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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

#291

Post by maxerickson »

Asbostos wrote: post #274
digikata wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It would help conventional law enforcement. Most violent criminals probably don't put enough forethought into their spontaneous attacks to properly avoid notice by the NSA. Unfortunately the NSA doesn't seem to use their resources to secure the nation, and just ignores all the large scale violent crime that goes on daily.

It's largely outside of the NSA mandate to monitor the communications of US citizen criminals. It is not the fault of the NSA that Congress has not passed a law telling them to spy on domestic criminals.

I get that some of the controversy lately is about how well they stick to their mandate, but that doesn't change what the mandate is.

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#292

Post by whatever_dude »

As someone said[1] the damage is already done.

Now everyone thinks that the terror attacks were perpetrated by Syrian refugees that were communicating through the PS4 network using encryption, and that nothing of this would have happened if videogames didn't exist, encryption was forbidden, and they hadn't sheltered refugees.

[1] https://openparachute.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/amount.jpg

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#293

Post by damosneeze »

One of the main problems with the NSA programs is that it targeted _everyone_. That just makes no sense. If you have a lead or probable cause on someone, great, track them and hack their messages. Collecting everyone's information to catch a terrorist only dilutes your search.

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#294

Post by jbooth »

Asbostos wrote: post #276
TillE wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think assuming that level of incompetence is a big claim. Not really. Have you listened to the average member of Congress lately? Incompetence runs deep throughout all levels of government.

I think largely politicians are very intelligent and competent. What they're not though, is open about their own thoughts. That's not their job. Their job is to reflect what their supporters (financially and votingly) want. If their supporters have wild nonsense ideas, they have to promote those ideas to keep their job. That's why they were elected. We don't choose politicians because they're smart and have good idea…

The best salesman is someone who believes in the product. I'm willing to take them at their word.

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#295

Post by dragonwriter »

Asbostos wrote: post #274
digikata wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It would help conventional law enforcement. Most violent criminals probably don't put enough forethought into their spontaneous attacks to properly avoid notice by the NSA. Unfortunately the NSA doesn't seem to use their resources to secure the nation, and just ignores all the large scale violent crime that goes on daily.

> Unfortunately the NSA doesn't seem to use their resources to secure the nation, and just ignores all the large scale violent crime that goes on daily.

The NSA is part of the Department of Defense charged with foreign signals intelligence for national security purposes, its not a law enforcement agency. (And many of the tools it uses would be flagrantly unconstitutional if used for domestic law enforcement.)

Generally, blurring of the military and law enforcement roles is not a healthy thing; it may be good for order, but rarely for liberty.

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#296

Post by pdkl95 »

sold wrote: post #287
mewse wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well-known caveat for people who are familiar with encryption, but it's worth calling out explicitly here: If you use the same one time pad to encode two or more different messages, then all the sorts of attack proposed here become plausible again. The security provided by a one time pad relies entirely on the fact that it is only ever used once.

I'd like to add this scenario actually happened during the Cold War. Soviets were reusing one time pads and the US army decrypted some of the messages, among other things this lead to discovery of Soviet spies targeting the US nuclear weapon program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venona_project

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxx3Bkmv3ck

Computerphile recently showed how this was done.

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#297

Post by odbol_ »

Asbostos wrote: post #276
TillE wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think assuming that level of incompetence is a big claim. Not really. Have you listened to the average member of Congress lately? Incompetence runs deep throughout all levels of government.

I think largely politicians are very intelligent and competent. What they're not though, is open about their own thoughts. That's not their job. Their job is to reflect what their supporters (financially and votingly) want. If their supporters have wild nonsense ideas, they have to promote those ideas to keep their job. That's why they were elected. We don't choose politicians because they're smart and have good idea…

They key point here though is that their "supporters" are NOT the American public. They are private corporations and banks with their own agendas, usually contrary to the public's well being.

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#298

Post by hinkley »

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…

The State is far more efficient and effective at instilling terror than any loose organization of dissidents could ever hope to be.

Read pretty much anything Amnesty International publishes, or even the right history books and you'll have all the evidence you ever need as to why privacy is important even when you think it isn't.

Once bad things start happening it's too late to change your mind. They already have what they need.

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#299

Post by [deleted] »

noselfrighteous wrote: post #257
nickbauman wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most dangerous terrorists have probably already reverted to couriers with one-time pads. One-time pads are uncrackable, yet they were used extensively before modern cryptography was even invented. They're cumbersome and constrained but very effective. No amount of mass surveillance will alter their efficacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad

So I read the wiki on the One-time pad and there's something I'm a little stuck on. There's a statement (paraphrasing) that the OTP is immune to cryptanalysis (brute force) because any given key translates to all possible plain-text, and the viable words all have a-priori the same likelihood. The thing I'm stuck on though, isn't it still possible to do semantic analysis on the various permutations. Basically reading…

[deleted]

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#300

Post by [deleted] »

mewse wrote: post #278
542458 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. What you described will work for a simple substitution cypher, but not for a one time pad. A one time pad is the same length as the message, and permutates every letter independently. Trying all keys will yield every possible plaintext . For example the phrase: "The swallow flies at midnight" May (with a one time pad) be encrypted into "WD4oXOl8yO0QtD4sOf7ip0P7ScIia" (which, incidentally, is indistinguishable fro…

Well-known caveat for people who are familiar with encryption, but it's worth calling out explicitly here: If you use the same one time pad to encode two or more different messages, then all the sorts of attack proposed here become plausible again. The security provided by a one time pad relies entirely on the fact that it is only ever used once.

[deleted]
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