Slashdot Mirror
London Terrorist Used WhatsApp, UK Calls For Backdoors (yahoo.com)
Wednesday 52-year-old Khalid Masood "drove a rented SUV into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge before smashing it into Parliament's gates and rushing onto the grounds, where he fatally stabbed a policeman and was shot by other officers," writes the Associated Press. An anonymous reader quotes their new report:
Westminster Bridge attacker Khalid Masood sent a WhatsApp message that cannot be accessed because it was encrypted by the popular messaging service, a top British security official said Sunday. British press reports suggest Masood used the messaging service owned by Facebook just minutes before the Wednesday rampage that left three pedestrians and one police officer dead and dozens more wounded.... Home Secretary Amber Rudd used appearances on BBC and Sky News to urge WhatsApp and other encrypted services to make their platforms accessible to intelligence services and police trying to carrying out lawful eavesdropping. "We need to make sure that organizations like WhatsApp -- and there are plenty of others like that -- don't provide a secret place for terrorists to communicate with each other," she said...
Rudd also urged technology companies to do a better job at preventing the publication of material that promotes extremism. She plans to meet with firms Thursday about setting up an industry board that would take steps to make the web less useful to extremists.
Rudd also urged technology companies to do a better job at preventing the publication of material that promotes extremism. She plans to meet with firms Thursday about setting up an industry board that would take steps to make the web less useful to extremists.
This is the same lady who thinks that they need to hire the people who "know the right hashcodes to fight terrorists."
She has no place conjecturing on the usefulness of the free web to a potted plant, let alone to extremists (whose membership increasingly include Western government officials)
Why the focus on the communication technology? Its role in these sorts of incidents seems minor compared to the effect and involvement of vehicular technology. It wasn't chat software causing the physical harm; it was vehicles.
Right now its looking pretty bad for the intellectual elite over there.
- He was screened by police several times
- Made an extremist while in her magisty's pleasure
And now the police are saying "If we read *that message* of him saying 'god be with me', *then* they would know what he was upto and what he was doing".
Looks more like they're trying to find a scape goat.
Because it's SO difficult for someone to write a new app with no backdoors. Britain can't stop this; they can pass all the laws they want. But terrorists really don't care what the law says by definition. Plus it is a proven fact that British police can't stay within the lines when it comes to information like this.
Sure, a religion which promote to stone raped women and gays to death.
The shear stupidity is mind-boggling. In the very same sentence she acknowledges that there are many other similar apps. Surely she must be aware that they are not all under UK jurisdiction...
This sounds very much like she has been briefed by security services looking for more powers and/or to create the impression that people who use encryption are up to no good. Seeing an opportunity to look tough and be seen to be doing something she repeats the words without understanding what they mean, or how stupid she looks.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I believe Khalid was a British citizen. That's why he's allowed "in the UK". The bigger question is why aren't the British (and the Americans for that matter) insisting that new citizens (including their children) become CITIZENS of that country in heart and soul, not just a piece of paper with allegiance back to terrorist orgs/states, islamic or otherwise. But if we attempt to even say that, the snowflakes start yelling RAYCYST!!@#!
So apparently the problem is too much free speech and too much privacy.
To get our intellectual freedom back, we're going to need a movement as powerful as the civil rights movement. Saying this stupid shit should be as taboo as saying a racial slur! This "Amber Rudd" needs to be made an example of. Really rake her over the coals. "You're advocating what?" "Why do you hate freedom?" Never let her live it down, same as if she'd said something stupid about a minority group. This shit needs to become the new hate speech.
It's not okay that she thinks like that and is as important as she is. We need to give her shit.
I believe Khalid was a British citizen. That's why he's allowed "in the UK". The bigger question is why aren't the British (and the Americans for that matter) insisting that new citizens (including their children) become CITIZENS of that country in heart and soul, not just a piece of paper with allegiance back to terrorist orgs/states, islamic or otherwise. But if we attempt to even say that, the snowflakes start yelling RAYCYST!!@#!
How would you do that? Is there some scanner that can look into one's heart and soul?
He had been investigated years ago, but cleared by the security services.
So:
1. Either they want to monitor everybody's communications, or
2. They are lying about the effect of having access to WhatsApp messages, or
3. This is just another excuse to monitor everyone's communications.
I believe that western civilization is in the process (if it hasn't already happened) of being taken over by the security apparatus, under the pretext of "protecting" us (in the same was as "devout muslims" "protect" their women by making them wear veils.
It's all about control under the guise of "protection". As I type that, I realize that it sounds just like the mafia.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The lesson learnt from the IRA was quite clear. Violence begats only more violence. It is only the call to cooperate to end that violence that is the solution. There is a type of person, aggressive and slow witted, that will commit atrocities in the name of. The name doesn't matter, it could be a religion, or a warped philosophy, or a country. When you speak out in aggression, your blind hatred plain to see, it is obvious that you are part of the problem, not the solution.
If you're actually serious about that question... I'll bite.
I'm a Muslim immigrant to Canada. I'm pretty secular now, but the idea that somehow you immigrate and then in the next generation, you're magically Canadian with Western values is just ignorant.
The culture matters. The numbers matter. The government policies matter.
Get enough people of a certain culture in an area and that culture and way of life becomes dominant. I guess if you thin being British/Canadian is just a piece of paper, then maybe this doesn't matter to you.
I have a lot of family in the UK. It really is a different world. Heck, I don't even go. I have family there 2nd/3rd generation where there is total gender segregation, always talk of Sharia...When new immigrants come, they settle around there to keep the community Islamic.This part is key... as you keep bringing in more people who settle there, it really keep the community a certain way. Once you hit a certain threshold, you're basically created a community that stands on its own with its own ideology.
This is not unique to Islam, by any stretch of the imagination.
You can talk to many Muslim immigrant families. Most will tell you the same thing. Well at least in my life, they have. When the community is small, integration is easy. My in-laws for example, came to Canada in the 70s. Hardly modern by any respect. My father-in-law thought nothing of buy someone a bottle of wine as a gift. He wouldn't drink himself. They're not that secular. My wife often complains that her family completely changed as more and more family was brought in. Few used to wear the hijab. Then everyone started and the social moral police started. Dating started to become more of a scandal if people found out a daughter was dating. Aunts who used to date and got married suddenly turned all religious and forbade their daughters from dating. Islamic school suddenly became a thing... People started wearing the niqab and marrying religious people from Asia. Yeah... now I have 2 silly segregated weddings this summer. lol.
This is the cultural problem. It is then layered with political issues. I don't really hang in dangerous circles, but I've seen what it can do. I know a few girls in the extended family who have actually talked positively of going to the Islamic State as that is real Islam. Yeah... girls born in Canada, but such are their values.
I don't blame this all on immigration. You can have high rates of immigration with the necessary social support. I can say that even in Canada, this social support is just not there. My high school was heavily
Indian immigrants. There was virtually no social support. Parents beating kids. Girls disowned for dating. Forced marriages... all happened.
It's just ridiculously ignorant to think none of this matter and because someone is born in Canada/Britain, nothing else matters.
Anyways, enough of a rant. You get the point. Immigration matters, community matters, culture matters, government policies matters...
Especially in this case. From the summary:
British press reports suggest Masood used the messaging service owned by Facebook just minutes before the Wednesday rampage that left three pedestrians and one police officer dead and dozens more wounded..
Even if he had sent in plaintext "GONNA DRIVE THROUGH A CROWD OF PEOPLE AND KILL AS MANY AS I CAN!!!" minutes before doing so, how could they have stopped him? Hell, he could have called police and told them explicitly where he was and what he was doing, maybe even sent a live video feed from his phone while he was doing it.
Security theatre.
Of course the problem there was not lack of always-on monitoring of everyone in the off chance the police nothing something.
The problem was not encryption of private information.
The problem was leftist control of a council where them hamstrung themselves so tightly that they were ignoring child rape
cases in case they offended a minority group, some of whom were actively raping children..
And yet not one single one of those in positions of power who let this continue to happen are in prison, nor ever likely will be.
Because, you know, they are 'sorry', for allowing children to keep being violently raped.
But no, what we need is more cameras, less privacy, more government control - who cares what they DO with it.
Seriously, she's Britain's answer to Sarah Palin. Or rather, an answer to a question nobody asked.
And while Palin is at least a looker, Rudd also has this "used car" air about her. This woman has so far in her total career never said a single sentence that wasn't a tear-soaked platitude, an "outraged demand" that simply echoed what everyone else has already been saying or simply and plainly stupid. I really have no idea what service she could provide other than being the bad example on how NOT to do something.
Seriously. When asked at her funeral to say anything good about her, all you can sensibly say is "she died".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
How many rapes by catholic priests and society looked the other way? Not that I am saying that this is any kind of excuse...
When 1person suffers from a delusion,it is called insanity.When many people suffer from a delusion,it is called religion