoy being treated like a small child your entire life, or like a criminal in prison, or like an animal in a zoo? That's what it will be like living in a world where governments can see, hear, and read everything you're doing every minute of every day, cradle-to-grave. How would you like it if you couldn't even be alone in your own home without someone watching and listening to everything you do? Would you enjoy using the toilet, or having sex with your wife while government cameras and microphones see and hear all of it, profiling and judging everything you do? No? Does that idea disturb you? You let these super-anal-retentive government types have their way, that's pretty damned close to the world we'd be living in. Don't believe me? Right now, TODAY, there is damned few places you can go in public where there are NOT cameras watching you. Your cellphone can be listened in on with relative ease. The GPS on it can pinpoint your location within a few meters, and that information is free for the taking by the wireless company, which will give it to the government on demand. Your emails? Your web traffic? EVERYTHING you do online? All tracked and logged, made available to the government, ON DEMAND. Your electric and natural gas usage? Meters are wireless in most places now; hour-by-hour usage data can easily be used to determine whether you're home or not, and what you're doing at home. Got OnStar in your car? It can be used to track you, and listen in on you while you're driving -- and again, even if you don't your cellphone can be used to listen and track you anyway. ALL your financial transactions are subject to scrutiny. You decide to start using cash only for everything? The FBI and HLS flag you as a possible terrorist or criminal.

You convinced yet? Or are you one of those "If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide" people? If you are then you are dumb, and if it influences who and what you vote for, then you are helping to destroy MY and many other people's actual freedom, in exchange for imaginary 'safety' -- since all their damn surveillance of normal citizens does NOTHING to combat 'terrorism', it just gives the less-than-1% more power over everyone else. THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE DOING.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[unixisc]

You can claim that she raped you by impersonating your wife....

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[unixisc]

Thank you, Mrs Obama!!!

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[npslider]

Please allow me to translate (as I have done numerous times in other replies I have made to my original post):

My post was dry sarcasm, meant to portray the silliness of the argument that many make that "if you are doing nothing illegal, why do you need encryption?"

My intention was to affirm that for even something as trivial as buying milk we should use encryption. If you don't believe me, look at my second sentence:

"Unless the government does not like that brand of milk..." (I spelled it out right there... ONE DAY THE LEGAL MAY BE DEEMED ILLEGAL!)

What was I saying? I was saying in effect "Buying milk is not illegal *wink wink, so why do we need to use encryption? Oh wait, yes we do need to, because even the TRIVIAL things today (like buying milk), may become non-trivial in the future (a more controlling government), thus encryption will be our only defense against a government that may seek to control what it's subjects do and seek and punish those who dissent.

I'm sorry my sarcasm was not worded better, I can see after looking back at my post how it does sound like I believe what I said. But I would have thought that my second sentence would have indicated that my whole point was to mock the very words I wrote.

Oh well, that post sure did generate a whole lot of replies, bringing out some great points along the way. I guess that made it worth it! :)

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[Penguinisto]

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

Funny thing, but "Honey can you get some milk on the way home" may itself be an encryption of sorts that means "Honey, send the kids to Nana's tonight 'cause that shipment from the naughty store came in today."

Re: Widely Used!!!!

[Kabukiwookie]

The government should be like the OS of a computer - a microkernel, if you will. Just do what's basic - protect the citizens from both internal and external threats, and do nothing else.

Instead, governments are starting to become like systemd. Encroaching on functionality that it should not be touching, until we have systemDOS.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[npslider]

I assume you have done this? ;)

I have twin toddlers, my wife and I use code words a lot. We will not use the word "Bath" lest, all heck breaks loose as they both run to the tub in gleeful excitement before we were ready for that.

Encryption is not for criminals
Encryption is not for good citizens

Encryption is for parents who wish to stay sane

Re: Widely Used!!!!

[Applehu Akbar]

Maybe we wanted a microkernel, but we're getting Windows 10. With all the viruses.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[kheldan]

..OK, I'm glad it was just sarcasm. But you must know all too well then how many people there are out there for which it's not sarcasm. Sad, isn't it? :-/

Re: Widely Used!!!!

[HelpTheNewOverlord]

I think this analogy is even better than what you imagine...

If you have an micro kernel, you need a fast processor so that the overhead is not noticeable. If you have an micro government, you need to somehow minimize the overhead of communication between every single part of a society to solve conflicts.

So, in the same way that monolithic kernels are more successful because we still don't know how to minimize the overhead. You could argue that monolithic governments ARE more successful than micro governments, because nowhere a micro government was tried it could beat an monolithic competitor.

So, maybe, with better communication and technical solutions to solve conflicts we could finally implement an effective micro government. But for now, it is still hurd to see how it should come to be.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[npslider]

Yeah, it is sad. There are some really ignorant people who do not understand the world we live in.

That's why I was hoping my words would make a point.. just the wrong point that time around...

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[LordWabbit2]

"widely used by Islamist extremists to plan attacks" where exactly have they proven (and not just stated) that they use encryption. The Paris attackers used burner phones and plain old text messages. No encryption there. There WAS hype shortly afterwards that they had, but in the end they didn't even bother.
"Party starts at 18:30, meet you at Mickeys"
Would slip past all surveillance and monitoring especially if they had no reason to be monitoring that particular phone (which is why they used burner phones).
Stopping encryption on messages is more about them monitoring ALL of us, and not really about stopping attacks.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[NatasRevol]

Shut up you twatwaffle.

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/p...

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[cbiltcliffe]

Not a right and diminishes those freedoms that are by attempting to twist rights to fit your agenda rather than having it codifed, like a coward.

Privacy is not a right? WTF? I suppose if you're in North Korea, maybe Venezuela, and a few other dictatorships, then no.
But that "right to be secure in papers and effects" (paraphrased, as I'm not looking up the exact wording, considering I'm not even American) means it's your right to keep them private, as much as it's your right to not have them arbitrarily seized by the authorities.

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[Agripa]

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

https://www.google.com/search?...

Re:Widely Used!!!!

[jwhitener]

Yeah, lets send all physical mail as postcards right? No need to hide our bills, letters to lovers, or anything else in an envelope, right?

Straw Man. False Dichotomy.

[zenlessyank]

Insert bullshit excuse here. This is a call to increase encryption 10x fold. It is none of your business what I say to my wife while I am chatting. I repeat. It is NONE OF YOUR FUCKING business. I won't stop using encryption. I will kick a terrorist in the nuts. You chicken shit fuckers wanna hide in a building and do all your spying from a chair. I have an old pair of wart encrusted balls you can sniff. Germany and France should not be allowed to do anything together.

Re:Straw Man. False Dichotomy.

[npslider]

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.

Re:Straw Man. False Dichotomy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop invoking Google, damn you!

Re:Straw Man. False Dichotomy.

[torkus]

It's fairly trivial to put together an encrypted chat client to begin with.

IM platform and communication has off-the-shelf and/or open-source options available. Pretty much IM modules where you provide the host for the server.
Encryption modules...same thing. Tons of open source and easily integrated with above IM platforms.

While it requires some expertise...it's really, really not that hard. Things like this nonsense that france is preaching are utter BS and have very little, if any, impact on terrorism.

Re:Straw Man. False Dichotomy.

[The-Ixian]

I suppose if you are an expert in crypto this might be true.

If you are not a crypto expert, you are going to rely on libraries or APIs or continue on to roll your own anyway. Crypto from scratch is hard to do correctly... look at all of the SSL vulnerabilities over the years. The math may be perfectly understood by this hypothetical person, but implementing that knowledge perfectly is another matter entirely.

So when encryption is illegal, where are you going to get your crypto libraries from? Not everyone knows how to get access to illegal goods. I would imagine the vast majority of do-it-yourself app writers in this dystopian future would end up with a system they thought (for all they knew) was secure, but was trivially attacked by state sponsored actors.

Re:Straw Man. False Dichotomy.

[geek]

I have an old pair of wart encrusted balls you can sniff.

Pics or it didn't happen

Re:Straw Man. False Dichotomy.

[npslider]

We were wrong!

Microsoft and Bill Gates of Borg are not the real threat. It's the very Alphabet itself after us!

Re:Straw Man. False Dichotomy.

[Bob the Super Hamste]

If you are not a crypto expert, you are going to rely on libraries or APIs or continue on to roll your own anyway. Crypto from scratch is hard to do correctly... look at all of the SSL vulnerabilities over the years. The math may be perfectly understood by this hypothetical person, but implementing that knowledge perfectly is another matter entirely.

My understanding of the OpenSSL and SSL issues you reference was not due to the cypto, well there was a lot of legacy crap that could be fallen back to (thanks Bill Clinton), but instead mostly due to the huge amount of crap in OpenSSL and that weird heartbleed bug. Now if you want to talk about screwing the pooch on crypto algorithms there is this little one that went unnoticed from 1998 to 2009. Basically it means that the confusion in the SERPENT cipher isn't as strong as was initially thought having a non-linear order of 2 instead of the claimed 3. This was something one would have thought would have been easily caught by all the experts doing the evaluation of the AES finalists but was missed. Granted the large number of rounds used should make up for this overlooked weakness.

Re:Straw Man. False Dichotomy.

[the_Bionic_lemming]

You forgot Clinton bombing Iraq, and Obama bombing Syria....

France ruled by idiots...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:France ruled by idiots...

[pla]

And our governments are rolling over, exposing their soft, bloated underbellies to ISIS.

This proposal did come from France, after all...

Re:France ruled by idiots...

[TheGratefulNet]

we can only hope, this proposal, like french culture overall, "SURRENDERS"

(yes, that's a meme. but somewhat deserved, in fact. france has done many things correctly, but this one is straight-out wrong)

Re:France ruled by idiots...

[Guybrush_T]

In every country (France is no exception) the minister in charge of intelligence agencies has the duty to push such measures. It doesn't mean it will work, nor that even the minister thinks it is good.

Intelligence agencies don't give a shit about citizen rights, they just want their job to be easier. That makes sense, but that doesn't mean they will win eventually.

Re:France ruled by idiots...

[Cro Magnon]

I would think they would care if the head of the French intelligence got his bank account cleared out because someone found the backdoor in the bank encryption.

My fat white ass...

[clonehappy]

...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.

Re:My fat white ass...

[npslider]

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.

Re:My fat white ass...

[bluefoxlucid]

It's easy to fight a head-on attack. It's hard to sort a rag-tag bunch of misfits out of a crowd of billions of non-hostile rag-tag misfits.

Re:My fat white ass...

[BoberFett]

Oops, that was supposed to be a reply to the Anon post below.

Re:My fat white ass...

[npslider]

Hehe. It may have been a mis-post, but it still fits! ;)

(In a twisted way)

Re:My fat white ass...

[wbr1]

It is called Newspeak. We have always been at war with eastasia.

Re: My fat white ass...

[ZeroWaiteState]

Morell (who will probably be in Hillary's Cabinet) advocated on TV for arming terrorists in eastern Europe and Syria hoping they will kill Russians ("Make them pay a little price" was the phrase he used). I'm not even joking. That shows you how afraid of terrorist groups the government actually is (not very).

What have we become?

[npslider]

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.

Re:What have we become?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The irony is that if we applied those sorts of measures to our governments, the world would probably be a better place. It is far more important that governments are transparent and accountable to their citizens than the other way around.

And the thing is, that applies at any scale. My sig around these parts used to point out that throughout human history, the greatest threat to life and quality of life has not been terrorism but the power of the state.

Re:What have we become?

[npslider]

But some animals (the ones in power) are more equal than others.

We are forced to live in glass houses, they live in lead bunkers.

Re:What have we become?

[judoguy]

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

This pretty much describes Singapore. Any thing that *might* be a meeting has to have a permit. Then the not-so-secret police will be present. The Singaporeans I know just shrug and say "Don't make trouble and you're OK and this stops problems before they can happen"

Not beating up on Singapore, which is a really nice place to visit as a tourist. Just pointing out that a well educated advanced economy allows this sort of thing with hardly a ripple. This could be the U.S. soon.

By the way, next time an anti 2nd amendment moron points to Singapore as an example of sane gun policy, remind them that there literally no real freedoms enshrined in the Singapore constitution. The police can inspect your home at any time without a warrant, stop and check bags at any time, etc. Nice place to visit, but I don't want the U.S. to become Singapore.

Re:What have we become?

[npslider]

Wow. I did not realize that!

These types of measures seem all good and dandy until the government (as all do), get one dose of power too many and begin to use this level of knowledge to advance not only it's power, but it's opinions, and whims.

That's when we hope we have a viable moon colony and a new Declaration of Independence...

Wow, now there's a book / movie plot I'd enjoy seeing!

Zba nrebtyvffrhe rfg cyrva q'nathvyyrf

[Anonymous Coward]

Gung vf nyy V unir gb fnl.

Re:Better solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Hitler,

Why don't you stop wholesale bombing them in their home country so they have no reason to leave?

And shave your mustache.

I agree, we need a worldwide initiative

[93 Escort Wagon]

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

Re:I agree, we need a worldwide initiative

[kanweg]

They are elected because intelligent and honest people/republicans)don't put themselves on the ballot list because they know they don't stand a chance of getting elected: A sizeable portion of the electorate believes in fairy tales and uses (expressed) belief in creationism as a litmus test. If you don't want to lie, you don't get elected. If you do have the brains to understand that creationism is nonsense, you don't get elected.

Look at Trump catering to the religious right right now (promising to give christianity power, abolishment of a law that prevents churches from becoming supPACs, Pence).

If you want good politicians, everyone should start speaking up against stupidity instead of respecting opinions and feelings. Value truth instead, use the Golden rule for morals, instead of some book with contorted morals (slavery, misogyny etc.).

Bert

Totalitarian States..

[thesupraman]

It is just the ever common push by those in power to extend their power and lead us to totalitarian states.
And t is working well - while they can keep peoples minds on the (almost non-existant) left versus right 'battle' we seem to happily ignore this development.

Worked for the Romans, the Nazis, the Stalinists, the Maoists, and its working for plenty more right now.

But dont worry, they wont take away your flavour of the month reality TV, so we are all happy little lemmings, right?

Re:Totalitarian States..

[npslider]

But don't worry, they wont take away your flavour of the month reality TV, so we are all happy little lemmings, right?

At least the things the sheep* truly value will still be safe and sound

*Sheep: The idiots we have collectively become. Who value absurd meaningless drivel, and despise that which is truly valuable.

Re:Totalitarian States..

[npslider]

Such as?

If a metaphor works, and effectively conveys a point I use it.

Please offer a new, fresh one.

Re:Totalitarian States..

[npslider]

History has a maddening tenancy to repeat. In different forms mind you, but similar themes.

Because terrorists, right?

[grasshoppa]

Bullshit. Terrorism is only peripherally related to government's interest in compromising encryption. Governments the world over are terrified of their citizens speaking freely, for whatever noise they make about "Freedom of Speech". It's about controlling the message, which they can't do if people are communicating outside of their control.

They're using terrorism to push this agenda.

Re:Because terrorists, right?

[npslider]

A government should fear the people. The only other option is that the people fear the government.

I much prefer option number one.

Re:Because terrorists, right?

[Creepy]

This is why the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States actually exists. The government was supposed to have no standing army and depend on a militia so that the government would fear the people. The Constitution literally restricts having a standing army to 2 years for this reason. Having a standing army for more than 2 years is Unconstitutional.

Re:Because terrorists, right?

[npslider]

So Trump was right?

If you do nothing wrong, then yak yak yak

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:If you do nothing wrong, then yak yak yak

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

We have populace where they think that if you do nothing wrong, then you have nothing to worry about.

Indeed, a disturbing number of people do seem to think that way. Humans aren't good at evaluating the risk of serious damage if it only happens rarely and has never happened to them.

Meanwhile, one of the most celebrated quotations of modern times goes something like this:

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Its origin is uncertain and it's obviously sexist phrasing by modern standards, but otherwise it's as true today as it ever was.

Here's another well-known quotation, also of uncertain origin (commonly attributed to Cardinal Richelieu but this is dubious) and also very telling:

Give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, and I will find there something with which to hang him.

In short, if you do nothing wrong then bad people can still hurt you, and if you do nothing at all then sooner or later they probably will.

Re:If you do nothing wrong, then yak yak yak

[david_thornley]

The other problem is that private parties can also get information, either from the government or using the government's methods. I'm less worried about the government reading my stuff than I am other people. I don't believe in systems where the government can read my communications and other organizations won't be able to.

Re:Better solution

[npslider]

We can't solve the real problem!

How will the government persuade the populace to surrender more and more freedoms?

Off topic

[sentiblue]

Hey guys.. I don't know where to send my comment for this... the certificate for this site expired a week ago.

Rot13

[Anonymous Coward]

Jr whfg arrq gb hfr fvzcyr rapelcgvba. Nalguvat vf rabhtu gb qrsrngr qhaqreurnqf yvxr gur Serapu Fcrpvny sbeprf.

Be jr pbhyq whfg abg fraq qnatrebhf naq vapevzvangvat cynaf bire vag jverf...

Vs V jnag gb fnl be qb fbzrguvat qnatrebhf V pbhyq whfg qb vg naq abg gryy nalbar.

Guvf vf n puvyqvfu nggrzcg gb fabbc va zl haqrejrne ntnva.

"Gubfr jub jbhyq tvir hc rffragvny Yvoregl, gb chepunfr n yvggyr grzcbenel Fnsrgl, qrfreir arvgure Yvoregl abe Fnsrgl." - Senaxyva

Bear in mind...

[MikeRT]

This is a government that says tells its people garbage like this:

"Times have changed, and we should learn to live with terrorism. We have to show solidarity and collective calm."

So keep that in mind. They expect stoic resignation apparently to not just death, but invasion of privacy.

Re:Bear in mind...

[ArtemaOne]

The "war on terror" has resulted in more terrorists and worse terrorist groups and more potent enemies.

Re:Bear in mind...

[lgw]

We're not that important. The Middle East isn't really focused on us, we're just a convenient demon in line behind Israel to vilify at political rallies. ISIS had been brewing for a long time, and would likely have emerged the moment Sadam could not hold power. It's pretty much inevitable any place where there's no job prospects and no safety net that you get a militarily aggressive dictator focusing the energy of the area's youth to the dictator's benefit. Terrorism is constant in the area: we just get some spillover; most of the victims are closer to home.

Paris terrorists used burner phones

[Anonymous Coward]

Paris terrorists used burner phones, not encryption, to evade detection

"Everywhere they went, the attackers left behind their throwaway phones."

Glyn Moody (UK) - 3/21/2016, 6:39 AM

New details of the Paris attacks carried out last November reveal that it was the consistent use of prepaid burner phones, not encryption, that helped keep the terrorists off the radar of the intelligence services.

As an article in The New York Times reports: "the three teams in Paris were comparatively disciplined. They used only new phones that they would then discard, including several activated minutes before the attacks, or phones seized from their victims."

The article goes on to give more details of how some phones were used only very briefly in the hours leading up to the attacks. For example: "Security camera footage showed Bilal Hadfi, the youngest of the assailants, as he paced outside the stadium, talking on a cellphone. The phone was activated less than an hour before he detonated his vest." The information come from a 55-page report compiled by the French antiterrorism police for France’s Interior Ministry.

Outside the Bataclan theatre venue, the investigators found a Samsung phone in a dustbin: "It had a Belgian SIM card that had been in use only since the day before the attack. The phone had called just one other number—belonging to an unidentified user in Belgium."

As police pieced together the movements of the attackers, they found yet more burner phones: "Everywhere they went, the attackers left behind their throwaway phones, including in Bobigny, at a villa rented in the name of Ibrahim Abdeslam. When the brigade charged with sweeping the location arrived, it found two unused cellphones still inside their boxes." At another location used by one of the terrorists, the police found dozens of unused burner phones "still in their wrappers."

As The New York Times says, one of the most striking aspects of the phones is that not a single e-mail or online chat message from the attackers was found on them. That seems to be further evidence that they knew such communications were routinely monitored by intelligence agencies. But rather than trying to avoid discovery by using encryption—which would in itself have drawn attention to their accounts—they seem to have stopped using the Internet as a communication channel altogether, and turned to standard cellular network calls on burner phones.

That authorities are only now discovering this fact shows how well the strategy worked.

As Ars has reported, along with other countries the UK government is pushing for ways to circumvent or weaken encryption because it claims strong crypto creates a "safe space" for terrorists. This new information that the Paris attackers did not routinely use encryption, if at all, but turned instead to the tried-and-tested technique of burner phones, undermines the argument that everyone's communications must be weakened in order to tackle terrorism.

The New York Times article suggests that there was some evidence of encryption software being used elsewhere. A witness reported seeing a terrorist with a laptop, and told the investigators that as the computer powered up, "she saw a line of gibberish across the screen: "It was bizarre—he was looking at a bunch of lines, like lines of code. There was no image, no Internet," she said." The New York Times writes: "Her description matches the look of certain encryption software, which ISIS claims to have used during the Paris attacks."

But as many were quick to point out online, the witness probably wasn't looking at some encryption software in action, because such systems show the decrypted message, not the encrypted form. The former Ars Technica editor Julian Sanchez wrote on Twitter: "It's suggestive of a verbose boot. Using encryption looks like 'reading a message' because you decrypt it first."

Until we have stronger evidence to the contrary, it seems likely that encryption played little or no part in the Paris terrorist attacks.

This post originated on Ars Technica UK

Re:Paris terrorists used burner phones

[johanw]

Belgium and Germany are now outlawing non-registered prepaid cards in response to that. They can for the time being buy Dutch prepaids but law enforcement lobbies will try to ban it there too.

Re:Paris terrorists used burner phones

[Rexdude]

In India, we have long since required proof of ID and residential address when purchasing any sort of mobile SIM, because terrorism. How effective it's been is another story.

Re:Paris terrorists used burner phones

[houghi]

A pre-paid card is about the way you pay. It would be very easy to demand that people have a valid ID before they can buy a pre-paid card. An ID is needed in Belgium anyway and can be read by chip and is open source.
Verification of the validity of the card can be done for free, automated if you like.

This is only the moment you get the pre-paid card, not each time you do a top-up.

And as it is not a contract, not having a residence is not an issue. They do not allow that, because they want their money, but with a pre-paid card, this will not be an issue.

So all you need is a valid ID and as those are obigatory anyway, no issues there.

Re:Paris terrorists used burner phones

[maelkum]

Poland introduced the "Surveillance Bill" which prohibits selling burner phones. Similar situation to Belgium and Germany it would seem.

Islam is the problem, not encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

Your line of thought is suspicious, citizen. The French Eyesocket Rape Squad has been dispatched to bring you back to the fold. Conformity is safety, citizen. Learn to appreciate your fecal matter and not question the wisdom of the Government, to which you must send your offspring to be initiated. March into the street while masturbating to the Hymn to Joy and do not ask questions other than "where do you want to put it?", like any good EuroReich citizen. Remember to always appreciate your fecal matter!

Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

Not entirely true:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[amicusNYCL]

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?

Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption

[NotARealUser]

Wow, good argument, AC. You rebutted that argument with a lot of really good facts! I can tell it is something in which you truly excel.

I did notice, that your argument could have been laid out a bit better. For future reference, check out http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/... for a list of a few fallacies in arguments. With a few minor deletions from your above argument, it would even sound better.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[fustakrakich]

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

Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption

[pixelpusher220]

A belief system is rather hard to eradicate. But a few bad apples don't make a religion bad. Christianity has plenty of problems.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[wickerprints]

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

How do you suggest we achieve that?

There's this remarkable thing that humans are capable of. It's called education. Not just the education of fact, but of modes of thought; of critical thinking; of evidence-based reasoning. Lift minds above the chaos of superstition, fear, and ignorance. Religion exists because it fills the intellectual and emotional void: it is the way humankind has sought to explain the world around them before science, and people today continue to cling to religion because it purports to provide easy answers to everything.

The scourge of religion is eradicated only through our collective and tireless pursuit of rational knowledge, and the free dissemination thereof; but more importantly, we must teach each other the means of proper reasoning; the natural consequences of which is the abandonment of dogmas, violent or otherwise.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[Captain Splendid]

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

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[sciengin]

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.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[unixisc]

'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

Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption

[MitchDev]

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...

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[geek]

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.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[unixisc]

Only problem w/ that brilliant argument: everything you listed above about Christians happened in the last millennium. Everything we're discussing today is something that started or restarted - depending on how one looks at it - in 2001. You are about as credible as Muslim triumphalists who talk about Islam's 'Golden Age' which is both fictitious, as well as completely irrelevant for TODAY!!!

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[npslider]

Why not a push to take religion in general out of society?

Well... that worked well in the USSR. The state became the religion, that saved lots of lives under Stalin and Friends.

Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption

[johanw]

Just kicking all muslims out, and certainly not letting any new ones in, would already help. The US wanted to start Arabic "springs"? Then take in the refugees yourself.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[amicusNYCL]

Sorry, are you suggesting we kick them off the planet? Where exactly is "here" that they aren't welcome? I'm pretty sure that Islam is alive and well in all the countries which name it as a state religion. If your goal is to remove Islam as a "problem" for the world then kicking Muslims out of a single country isn't exactly going to cut it.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[amicusNYCL]

It's very well and good that rational people pursue education, but we would still see the same pockets of extremism. The pockets that attack girls for going to school, or tell people that the only kind of education they need is a religious education.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[Captain Splendid]

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.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[FranklinWebber]

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

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

Send an atomic bomb on Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem.
Problem solved.

Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption

[lgw]

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.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[amicusNYCL]

pus or minus

That's the name of my Gwar cover band.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[the_povinator]

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?

Well, it worked for their ancestors :-)

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?

I think it would actually be more practical to try to educate people out of religion more generally, instead of Islam specifically. The problem is, IMO, that the intellectual underpinnings of Islam come from Judaism and Christianity, so it's hard to discredit one without the other, at the intellectual level. And if we were to try to eradicate just Islam, it would feed into their whole belief system of religions as competing ummah's (communities), and Christians and Jews as the enemy.

Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption

[easyTree]

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

Enforced 'democracy', cheap fuel, fast 'food', movies and baseball?

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[sysrammer]

We'll have to re-institute the draft, of course. You better hope you get a low number.

Ach, what am I saying? You're not military age. Silly me. Generally, only people who no longer have to risk it are the ones that prefer to pursue war.

Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption

[easyTree]

Let's not forget that Texas teaches creationism in schools.

Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption

[easyTree]

FSM? Pastafarianism is way too sensible to be a real religion.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[WaroDaBeast]

Care to provide quotations for that?

Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption

[unixisc]

Kicking Muslim citizens already here out will be unconstitutional, but you have not just Democrats, but also too many Republicans arguing that not letting foreign Muslims into the country is unconstitutional. Even though the constitution places no restrictions on who may be let in or who may be kept out. If somebody decided to put in place an immigration policy that would only let in people from Singapore and Japan, it may be bigoted all right, but it certainly wouldn't be unconstitutional.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[unixisc]

No. Islamic texts clearly teach Jihad against non-believers. While Christian texts may have done the same, they have been reinterpreted by every branch of Christianity - Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant... to not include violent activities against non believers. In every Christian country, non Christians are free to practice their religions, and don't even get discriminated against. That's more than can be said for any Muslim - not just Islamic - country.

So a lot of Muslims, who think they are being devout by waging Jihad, would not wage holy wars after becoming Christian, since that's not what's taught any more

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[unixisc]

Why not just let the Jews demolish the al Aqsa mosque, and rebuild the temple on the Temple Mount? Let Jerusalem be only a Judeo-Christian pilgrim site. Unless you have dreams of massacring Jews in addition to Muslims

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[Kabukiwookie]

Since the root cause of the whole problem of terrorism is extremism from two sides and you're on one extreme end of the spectrum, I would suggest that you'd put yourself in that 25% as well and let all the (non-religious) moderates inherit the earth...

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[unixisc]

No, much of what's in Islam is exclusive to Mohammed. Sure, he may have borrowed some tenets here & there from Judaism or Christianity, but he twisted it enough to make it unrecognizable. And Islam is very cleanly tied to the way Mohammed did and how he lived: thereby, reforms that happened and happen in Judaism or Christianity don't percolate to Islam

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[Applehu Akbar]

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.

Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption

[Applehu Akbar]

The problem with the Christianity-has-been-just-as-bad argument is that it applied centuries ago, in a time that for exactly that reason we call the Dark Ages. Islam is having its dark age right now, and is in serious need of a Reformation. This has to come from within.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[Harlequin80]

Unless of course they decide to use a version or interpretation of the Bible that supports their desires EXACTLY the same way they are twisting the Islamic texts to do so.

In which case all you have done is swap Islam for "XXism". I think it would be safe to agree that the history of Christianity is less than peaceful and I would propose the peace of western civilisations had more to do with their economic and educational advancement then any evolution of their religion.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[UnknownSoldier]

Well said.

ANY belief that teaches mass genocide is evil / satanic / definitely NOT holy.

Jesus taught compassion first, repentance later. "Your sins are forgiven. Go and sin no more."

He **never** attempted to convert anyone.

Radical Muslims seem to forget one KEY verse: "all who draw the sword will die by the sword."

However, the REAL problem is not the radicals; it is the silent majority who do NOTHING to stop this evil of intolerance.

--
cult, noun, the belief that our belief is the only way. Religion and Science become cults when dogma is more important then facts.

Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption

[Kjella]

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.

The Bible is rather nice to those who repent and seek forgiveness from their lord and savior, but reality is that we're toned down sin, purgatory, hell and eternal damnation a whole damn lot. As for Christianity and infidels, let me quote you a passage from the New Testament (2 Thessalonians 1:8-9):

He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might

Now I'm sure someone will come up with some creative interpretation that this does somehow not say what it does or doesn't apply anymore in wildly inconsistent fashion. For example the ten commandments are from the Old Testament, if those are still valid why isn't Leviticus 20:13:

If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.

Or ability to turn Christianity into a US school where everybody gets a participation award and everyone else is cool too hinges on our ability to disregard pretty much everything in scripture that doesn't fit modern life. How about this gem from the New Testament (Ephesians 5:22-24):

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

I could go on all day. Of course nobody really reads or cares about these things anymore except a few sects. For most it's like Jesus loves you, Jesus died for you, Jesus will forgive your sins and open the gates to Paradise. The end. Even in religious circles the trend is towards less and less effort put into church and prayer and so on, if you're not a "bad person" you're good right? Participation awards for everybody...

Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption

[CrimsonAvenger]

Christianity has a New Testament

Umm, Christianity IS the New Testament. The Old Testament is just background material from Judaism.

Though I've heard it described as "Do unto others as you would have them do to you. Everything else is just commentary"....

Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

"They" have done no such thing, a few radicals might have, so what? How many million casualties has the west caused in the middle East since 9/11? If you look at the facts instead of the slogans on your TV, it seems that it's us who are interested in eradicating them, not the other way around. But fools like you still think that our cause is noble, an attempt to spread peace and democracy, I assume.

And then, by overlooking our own actions, you feel so violated that you shamelessly call for the extermination of almost 2 billion people and call it self defense.

You sir, are an idiot, and not because you call for genocide, that just makes you vermin like any other terrorist, but because you don't realise that your ideas stem from us being led to believe that there is a terrorism problem, your meant to think that they are coming for you, you're meant to be scared. Because then you get people thinking like you, ready to support the most vile, inhumane actions we can think of while actually believing it's humane, civil and a positive thing for the world.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[fustakrakich]

"My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes."

Whoops! Sorry! Are we interrupting?

Heh, maybe the attraction really is mutual :-)

Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption

[pixelpusher220]

Belief in unprovable tenets allow anyone to say anything means Everything. Religion has served humanity but it's time has passed

Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption

[lgw]

If you care to debate Christian scripture, I'm not the best to debate with. I do know Christ said something to the effect of: scripture is complex and can be confusing, so if it seems to be telling you to hurt someone else,that's how you know you're reading it wrong. How consistent he was with that message, I don't know.

That passage from Leviticus is in a long list of trivial "crimes" and is given the same weight as, say, wearing a shirt made of two fabrics (i.e., almost none).

As far as Ephesians, yup, that's how families were structured for many centuries. It's not like Christianity was somehow unusual in that regard, nor did it have much to do with how decisions were actually made in a relationship, as anyone who's been in one can tell you. Even if you have the Word of God that you get to make the final decision, woe be unto he who pisses off his wife. It's not comparable to the modern practice in many nations of brutally punishing women for being rape victims on the basis of scripture.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[Captain Splendid]

Huh, I might have to watch more Alex Jones vids. I didn't realize he did so much cocaine.

Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption

[Orgasmatron]

You'll notice that Paul isn't telling the church elders in Thessaly to go out and perform this everlasting destruction themselves. He is, in fact, reminding them to stay strong because God will eventually triumph over those that persecute them.

If you look to the old Testament, you'll see that God often gave the jews that were alive at the time direct orders, including things like genocide. If you read carefully, you'll notice that he doesn't ever say that those orders are permanent and binding on all believers in the future. Ever hear a Christian tell you to go forth and kill Amalekites? No?

By contrast, the Koran conveys many orders directly from God's mouth to the ears of all Muslims to come. For example, they are to take control of the entire planet by force and kill anyone that doesn't convert. And if that wasn't enough, all Muslims are instructed to view the prophet as the perfect man, and to live their own lives according to his example.

Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption

[yuriklastalov]

Yeah, those bombing campaigns in the War of 1812 were brutal. You fucking retard.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[yuriklastalov]

Well, to be fair it is kind of their fault that Islam even exists in the first place.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[yuriklastalov]

Found the Evil White Islamophobic Racist!

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[yuriklastalov]

3) Have a President who isn't so petulant and dishonest that they can actually admit Islamic terrorism is a real problem.

"Ahhhhh, why bother calling it aaaaah Islamic aaaah Terror? Everyone aaahhhh knows Islam is the ahhhhh religion of peace. Ahhhh the religion of peace can't be ahhhh responsible for ahhhhh terror, it's a contradiction! Aaaaah, only hateful aaaahhh racist bigots think aaaahhhh Islam is ahhhh responsible ahhh for terrorism."

*Note, you'll have to add your own sibilant whistle on the S sounds, I can't for the life of me think of a simple textual description of it suitable for including in ahhhhhh a "quote" as above.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[fustakrakich]

:-) Ohhhh, so weak and far off target with your conspiracy theories there. I expected better. I'm "curious", care to *show your work*? Or shall we just call it a wrap for this one?

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[Captain Splendid]

Check out his jaw. That ain't cough syrup he's on.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[chthon]

You could start with a much smaller number by removing the clergy first.

Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption

[Rakarra]

The United States was certainly not "bombing" people back then, but it was certainly capable of and culpable in genocide, from its earliest days.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[Rakarra]

Unless of course they decide to use a version or interpretation of the Bible that supports their desires EXACTLY the same way they are twisting the Islamic texts to do so.

Are they really? Seems to me that the ISIS folks are the only ones interested in following, in REALLY following the Quran, including the parts that make modern Muslims squeamish, like Leviticus makes modern Christians uncomfortable. Apologists for Islam in West like to say they're "twisting" without actually addressing ISIS's beliefs, which is a rigid adherence to the Quran, and that the Quran and Muhammad are absolutely infallible. After all, if they were infallible, they don't need to be "reinterpreted" for modern times. You don't say that, oh, punishments laid out by the Quran for various crimes are outdated today -- we're dealing with people who believe that society realized perfection with the original writing of the Quran, and that Muhammad was the perfect leader. If we disagree with anything Muhammad said or did, we are the wrong ones.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[fustakrakich]

:-) C'mon man, we're in genpop, you can make up better shit than that.

Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption

[goose-incarnated]

A belief system is rather hard to eradicate.

No it isn't. Well, not fully eradicate, but at least pull all the teeth so that it's on par with FSM beliefs. It worked against the Nazis - all the Nazi symbolism is illegal, and that caused it to be all but gone. Once you start the purge you'll find that all the moderates happily give up the belief system and you don't have to purge 25% of the planet, only the extreme 0.001%.

We didn't have to kill all the Germans of WWII to eradicate Nazis. Once the purge seemed imminent people gave up the system before anyone with a gun got near them.

But a few bad apples don't make a religion bad. Christianity has plenty of problems.

Sure they do, but their extremists for the last 20 odd years have hardly reached the body count of Islam extremists in this year alone! You can't really compare the two.

Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption

[theCoder]

The Thesolonians verses are saying that God will punish those people -- there is no need for any people to do it. Some would argue that also means people explicltly should not do any punishing, as that is God's perrogotive.

The Ephasians verse needs more context. Look at verses surrounding it:

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.

Christians are encouraged to submit to one another, and husbands are encouraged to love their wives, and give up everything for them. True, this passage is describing different roles for men and women, but it is not so one sided as you presented.

The Leviticus verse is from the Old Testament, which is law oriented, and does have many harsh punsihments. But Christianity teaches that "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23) and "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Basically, we ALL deserve to die by the standards of the Bible. Singling out one sin isn't really relevant. Christianity teaches that Christ sacrificed himself in our place for forgiveness of sins.

There are difficult and confusing passages in the Bible, but when the Old Testament is combined with the New, it is clear that the overall message of Christianity is love and forgiveness.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[Harlequin80]

But that simply isn't true.

The main sentence that gets put forward as to how bad the quran is is "kill the idolaters wherever you find them and take them prisoners, and beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush". It comes from about the most brutal chapter in the book.

But it is generally taken out of context because the next sentence is left out. "But if they repent and observe Prayer and pay the Zakat, then leave their way free. Surely, Allah is Most Forgiving, Merciful"

What's more is the next sentence is "And if anyone of the idolaters ask protection of thee, grant him protection so that he may hear the word of Allah; then convey him to his place of security. That is because they are a people who have no knowledge."

Which would imply to me that even if you don't accept Allah and the all the Muslim teachings you should be accorded security. So which part of that are ISIS holding to strictly?

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[maelkum]

ANY belief that teaches mass genocide is evil / satanic / definitely NOT holy.

Except satanism does not really tell you to go and mass-kill people. It teaches you to cherish and follow your desires as you like without paying much attention to the needs of others. However, as you cannot produce all that you want by yourself you are forced to cooperate with others.

There is a safeguard there; if the only moral compass is egoism and "eye for an eye", you should be careful to behave yourself because nobody will hesitate before they retaliate when you attack them. La Vey even writes in his book (let me paraphrase) that "when in public space, mind your business and don't cause trouble to others".

Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption

[MitchDev]

The "Dark Ages" is time when religion ruled...

And modern christians are just as bad, just not out in the open about it as much

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[Captain Splendid]

You're really not good at reading tone, are you?. FWIW, my original reply is not meant as an insult to him, but a compliment. The dude's a party monster, and it's a good thing.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[fustakrakich]

Ah, a joke.. Well, very good then. I certainly concur that he does know how to have fun. It's what makes him kinda special. You would do well to apply the same notion to a few other people I have described in a vaguely similar fashion.

Yes, reading "tone" in a text forum is more difficult for me without hearing the inflection and seeing the facial expression. I'll try to do better

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[UnknownSoldier]

> It seems like bad religion has been holding back real global progress, why not a push to take religion in general out of society by replacing it with True religion, compassion, instead?

0. FTFY

1. Yeah, Good Luck with removing religion. Gee, did you forget a small little detail called The First Amendment ???

2. Everyone has faith. If you didn't have faith in your beliefs then why do you even have them in the first place???

3. Trading one evil with another another isn't the solution. i.e. Trading ignorance (Theism) for arrogance (Atheism) is treating the symptom and not the cause. As a mystic the solution is two-fold:

a) "gnosis" or _experiential knowledge_.

b) The fundamental problem is bad behavior towards others. There are nice Muslims, and nice Atheists. Likewise there are asshole Muslims, and asshole Atheists. Your beliefs only become a problem when you are unable to treat others with respect.

Banning something just because _you_ don't agree with it quickly leads to a slippery slope of censorship and rights abuse.

With freedom comes responsibility. Spiritually immature people who wish to harm others have yet to grow up and understand this truth.

--
First Contact in ~2024, proves that the Bible is not _literally_ true.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[Captain Splendid]

It's what makes him kinda special.

0.0

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[unixisc]

Actually, no. There are tons of verses in the Qur'an that preach hatred, misogyny, violence and so on. In fact, all of Chapter 9 is pretty brutal. And in the line that you put out , 'hear the word of Allah' means that the idolator gets persuaded to convert to Islam.

The whole deal w/ tolerance in Islam is that Islamic rule has to be asserted. In other words, Muslims have to be the overlords, and as far as the infidels go, there are 3 choices: convert to Islam, get killed, or live as servile citizens in a state of what they call 'dhimmis' - our understanding of 2nd or 3rd class citizens. In Islamic states, it's not just legitimate, but even required, to discriminate against Infidels. Not just that, many of them even go further and discriminate against those not belonging to the majority sect, which is what defines what Islam is for that local environ.

What ISIS is doing is no different from what the various Muslim conquerors did between the 7th and 18th centuries from North Africa to India. Just that there was no US or UN at that time to condemn them, and European rulers were powerful enough to keep them at bay at places like Poitiers, Lepanto, Vienna, et al

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[unixisc]

Why, what did Jews - or Christians - do to create Islam?

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[fustakrakich]

:-) So I did read you right the first time. Gotta admit, you had me going for a second, Mr. Trump.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[Captain Splendid]

No, I read you wrong. Very wrong. So wrong. I feel like the protagonist in an HP Lovecraft story now.

Just...fuck, man, really? That comment, a while back, that was a joke. Why'd you have to make it real?

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[vinlud]

It is really amazing defending mass killings gets +4 Insightful on Slashdot these days, sigh

What the fuck happened with the reasonable audience here?

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

15Beware of false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. 16By their fruit you will recognize them. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20So then, by their fruit you will recognize them. -- Matthew 7:15 - 20

Just compare how Muhammed treated the woman who confessed to adultery to how Jesus treated the woman who confessed to him. It's pretty plain to see which one of them loves and which one of them hates.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[amicusNYCL]

FTFY

No, you didn't.

Gee, did you forget a small little detail called The First Amendment ???

I did not suggest a law outlawing religion. It's already happening in several advanced countries, I'd just like to see it happen a little quicker. I'm not suggesting that legislation would make that happen, education will make it happen.

Everyone has faith.

No they don't. See the article above.

If you didn't have faith in your beliefs then why do you even have them in the first place???

I prefer "beliefs" that are fact-based and don't require faith, only evidence. I think that questions like "do you believe in evolution" are ridiculous questions, because evolution is not a belief system. It is a fact which is plainly obvious to anyone who cares to learn what it actually is and bothers to look around the world.

Trading one evil with another another isn't the solution.

I'm glad we can agree on that. Trading Islam with Christianity, for example, isn't exactly progress. It's more of a lateral move.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[cbiltcliffe]

14,000 god fearing americans killed by other god fearing americans every year for the last 100 years or more. More Americans have been murdered with a gun since WWII than were killed in WWII.

So, it's OK to assume every American is a God fearing, murderous gun nut, but it's not OK to assume every Muslim is a jihad-waging, terrorist psychopath? OK. Nice double standard you've got there.

Christianity is objectively worse because it preaches one things, and does the opposite.

So, all you've done is prove that there are some Christians who are hypocritical, just like you.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[noodler]

"Virtually all Christians are taught that if they committed acts of terror like what is frequently done by Muslims"

Yeah, that's your problem right there.
You basically state here that all muslims frequenctly do acts of terror. You bunch all muslims together and label them terrorists. You're a blind idiot.
You fail to see that the people doing the terrorism are a select bunch. Do you even know how many muslims there are in the world? And how many of them are associated with terrorism? Right. You're full of bullshit.
And never mind that gw bush pulled the nation together under the christian god before he countered an attack that killed about 3000 us citizens by killing many more us citizens. Cause, you know, that's how the US rolls bitchez. Fucking biggot.

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[unixisc]

Actually, Shintoism is a better example. Here is a religion that was pretty much Emperor worship, and still is very Emperor centric. Gen MacArthur got Emperor Hirohito to publicly disavow any divine claims - pretty much tell his people that he was not a deity. A combination of that, and an occupation of Japan straightened things out. I don't think the West - even if allied w/ Russia - has the troops to occupy all those Islamic countries from Pakistan to Egypt (much less Gambia to Brunei), but forcing, say, the OIC to repudiate large parts of the Qur'an and Tafseer could go a long way

Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption

[MitchDev]

HERE?

Look at American society as one example. Extremism is the norm.....

Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption

[MitchDev]

The Bible was written by, modified by, and interpreted by humans. It is no more valid as "way to live" that the Koran, The Lord of the Rings, or Green Eggs and Ham.

Fiction one and all

...ignorance

[XSportSeeker]

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.

Re:...ignorance

[StormReaver]

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."

France needs to shut up

[campuscodi]

France needs to shut up and mind its business... like dealing with all those crazy ISIS people...

Re:France needs to shut up

[unixisc]

Except that France, like a lot of the EU and John Kerry has switched to Arabic and call them 'Daesh'

In 20 years

[Anonymous Coward]

people will laugh their assess off at this anti-encryption mentality. Nothing's gonna happen to it, mark my words.

Arab Spring got them scared shitless they're next

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not _those_ terrorists they are worried about. It's the fear that average citizens will band together and collaborate to dismantle their power structure. It's one thing for a few hundred or thousand people to show up to a demonstration, quite another if a large portion of the population were to organize with no easy way to tell who is doing the organizing, where they are doing it from, and what is coming next.

Dear France, No!

[nucrash]

Dumb idea on a local scale is equally if not more dumb on a global scale.

starting a war vs finishing one.

[Anonymous Coward]

Governments worldwide have declared war on privacy. Sorry, Interior Minister Cazeneuve, but you and your ilk started this war. The rise of strong encryption is precisely because you couldn't keep your fingers out of my grandmother's emails, not to mention her travels about the city, her social network, and anything else your grubby little fingers could reach. Not just my grandmother. Nearly everyone in the world who is using a form of electronic communication.

You started this shit. You enraged the tech community. Now you get to reap what you sow. Enjoy!

"We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end."

“In a way, the worldview of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening.
    -- George Orwell, 1984

How do I put an accent on these r's?

[Pseudonymous Powers]

Yvoregr, rtnyvgr, sengreavgr!

What really needs to be a worlwide initiative...

[cloud.pt]

Anti-deuchebaggerism is actually what needs global attention.

The elimination of hypocrisy must take precedence over the patching of other societal problems, because that's what the "fight against message encryption" is just that: a patch to the failures of internal security. The real problem is what causes this terrorism, and while most people think closing borders is the solution, it is just another patch to another failure. The thing that both these have the most in common isn't actually the fact they are both patches, but that they are both killing much more important things than the possibility of there being bombs or killing: they are taking away freedoms of privacy, safe-haven/asylum, or even freedom of speech. They are, and sorry to be cliché in advance, turning developed democracies into a 1984-esque states.

France, the U.S. and the rest of Europe need to dive deep into their consciousness and create solutions for the real problem - solutions that tackle directly the radicalism problem rather than attempt to generalize it to any and all dark-skinned foreigners, or even the entirety of people inside a country. They need to help Syria get their stuff sorted out and they need to stand besides the more civilized party of that conflict. They need to do exactly what Russia is doing but with a better partner than one that is stoic to the use of chlorine, because, you know, chemical attacks are just a bit harder to target specifically to your enemies (i.e. to avoid killing innocents). And yes, there is no actual good party involved in a war like Syria has, but you need to pick the BETTER one, educate it, and instruct it during and after the conflict.

"But you want to start a war to solve a problem that can easily be solved by me not having an encrypted app or not letting Muslims in?" Yeap: For starters, losing privacy and freedom might not sound like much now, but a lot of people died in the past for us to have what we have now. If you think being less free solves anything you're flat out wrong. And secondly, the war has already started. The main point here is: states need to act in accordance to their own standards. Lowering the standards to suit one's own transient needs is the same as printing money or lending banks money to avoid default - it has been proven wrong in the long term and to setting precedents that are way to hard to roll back.

Math...

[ewhenn]

Good luck regulating equations and math.

Re:Math...

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Well given the quality of the US educational system they won't have to regulate math as anything beyond the most simple arithmetic will be too complex.

Re:Math...

[unixisc]

I thought this is France & Belgium we were talking about. Is their math just as bad?

Re:Math...

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Probably not yet but they have a clear model of how to get it there.

Why stop there

[Tukz]

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.

Re:Why stop there

[Howitzer86]

Air. Terrorists use air to propagate shockwaves and poison gas. You must henceforth live in vacuum for your own safety.

Re:Why stop there

[MitchDev]

Food, terrorists need to eat! Ban all food for everyone!

THe joke is so sad it's not funny anymore, it's a war against the power-mongers and the fascists that the human race is LOSING....

Re:Why stop there

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

We need to BAN all types of vehicles, they are widely used by Terrorists!

But what about roads? Terrorists use roads to commit their crimes, so we must also ban roads. And plates and books and pencils and light bulbs and door knobs. It's a FACT that every terrorist has used door knobs in the commission of their crimes, so they've got to go.

First they came for Integral Domains...

[ZipK]

First they came for the Integral Domains, and I did not speak out,
Because I did not use Integral Domains.
Then they came for the Riemann Hypothesis, and I did not speak out,
Because I did not use the Riemann Hypothesis.
Then they came for the Elliptical Curves, and I did not speak out,
Because I did not use Elliptical Curves.
Then they came for Cryptography—and there was no one left to speak for Cryptography.

Complete with golden key?

[Midnight Thunder]

64-bit encryption with a golden key should be sufficient?

If they do introduce a law it should probably be tied to Moore's law, such that we don't end up with something that can be broken in 20 minutes with an average BitCoin processor

Re:Complete with golden key?

[unixisc]

We could meet French demands and make it a win-win. Have single bit encryption. That way, we'll still have encryption, but in the meantime, everything can be quickly decrypted

Re:Complete with golden key?

[Bob the Super Hamste]

If they do introduce a law it should probably be tied to Moore's law, such that we don't end up with something that can be broken in 20 minutes with an average BitCoin processor

No. I would suggest using a key in the 570 to 600 bit range (the last time I calculated it I got 601 bits but vaguley remember at one point in the past getting 570 bits as an answer) as somewhere in that range you run out of energy in this universe running on an ideal quantum computer. Granted this assumes symmetric key algorithms as a number of asymmetric (public key) algorithms are known to fall easy to quantum computers but there appears to be some other solutions.

Re:Complete with golden key?

[lgw]

For symmetric keys 256 bits is enough forever - quantum computers don't help with most algorithms. 128 bits is enough for quite a few years - maybe not forever, but decades.

Re:Complete with golden key?

[david_thornley]

I don't care about Moore's law. I want enduring encryption.

It is not possible for a Kardashev Type II civilization (one that uses all the energy from it's star) to brute-force a 128-bit key before it's star dies. Quantum encryption can halve the effective length of the key. Therefore, using a good cryptosystem with a 256-bit key should be adequate against anything we're likely to run into for a long time. Those worried about Kardashev Type III civilizations might want longer keys.

Asymmetric (public-key) ciphers are a different problem, and I don't know how to deal with those.

It's also possible that all ciphers will be solvable. All ciphers are in NP, and since we don't know if P = NP it's possible that all ciphers are in P, and in that case it's possible that we get usable breaks for all ciphers. I don't think this is likely, but if I'm worried about security from the NSA next century I have to consider it.

Re:Complete with golden key?

[AHuxley]

The US and UK interest in upgrading French crypto was that if the NSA and GCHQ had total access to all French secure material, so might the Soviet Union, so long term it was better to help France upgrade, finally be more secure and be able to track its own network usage.
France has the key to its entire telco network, since about the 1970's when it got a deal from the UK to finally upgrade its collection ability. Past US and UK access to all the French mil/gov networks was to be history and France got UK help with its very own total network collection ability.
For that network gift France had to totally share with the US and UK. From the 1980's French networks posed no issue and France was able to fully track the origin and destination of all and any communications on any French network.
Early success with such nation wide upgrades can be seen in the ability to track use of the Minite networks spreading protest location in real time in the 1980's.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... "... in 1986, French university students coordinated a national strike using Minitel, demonstrating an early use of digital communication devices for participatory technopolitical ends."
Later upgrades and a fully funded budget ensured France would always have fully mastery over its own emerging telco, computer, internet networks.
So France is keeping its long term deal with the US and UK to only share with them. Lower French courts, police and other investigative bureaucracies would be kept totally out of any such bulk collection. Trusting courts, telco staff, the police is now a huge security risk in any nation given lax and very inclusive hiring policies over the past decades. French police will not get raw collection material to fully protect decades of bulk collection methods that can only be shared with the USA and UK.
The easy solution is to degrade network, app, OS security and try and buy off the shelf bulk collection devices from the private sector for police use. Everyone found using any advanced communications methods would stand out for further investigation. IMSI-catchers, OS, AV vendor, web site downloads and requested cooperation from telcos would soon map users and locations.
Such methods would also be court friendly as logging usage is common. All Francophone web portals been tracked for all software/app crypto search results would be a very easy start.
The problem with that is the method becomes very public very quickly and courts soon leak details to staff, officials, lawyers... data soon exists about every ip, cell number, person been investigated.

Re:Complete with golden key?

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Not really understanding Grover's Algorithm I have been under the impression that while it does speed up symmetric key crypto its effect is that it more or less halves the key length. A number of public key algorithms are done in using Shor's Algorithm but there are others available. So using it with a quantum computer on a 256 bit symmetric key would be the same as using a classical computer to crack 128 bit symmetric key. When I looked into the energy requirements I believe that to cycle an ideal 128 bit counter through all states takes a huge amount of energy, as in a sizable portion of the total annual US production. Given that there are some very smart people working to crack encryption and breaks only get better with time having something that puts the feasibility out past the heat death of the universe seems like it might be in order. If it turns out we really can't make a quantum computer then the 256 bit estimate is much closer to being unbreakable as there you are looking at entire star level of energy. Also those energy requirements are only for cycling a counter through all states using an ideal computer so there would be even higher requirements to actually attempt the decryption and more so because modern computers are many orders of magnitude worse energy wise than an ideal on.

France is absolutely right

[The-Ixian]

By stating that this is a global issue. Completely true. The Internet is global and knows no borders....

This is why I expect that in the not-too-distant future, electronic borders will be just as heavily (if not more so) guarded as national borders.

That is really the only "solution" here for countries that want the Internet but also want to be able to legislate it.

The likely fallout of this will be an "instanced" Internet. Where Google in France is a completely separate network than Google in Spain (for example).

Then, the country-to-country interlinks are locked down and only authorized packets will be able to cross the borders.

Huge cost, which is why there will be push back, but it will happen eventually.

Say it with me, people: WHEN YOU OUTLAW ENCRYPTION

[kheldan]

..ONLY OUTLAWS WILL USE ENCRYPTION. Retarded, knee-jerking, technologically clueless politicians and government officials are what need to be banned, not encryption. In the end they'd have the entire planet doing everything, including their banking and other financial transactions, in the clear, where any two-bit criminal hacker could grab the data and ruin people's lives. Meanwhile the violent assholes they're trying to stop will use whatever encryption or codes they want, and they won't be hampered one single bit. You may as well just take a fire axe to the entire Internet and go back to 1990.. or 1950.. or whatever the fuck these idiots are thinking, for all the good it'd do anyone. FOR THE TEN TRILLIONTH TIME: YOU CANNOT BAN OR WEAKEN ENCYPTION! It's a bad idea plain and simple!

Also, every time I see shit like this? It convices me more and more that what they REALLY want to do, is treat 99.999% of everyone like convicts in a prison, or animals in a zoo: watched 24/7/365, every single move and noise monitored from cradle to grave. I'd sooner blow the whole gods-be-damned planet up MYSELF, burn it all to the ground, rather than have the human race live in a world like that! Them, them, FUCK THEM sideways with an AIDS and Zika-saturated rusty chainsaw; fucktarded politicians like these are the REAL reason we can't have anything nice!

No, just no.

[MitchDev]

The fight against encryption is the fight to establish a police state of tyranny and the death of freedom.

Re:Say it with me, people: WHEN YOU OUTLAW ENCRYPT

[MitchDev]

Finally, someone who gets it.
At this rate, the only winning vote in November is for the Asteroid that wipes out all life on earth

Wouldn't help anyway

[subk]

Even if they had the plain text, they wouldn't be able to understand it.

France Says

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

More accurate headlines:

France Says "Help Us Put That Cat Back Into The Bag"

France Says "Help Us Overturn The Laws Of Physics"

France Says "Now That The Horse Is Gone, Please Close That Barn Door"

Terrorists use encryption because of this

[Mike Van Pelt]

I mean, terrorists are a pretty stupid and unimaginative bunch, by and large. I can think off the top of my head of a dozen far more terrorizing and destructive (and far easier to accomplish) things they could be doing if they had any brains and imagination. The whole OMG ENCRYPTION OMG OMG BAN IT stuff just manages to get encryption on the terrorists' radar, and "Doh... uncriptun... might wanna use some of that."

Re:130 French citizens encrypted in terrorist atta

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Sometimes, its use is even legally mandated.

Shut your pie hole NERC and the DOE would never recommend or mandate such terrorist supporting activities.

Yes that was sarcasm and it is sad that without this someone would misinterpret it.

Re:Better solution

[unixisc]

Since when has France been bombing Tunisia or the Mahgreb countries? Try a stupider argument

Cue the music..

[iridium213]

The Global War on Freedom wages on..

Re:Say it with me, people: WHEN YOU OUTLAW ENCRYPT

[sl3xd]

Cthulhu for President

If we're all going to choose our means of destruction, I want a president who'll do it properly and indiscriminately.

Hey France!

[kuzb]

You wouldn't have needed a world wide initiative if governments weren't so insistent on indiscriminately spying on everyone. We're protecting ourselves from YOU. You made your bed, now sleep in it.

Fighting Islamism with Fascism. Great idea!

[gweihir]

I begin we have actually two main terrorist factions acting here: One fighting against the western governments and the other constituted by the western governments.

Weird

[easyTree]

I would say the world's people need to band together against the governemental-authority-overeach types.

Uhh...

[easyTree]

The shilks appear to have hijacked this thread.

Feel free to comment on the governments of the world uniting in overeach against their own citizens.

To clarify my remarks

[npslider]

My post was dry sarcasm, meant to portray the silliness of the argument that many make that "if you are doing nothing illegal, why do you need encryption?"

My intention was to affirm that for even something as trivial as buying milk we should use encryption. If you don't believe me, look at my second sentence:

"Unless the government does not like that brand of milk..." (I spelled it out right there... ONE DAY THE LEGAL MAY BE DEEMED ILLEGAL!)

What was I saying? I was saying in effect "Buying milk is not illegal *wink wink, so why do we need to use encryption? Oh wait, yes we do need to, because even the TRIVIAL things today (like buying milk), may become non-trivial in the future (a more controlling government), thus encryption will be our only defense against a government that may seek to control what it's subjects do and seek and punish those who dissent.

I'm sorry my sarcasm was not worded better, I can see after looking back at my post how it does sound like I believe what I said.

To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin

[Heebie]

A society that gives up freedoms in the name of security will have neither.

Fight against message encryption

[seven of five]

.. and you're supposed to do international money transfers how again?

Germany and France

[AHuxley]

Given the French and German success with their own advance maths, domestic network security and crypto would it not be better to consult nations with a global track record in network access that remains hidden?
NSA surveillance: Merkel's phone may have been monitored 'for over 10 years' (Sunday 27 October 2013)
https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
If the best in Germany cant even keep one phone safe, the only phone they really had to keep safe, something is very lacking.
France had its entire diplomatic communications network full reconstructed by the US and UK into the 1950's after failing to protect its FMT diplomatic code and later code use.
France in the NSA's crosshair : phone networks under surveillance (21.10.2013)
http://www.lemonde.fr/technolo...
e.g. under DRTBOX and WHITEBOX

[citation needed]

[allo]

IIRC there is not proof up to now, that islamist extremists used encrypted messengers.
On the other hand, government of different states want to be able to read everything their citizens are writing. No more secrets.
Stop this bullshit!

Re:Isn't one of the pillars vulnerable?

[unixisc]

One good way of doing it is to

1. 1). Recognize Islam as the root of the problem
2. 2.) Contact the OIC, which is that club of all Muslim countries plus a few
3. 3.) Make it clear to them that if they don't pursue a comprehensive campaign to transform Islam into a benign religion, they will be subject to international sanctions of the type that was imposed on South Africa
4. 4.) Include all non-Muslim countries in this as possible, including the likes of Russia, China, et al, and don't give them an alternate power to rally around

Do this, and there may well be movement in defanging Islam, and causing the likes of al Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, et al to wither on the vine

Germany constitution says ...

[Qbertino]

... fight for privacy needs world-wide initative.

"(1) Das Briefgeheimnis sowie das Post- und Fernmeldegeheimnis sind unverletzlich."

meaning

"(1) The privacy of correspondence, posts and telecommunications shall be inviolable."

This is one field where France can actually just STFU and learn a little from other democracies.

Re:Not even the best example

[Salgak1]

Incorrect. There is no stamping required.You buy the "flat", which often is pre-drilled and has some embossing, fold it around a form (typically on a hydraulic press) , and weld and rivet to create an AK lower. It's actually a little more complicated than that, but that's gunsmithing details, like pressing the barrel into the trunnion, riveting appropriately, and drilling the gas hole in the barrel. . .

As for the AK Shovel build, the guy just flattened a shovel, cut and drilled, then folded and welded.

Now, for your question as to why it's the LOWER that needs to be registered, that's a US-centric quirk of the BATF. And changing the ballistic fingerprint of a barrel is not difficult, either. . . (yes, I **AM** a gun geek. . . )