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ISIS Has a Smartphone App

fortune.com

61–70 of 80 posts

Re: ISIS Has a Smartphone App

#61
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Here's an interesting historical fact I have dug up in some research for an essay I am writing about the relationship between liberty and security: That famous quote by Benjamin Franklin that “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” does not mean what it seems to say. Not at all. https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-ben-franklin-really-said And…

from npr link:

>Far from being a pro-privacy quotation, if anything, it's a pro-taxation and pro-defense spending quotation.

>It is a quotation that defends the authority of a legislature to govern in the interests of collective security.

Re: ISIS Has a Smartphone App

#62
post #46

Alrawi can’t be downloaded from Google Play. Instead it must be installed from shady back alleys of the Internet. Well, there's your obvious solution. Get a copy of the APK, wrap it with some spyware, then propagate the bugged version. If ISIS won't host the source or can't provide an "official" outlet to grab it, you've got no way of knowing whether your version is legit or not. Who'd have thought the paradigms of s…

ISIS has a list of "allowed" devices, that can be used bye its members, iOS was banned long time ago for privacy invasions. I bet they forked Android and you can install only apps signed with a key and Android validates them before installation. If I did it with my Paranoid ROM and F-Droid key, why can't them?

ISIS IT must get the most irritating tech support calls. I'd hate to manage their Exchange server.

Re: ISIS Has a Smartphone App

#63
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if it were bombs instead of surveillance you would bomb the target when you're uncertain about its enemy status? And since we're talking about mass surveillance... I guess carpet bombing?

... this is an obviously terrible argument. If you surveil someone secretly and then decide not to act on the intelligence, they aren't harmed in any way. They don't even know. The mistakenly assassinated are still dead.

Yes. They. Are.

EDIT For example the mere knowledge of surveillance changes how people interact. This has a chilling effect upon speech that is not compatible with a robust democracy.

Re: ISIS Has a Smartphone App

#64
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not true. E.g., do you think the average user of Tor takes this precaution? Thinking back to the times I have downloaded Tor, I never did that. It reminds me of a time when I wanted to get in touch with an HN user... they had their pgp key in their user page... I tried sending the email but it didn't work (formatting issues). Finally I reached this user and asked what was up with it... and he responded by sa…

Well, differently from you and your friend, ISIS does have somebody out to get them. It's very hard to think someone would get to the trouble of creating and using a secure chat application, but then fail to secure its distribution.

The submitted headline is just plain wrong. The article mentions no ISIS-produced messaging app, just a news app.

Re: ISIS Has a Smartphone App

#65
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if it were bombs instead of surveillance you would bomb the target when you're uncertain about its enemy status? And since we're talking about mass surveillance... I guess carpet bombing?

... this is an obviously terrible argument. If you surveil someone secretly and then decide not to act on the intelligence, they aren't harmed in any way. They don't even know. The mistakenly assassinated are still dead.

As long as the data is discarded after the fact. People can be harmed if that data is kept and then repurposed in unforseen ways which are harmful to the surveiled non-terrorist.

Re: ISIS Has a Smartphone App

#66
post #4

> Apple and Google could easily kick apps used to organize violence out of their official app stores. But would they be willing to build further barriers to usage directly into their mobile operating systems? This is a silly question for the Android side (and possibly the iOS side as well). That would be a monumental effort that would seem easily thwarted by simply installing your own version of the OS.

> and possibly the iOS side as well This is exactly what jailbreaking fixes. By default, iOS does not allow you to install apps that are not published in the App Store.

Well, unfortunately jailbreaking "fixes" the problem by ruining code signing integrity on the device. Ideally, the jailbreaks would leave code signing enforcement in effect but just augment the default trusted CAs/CDHashes. I'm disappointed that AOSP never gained the code signing framework that iOS has, allowing people to have better Freedom and Security simultaneously.

Re: ISIS Has a Smartphone App

#69
post #18

Alrawi can’t be downloaded from Google Play. Instead it must be installed from shady back alleys of the Internet. Well, there's your obvious solution. Get a copy of the APK, wrap it with some spyware, then propagate the bugged version. If ISIS won't host the source or can't provide an "official" outlet to grab it, you've got no way of knowing whether your version is legit or not. Who'd have thought the paradigms of s…

I'd doubt users of an encryption app not using a simple checksum to verify its legitimacy before using it.

Where would you get a checksum from? How would you know to trust it?

Re: ISIS Has a Smartphone App

#70
This article... 10/10 would click again...

Here's the real story, the app is a mediocre app that you can download from an archive.org link from a news website supporting ISIS, I don't have time to try the app but I assume that it get RSS from the said website (one of those enter RSS link here and we give you an app probably). Well by a website I mean something.wordpress.com, yeah that's real hard to shut down I know...

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