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Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

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Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#181

Post by allemagne »

fukusa wrote: post #49
GrinningFool wrote: post #37

Increasingly we're seeing 'encryption' discussed in mainstream media as a tool that can only be used for nefarious ends. Kind of like how they talked about "cookies" in the late 90s and early 00s. It's unfortunate that there's no way [without a lot of money] to launch a campaign that highlights the fact that most sensitive online transactions rely on encryption - banking, purchasing, etc - to protect you from The Bad…

We have to get rid of this narrative of bad versus good people while we're at it. It removes every bit of nuance from the discussion.

I don't see the point to inserting a philosophical debate about good and evil here. What nuance are you trying to keep?

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#182

Post by JshWright »

BeuitTheRipTide wrote: post #157
rbcgerard wrote: post #112

"One key premise here seems to be that prior to the Snowden reporting, The Terrorists helpfully and stupidly used telephones and unencrypted emails to plot, so Western governments were able to track their plotting and disrupt at least large-scale attacks. That would come as a massive surprise to the victims of the attacks of 2002 in Bali, 2004 in Madrid, 2005 in London, 2008 in Mumbai, and April 2013 at the Boston Ma…

It would indeed come as a massive surprise to the 2008 Mumbai terrorists, who were well versed in in using encrypted channels to communicate -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/world/asia/09mumbai.html?_...

They were not using encrypted channels for their operational control. The security forces had no trouble listening in on the calls and text messages being sent between the attackers and their command and control infrastructure.

The issue the security forces _did_ have was in identifying where the calls were originating. The actual content was not encrypted though.

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#183

Post by digikata »

ewzimm wrote: post #120
rbcgerard wrote: post #112

"One key premise here seems to be that prior to the Snowden reporting, The Terrorists helpfully and stupidly used telephones and unencrypted emails to plot, so Western governments were able to track their plotting and disrupt at least large-scale attacks. That would come as a massive surprise to the victims of the attacks of 2002 in Bali, 2004 in Madrid, 2005 in London, 2008 in Mumbai, and April 2013 at the Boston Ma…

It's even more absurd than that. The premise is that we can have a public worldwide debate that emphasizes how important encryption is to successfully carrying out terrorist attacks, convince the world to give up their privacy for the sake of safety, and after the majority of the protestors have been defeated by public awareness that encryption and terrorism go hand-in-hand, the terrorists will go back to using phone…

My thought is that if we implement a back door policy, the public will have communication links which are much easier to compromise by any party, while terrorists can still easily use encryption and/or steganography to secure their communications.

All the back doors accomplish in the end is harming the general public.

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#184

Post by Retric »

Syrup-tan wrote: post #140
Retric wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on what you mean by premeditation a large percentage of US murders are more or less random. #Pollution #Cars

GP's point was that human's thoughts and intents are a lot different from randomness. It isn't likely that most people intend on running into pedestrians whenever they get in their car.

When someone drives a car into a farmers market there not exactly choosing there victims. In extreme cases you have things like people flying airplanes into someone's home.

Sure, they did not intend to crash, but choosing to risk others lives is considered a reasonable thing to do. Assuming your not overly blatant about it.

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#185

Post by JshWright »

WildUtah wrote: post #88
coldcode wrote: post #24

You could plan terrorist activity using postcards. Should we ban the Post Office? You could use phone calls from pay phones (where they still exist) and people used to do that all the time to plan crimes. You could go on vacation together and plan something. You could use voice or text chat in an online game to plan stuff. The people in charge of these organizations are not the suicide bombers; the head folks know fu…

I have a friend who used to get erotic messages from her mathematician boyfriend steganographically encrypted on postcards. I had to show her how to decrypt them. It was pretty standard cryptanalysis once I guessed that the messages existed. Some of them were filthy.

Stenographically encrypted in the printed image? How would that work?

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#186

Post by davesque »

colund wrote: post #145
ewzimm wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even more absurd than that. The premise is that we can have a public worldwide debate that emphasizes how important encryption is to successfully carrying out terrorist attacks, convince the world to give up their privacy for the sake of safety, and after the majority of the protestors have been defeated by public awareness that encryption and terrorism go hand-in-hand, the terrorists will go back to using phone…

If (almost) everyone who is not a terrorist were to give up encryption, then it would be much easier to track down/narrow down the terrorists if they keep using it, no?

If there was some way to learn the identity of said terrorist simply by observing the origin and destination of an encrypted message, then perhaps. It would possible for them to coordinate and avoid this outcome. And there are still plenty of secure crypto systems out there so we wouldn't be able to decrypt their messages (unless quantum computers turn into an actual thing).

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#187

Post by the_watcher »

rbcgerard wrote: post #112

"One key premise here seems to be that prior to the Snowden reporting, The Terrorists helpfully and stupidly used telephones and unencrypted emails to plot, so Western governments were able to track their plotting and disrupt at least large-scale attacks. That would come as a massive surprise to the victims of the attacks of 2002 in Bali, 2004 in Madrid, 2005 in London, 2008 in Mumbai, and April 2013 at the Boston Ma…

This is always the part of the anti-Snowden case that baffled me. Those who seem to think that he alerted terrorists to the most secure means of communication seem to assume that, prior to the Snowden leaks, they were communicating by yelling really loudly across the NSA buildings. It's like they simply forgot about the biggest reason it took so long to find Osama bin Laden: he was so security-concerned that he used couriers and relays (which, counter to the broad narrative about the terrorist shift to security, actually cannot be decrypted)

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#188

Post by kohito »

nab wrote: post #177

This link implies that the NYT is backtracking about a piece apparently "blaming encryption." The NYT article referenced did not at all focus on encryption, and it didn't go so far as to definitively blame encryption. The only paragraph discussing encryption is buried in the middle of the article. """ The attackers are believed to have communicated using encryption technology, according to European officials """ The…

you're saying its only possible the NYT "blamed encryption" if encryption was the article's main topic or the article's lede?

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#189

Post by the_watcher »

The biggest problem with the "encryption is too good" crowd is that they simply refuse to recognize the simple fact that if there is a way in for them, there is a way in for others. If there is a back door, it's simply no longer effective encryption.

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#190

Post by fineman »

colund wrote: post #145
ewzimm wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even more absurd than that. The premise is that we can have a public worldwide debate that emphasizes how important encryption is to successfully carrying out terrorist attacks, convince the world to give up their privacy for the sake of safety, and after the majority of the protestors have been defeated by public awareness that encryption and terrorism go hand-in-hand, the terrorists will go back to using phone…

If (almost) everyone who is not a terrorist were to give up encryption, then it would be much easier to track down/narrow down the terrorists if they keep using it, no?

Not really, because the proposals aren't to go to no encryption but to go to government-backdoored encryption. To an observer you've still just a random stream of bits until someone tries to decrypt it with the backdoor key. Pretty easy to hide in unless we're monitoring every message.

And terrorists would be smart - they'd employ non-backdoored encryption, hide that in "legit" communications, and encrypt that with the proper back-doored government encryption. They'd appear to be a totally normal snapchat user, or whatever.

If we actually meant to give up all encryption, card-kiddies would destroy civilization in three weeks.

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