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posted by martyb on Thursday November 19 2015, @03:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the hiding-in-plain-sight dept.

From Techdirt and The Intercept :

In the wake of the tragic events in Paris last week, encryption has been a useful bogeyman for those with a voracious appetite for surveillance expansion. Like clockwork, numerous reports have circulated in the days since, blaming everyone from Snowden to Sony for letting the attackers make their plans in secret, protected by encryption.

"Yet news emerging from Paris, as well as evidence from a Belgian ISIS raid in January — suggests that the ISIS terror networks involved were communicating in the clear, and that the data on their smartphones was not encrypted." The reports note that Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the "mastermind" of both the Paris attacks and a thwarted Belgium attack ten months ago, failed to use encryption whatsoever.

That's not to say dangerous organizations like ISIS don't use encryption, and won't do so going forward. Everybody uses encryption, or at least should. But the point remains that to use a tragedy to vilify encryption, push for surveillance expansion, and pass backdoor laws that will make everybody less safe -- is nearly as gruesome as the attacks themselves.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday November 19 2015, @04:37PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Thursday November 19 2015, @04:37PM (#265390)

    The exact same thing happened with the "Patriot" Act. In a nutshell, Congress said "Yikes, 9/11 happened! We have to DO SOMETHING!" The three-letter agencies said "You want to do something? Here's what you can do!" And it was their wishlist of everything they'd been wanting to do for decades. And Congress passed it with very little debate or serious discussion or opposition, mostly because they knew that any "Nay" vote would turn into "Senator Blowhard supports the terrorists!" in the ads. I should mention that of the current presidential candidates, the only one to vote against that travesty was Bernie Sanders, which is one of the many reasons I support his presidential bid.

    So now this happened, and there are cries to DO SOMETHING! And you can see all the signs that the three-letter agencies are taking the opportunity to argue for more power and more money on the grounds that if you don't give it to them, right now, no questions asked, you're a terrorist sympathizer.

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    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by TheReaperD on Thursday November 19 2015, @06:38PM

    by TheReaperD (5556) on Thursday November 19 2015, @06:38PM (#265439)

    There's a saying in politics and news outlets, "never let a good tragedy go to waste." There are always wishlist items for various programs that are written and ready to go if the right type of tragedy happens. Lobbyists for the causes always have them ready to go.

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    Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2015, @02:32AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2015, @02:32AM (#265619)

      Which is why conspiracy theorists come to the conclusion that "the right type of tragedy" is sometimes orchestrated by those organizations. They are just too ready to profit from it.

  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday November 19 2015, @08:11PM

    by frojack (1554) on Thursday November 19 2015, @08:11PM (#265475) Journal

    The three-letter agencies said "You want to do something? Here's what you can do!"

    Not quite true.
    The TLAs said "Here's what we've been doing all along. Just make it legal to use in the US".

    The actual number of new exploits developed since 9/11 are a small minority of what they already had running world wide (their stated mission) as well as in the US (contrary to law).

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    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2015, @10:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2015, @10:36PM (#265538)

    >>>>I should mention that of the current presidential candidates, the only one to vote against that travesty was Bernie Sanders, which is one of the many reasons I support his presidential bid.

    That statement is a little disingenuous. How many of the current presidential candidates were actually in Congress at that time to be able to vote against the Patriot Act? A number of them are not career politicians and haven't been in a position to vote for anything much less a bill that was passed 14 years ago.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday November 19 2015, @11:59PM

      by Thexalon (636) on Thursday November 19 2015, @11:59PM (#265568)

      How many of the current presidential candidates were actually in Congress at that time to be able to vote against the Patriot Act?

      Rand Paul was not in Congress at the time. To his credit, he's now taken steps to oppose its renewal.

      Those who have voted for the Patriot Act, either when it originally passed, or the several times it has come up for re-authorization:
      - Hillary Clinton
      - Ted Cruz
      - Lindsey Graham
      - Marco Rubio
      - Rick Santorum

      The remaining candidates have either never held political office (Trump, Carson, Fiorina) or were never in Congress (O'Malley, Christie, Gilmore, Huckabee, Kasich, Pataki).

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 3, Informative) by M. Baranczak on Friday November 20 2015, @04:31AM

        by M. Baranczak (1673) on Friday November 20 2015, @04:31AM (#265646)
        I don't know why you didn't mention Sanders. He's the only candidate who voted against it in 2001 (he was in the House at the time).
        • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday November 20 2015, @12:42PM

          by Thexalon (636) on Friday November 20 2015, @12:42PM (#265773)

          I did mention Sanders, further up in the discussion. I was accused of being "disingenuous" because I hadn't mentioned everybody else.

          --
          The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.