NYT Quietly Pulls Article Blaming Encryption In Paris Attacks 259
HughPickens.com writes: Inside Sources reports that the NY Times has quietly pulled a story from its website alleging the attackers used encrypted technology. The original piece, which has since been removed, can be found on the Internet Archive. It stated, "The attackers are believed to have communicated using encryption technology, according to European officials who had been briefed on the investigation but were not authorized to speak publicly. It was not clear whether the encryption was part of widely used communications tools, like WhatsApp, which the authorities have a hard time monitoring, or something more elaborate. Intelligence officials have been pressing for more leeway to counter the growing use of encryption."
A link to the NY Times article now redirects readers to a separate, general article on the attacks, which does not contain the word "encrypt." The Times later posted a second article citing an anonymous "European counterterrorism official" who was quoted saying authorities' "working assumption is that these guys were very security aware," but clarified officials "offered no evidence."
A link to the NY Times article now redirects readers to a separate, general article on the attacks, which does not contain the word "encrypt." The Times later posted a second article citing an anonymous "European counterterrorism official" who was quoted saying authorities' "working assumption is that these guys were very security aware," but clarified officials "offered no evidence."
The hilarity it keeps growing. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is like watching a Hollywood spy movie where they're astounded at how the elite criminals are using Unix!
It's an open question to me whether it's the media that is dumb, the alleged government spokespeople, or somebody is just faking it to bullshit the generally dumb public who doesn't know any better.
Here's a hint how to defeat these terrorists. Go about your daily life as if nothing happened, and don't let the government do anything different.
Then they'll lose and you won't lose either.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
This is like watching a Hollywood spy movie where they're astounded at how the elite criminals are using Unix!
Like... MacOS?
Re:The hilarity it keeps growing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps it was more like this:
Ostensibly erudite reporter was given inside information with the carefully planted bugaboo word: encryption, so as to allow the information provider to cast a negative shadow upon encryption, so as to favor the arguments of those tireless government officials that are seeking to permit governmental backdoors into encryption methods.
Or, perhaps more likely, the erudite reporter merely salted their story for street creds.
In either case, it was seemingly rapidly corrected.
Re:The hilarity it keeps growing. (Score:5, Funny)
Or, perhaps more likely, the erudite reporter merely salted their story for street creds.
The reporter should have hashed it after salting.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
How about this, instead:
Reporter interviewed some investigators who mentioned that the terrorists had been using encryption, and published the story including that fact. The investigators then realized that the terrorists associates might later read the article and realize that their encryption methods might now be compromised and abandon them -- so the investigators asked the newspaper to bury the article, in the hopes that the terrorists would continue using their (perhaps now compromised) encryption met
Re: (Score:2)
And now those investigators are calling Slashdot editors with the same request? I doubt, they haven't heard of Streisand Effect...
Re: (Score:3)
It wasn't corrected. A correction involves printing a retraction saying "WE FUCKED UP LOL".
This is being swept under the rug as if it never happened.
I watched a bit of the news after the attacks (because the few shows I do watch were preempted by it).
Every single channel kept parroting the same FUD about encryption and PlayStations.
It's CLEARLY a government-planted narrative.
Re: (Score:2)
It has all the earmarks of a plant, but no one has come forward to say why the retraction was done, so far as I know. Seems suspicious.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, now there's this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11... [nytimes.com]? which seems to be the NYT's contribution to the Obama Administration's propaganda arsenal.
Read clearly the first paragraph to contrast the second one.
Temporary crises lead to permanent rights-losses (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, of course! The Statist types always complain about encryption and anonymity (and personal weapons, BTW) making their jobs more difficult. They are sincere, and what they say is true. It is just that at normal times we can rationally resist their urging, while at the times of crisis our collective rationality weakens and we allow major freedom-infringements to happen...
Rolling them back is hard, because the things like having to present an ID or even submit to a pat-down are not too tedious and the burden never reaches a crisis level of its own, despite occasional trouble-making by some prominent figures [go.com].
Re:The hilarity it keeps growing. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an open question to me whether it's the media that is dumb, the alleged government spokespeople, or somebody is just faking it to bullshit the generally dumb public who doesn't know any better.
I'm going with option C. The authorities want to be able to see what we're doing. Encryption interferes with that. Linking encryption with terrorism in the public mind might change public sentiment when it comes to the question of back doors. The public is largely unsophisticated in this area and the government and media like that just fine.
Re:The hilarity it keeps growing. (Score:5, Insightful)
If they can also somehow tie the terrorist encryption to child pr0n, then they will have the crowd behind them to ban common citizen encryption without backdoors.
This of the children!!
Think of the terrorists!!
I think the two of those are likely to be the keys to the Constitution, at least in the US>
Re:The hilarity it keeps growing. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The hilarity it keeps growing. (Score:5, Insightful)
NPR had a great piece on this yesterday where they openly stated that if strong encryption was backdoored, some kid would just write an app in his basement implementing strong encryption without a backdoor. The algorithms are public, and honestly not that complicated. The iPhone encryption that has everyone in such a lather is a Federal standard, after all.
Some of the media gets it.
OT: NPR (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Then how will the next concert be different from the one last Friday?
Something must be done. It just mustn't diminish the freedoms (including privacy), which the Western World has grown used to...
Re: (Score:2)
Thing is....its not even new.
I first became aware of encryption back when it was still being pointed out that ITAR regulations are stupid when the encryption they block from export already exists, and some of it was even patented, outside the US. There were, quite literally, two versions of the same library based on whether you were in the US or outside the US....same routines, same capabilities.
And this was the mid 1990. How ridiculous is it to be threatening people with prison time for "exporting" somethi
dear national security personnel: (Score:5, Insightful)
do your fucking job. spying on suspects
not hoovering everything from everyone and thinking a search query will give you magic intelligence. intelligence work is *work*
the encryption is not important. your gumshoe work is. get out of your fucking cubicle you lardass and find these dirtbags
and if you can't do that maybe your useless security theatre job should be axed
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They are doing their job, spying on suspects. The problem is that you, me and everyone else ARE the suspects. We have been judged guilty as a society without any trial or due process. The government breaks the law, yet treats law-abiding citizens like criminals.
The only solution is to dissolve these letter-agencies that answer to nobody and bear responsibility for none of their atrocities. Abolish the CIA, NSA, their traitorous Canadian counterparts in CSIS. They are out-moded agencies, a throwback to Cold
The solution: Muslim profiling (Score:3, Interesting)
You are partly, but only partly right. The reason that you, me and everyone else are suspects is b'cos of political correctness. The compulsion to see Muslims as innocent, despite all the evidence to the contrary since 9/11. It started w/ the TSA in airports post 9/11, when they avoided profiling Muslims and scanned little girls and grandmothers, as opposed to Muslim men and women. The emboldening of Jihadi groups like CAIR just kept making things worse, so that every investigation's first priority was
Re:The solution: Muslim profiling (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean Muslims like Timothy McVeigh, or the IRA?
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that you, me and everyone else ARE the suspects. We have been judged guilty as a society without any trial or due process. The government breaks the law, yet treats law-abiding citizens like criminals.
And we let them...
Yep. Game over. The terrorists have won.
Re:dear national security personnel: (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:dear national security personnel: (Score:5, Insightful)
Preview is your friend. As is being able to spell "blockquote" reliably....
Your mistake is not understanding that to "national security personnel" EVERYONE is a suspect.
The question is not whether you've done something wrong, but exactly what you've done wrong, and whether they want to prosecute you for it, far as they're concerned....
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
do your fucking job. spying on suspects
So ... where were you 2 days ago? Anywhere near Paris by any chance? How can I tell you're telling the truth? Maybe it's time you open up to us a little since your refusal of our probings make you a suspect.
Re: (Score:2)
It doesn't make the job of finding terrorists easier.
Even if your terrorism detector algorithm is 99.99% accurate, in the USA, that would falsely identify 35,000 innocent people as terrorists.
The number of case officers you'd need to vet them all is huge. And 99.99% is really, really optimistic. 99.9%? 350,000 suspects. 99%? 3.5 million.
Now, the three letter agencies have people that can do maths. They know this.
Using Occam's Razor ; the reason for blanket surveillance programs isn't terrorist detection. It
Sudden outbreak of common sense (Score:2, Insightful)
Have some newspeople actually stopped to think whether their sensationalist article had the potential to cause great harm to their own society?
Is it snowing in hell?
The Most Shocking Thing About the France Attacks (Score:5, Insightful)
The most shocking thing to me is that our (the US) security agencies seemed to be completely unaware that anything was being planned. No reports of chatter. No outwardly visible concern. Even the President was briefed that ISIS was "contained" and "under control," and he reported as much on national television days before the attack.
This begs the question of where our intelligence agencies are focusing their efforts. Are they really scouring the world for terrorist activity, or are they too busy spying on their own citizens?
We live in dark and scary times when my government knows everyone I call or email, and when, and records all of that communication, but they can't catch wind of a major terrorist attack in its planning stages.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Intelligence briefings to Congress say ISIS is not contained and getting stronger. This is from D. Feinstein, head of the security group in the Senate. The head of the FBI also told Congress that it is impossible to vet the Syrian refugees coming to the US.
Obama came out and gave a speech filled with lies, according to his people and other members of the DNC. They know things are going on, Obama just doesn't want to recognize that there is a problem because he would then have to deal with it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The most shocking thing to me is that our (the US) security agencies seemed to be completely unaware that anything was being planned. No reports of chatter. No outwardly visible concern. Even the President was briefed that ISIS was "contained" and "under control," and he reported as much on national television days before the attack.
....
And you believe Obama because????
You don't know what Obama was briefed. He's been openly trying to downplay ISIS for several years - because their existence imperils his "be nice to everyone and everyone will be nice to you" approach to international relations in a way that would make Neville "Peace for our time" Chamberlain proud.
Re:The Most Shocking Thing About the France Attack (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't know what Obama was briefed. He's been openly trying to downplay ISIS for several years - because their existence imperils his "be nice to everyone and everyone will be nice to you" approach to international relations in a way that would make Neville "Peace for our time" Chamberlain proud.
That image too is for public consumption. American foreign policy has nothing to do with "be nice to everyone and everyone will be nice to you".
Re: The Most Shocking Thing About the France Attac (Score:2)
Re:The Most Shocking Thing About the France Attack (Score:5, Informative)
The same subordinate status that makes it OK for the ruling class to violate citizens' privacy means it's not a big deal if they are blown up. Sheep are herded, sheep are slaughtered.
or it is a BS keyword (Score:3)
"Brennan also said the United States had âoestrategic warningâ about the terrorist attack in Paris, but did not provide details, other than to say it was âoenot a surprise.â He said he believed the attack was planned over âoeseveral months.â
If they really had a precise they would have reported in the news article or to the relevant french department. That they use the unqualified keyword "strategic warning" is more like "somebody mentioned they wanted to attack
Re: (Score:2)
Even the President was briefed that ISIS was "contained" and "under control" in Iraq and Syria, and he reported as much on national television days before the attack.
FTFY - If you're going to quote the president, quote the whole thing. Too many people run off at the mouth with half a quote that lacks any context. While ISIS is "contained" and "under control" in Iraq and Syria, it doesn't prevent the offshoot terrorists from launching attacks in non-combat zones far removed from the main battlefield.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
> The most shocking thing to me is that our (the US) security agencies seemed to be completely unaware that anything was being planned.
Why does this shock you? Do you expect security agencies to be aware of every single time a handful of nut-jobs decide to shoot up a public place?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The Most Shocking Thing About the France Attack (Score:4, Insightful)
How is this shocking?
The team leader gets his general, not specific, verbal instructions from some guy in a tent in the middle of some desert wasteland. He goes back to Europe and recuits a half dozen guys.
They all manage to plan it secretly, don't tell anybody, and nobody gets busted doing something stupid, like getting pulled over with AK-47s and Semtex in the back seat.
How the fuck do you stop that with electronic surveillance?
The only thing that would seem to even put a dent in that kind of operation is going full-on totalitarianism, ie, sending in the jackboots to every house with "Mohammed" on the nameplate and turning the place upside down, hemming them into their own neighborhoods and not letting them out without checkpoints and searches.
I think everyone sees the drawbacks to such an approach. Even the people who manage to pull it off halfway decent STILL have problems and have all the other problems that go alone with such a system. The Israelis aren't 100% effective, even the goddamn Chinese can't seem to squeeze the Uighurs tight enough to shut that problem down and their playbook has rules like "if anyone objects, shoot them in the head and ship everyone they know to a gulag".
About the only country that makes it work is North Korea, and that just might be because we don't know what doesn't work there.
Re: (Score:2)
This begs the question of where our intelligence agencies are focusing their efforts.
I'd imagine that US security agencies are concentrating their efforts on... the US.
The most shocking thing about spying (Score:2)
Are they really scouring the world for terrorist activity, or are they too busy spying on their own citizens?
From Fox:
"Three of the seven Islamist suicide bombers have already been identified as French citizens, as was at least one of seven other people arrested in neighboring Belgium in connection to the deadly attacks."
So four of fourteen were, in your words, their own citizens. I can pretty much guarantee that the intelligence agencies don't really care that much about the nationality of who they spy on; they spy on everyone to try and get intelligence. But, of course, you would like them just to spy only on th
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The easiest way to learn is to have your enemy brag about how they got you.
We've seen a lot of officials brag about how they achieved something when they brag about achieving it. But I guess they have to brag in order to justify the crap to the public.
Re: (Score:2)
> If these asshats are smart, and they are, they are using one-time pads
Or communicate in person. How much electronic coordination is required to gather some small arms, and to agree on a time and place?
> there are thousands of them streaming into Europe
Not controlling immigration will be looked back upon as a profound strategic blunder, even though (as I disagree with you) there is no conscious invasion motivation on the part of the immigrants.
Re: (Score:2)
If I were running a terrorist organization, I'd order everyone to communicate everything. "Go to the p
Re: (Score:3)
> MORELL: So, I think what we're going to learn, we don't know for sure yet, but I think what we're going to learn is that these guys are communicating via these encrypted apps, right, the commercial encryption, which is very difficult, if not impossible, for governments to break, and the producers of which don't produce the keys necessary for law enforcement to read the encrypted messages.
Christ, you can hear in the transcript the internal discomfort that must come with the awareness that you are being
Of Course (Score:2, Interesting)
The terrorists already assume you can read their emails and listen to their telephone calls and act accordingly. Calling for the government to easily be able to read the common man's emails and listen to their phone calls isn't going to help against terrorists one bit. All it's going to do is to help the government keep the populace in line which is more important to them than the terrorists.
They put out that it's encryption that allowed the attacks because it absolves them and their policies of any acco
Re: (Score:2)
I agree that it would be naive to think that trained operational terror cells do not use a variety of techniques to hide from intelligence services. Technically it would be an unwinnable war to defeat encryption so the noise about it is largely ill informed political hubris.
Mass surveillance of un-encrypted communications and web browsing can detect people who have an interest in Daesh. It will certainly catch a lot of teenagers and put them on watch lists, which is probably the actual intention of mass sur
In other news... (Score:5, Informative)
"The attackers are believed to have transported themselves and their weapons using modern automobile technology, including (but not exclusively) internal combustion engines, air-pressurized tires and asphalted roads. They may even have used advanced public transportation technologies".
Speechless.
Are our so-called leaders *that fucking incompetent*?
Eh. (Score:5, Interesting)
FFS, any pot dealer who has stayed out of prison for a couple of years would count as 'pretty security aware' in the vacuous "well, we didn't realize that they were up to something until they had already executed it" sense of the term. Of course some degree of care was used in orchestrating a coordinated attack involving a number of people, some of who had had run-ins with the law before. Why would you expect otherwise?
Plus, historical examples suggest that terrorists aren't complete morons about security: Al Qaeda and the Taliban both had a healthy distrust of cellphones, even before we learned what 'dirtboxing' was; and the guys who pulled the Mumbai attacks in 2008 used Blackberries specifically because BBM is way more resistant than SMS. I realize that somebody had a burning need to fill column inches; but what pitiful dreck.
Re: (Score:2)
"Security Aware" is being treated in the media as something bad, something people shouldn't aspire to.
This concerted effort after the Paris attacks isn't someone filling column inches, it is yet another example of those with the editorial influence to pressure the First World to completely give up any shred of privacy or freedom.
Here it comes (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... [bloomberg.com]
NPR is doing it too. (Score:3)
How many times can someone say "Going Dark"?
Re: (Score:2)
On Face the nation it was front and center. Appalling, but expected.
We don't need "backdoors" (Score:4, Informative)
And the NYT has a new and extensive story that absolutely "mentions" crypto [nytimes.com].
We don't need "backdoors". What we need is a clear acknowledgment that what increasingly exists essentially amounts to a virtual fortress impenetrable by the legal mechanisms of free society, that many of those systems are developed and employed by US companies, and that US adversaries use those systems against the US and our allies, and for a discussion to start from that point.
The US has a clear and compelling interest in strong encryption, and especially in protecting US encryption systems used by our government, our citizens, and people around the world from defeat. But the assumption that the only alternatives are either universal strong encryption, or wholesale and deliberate weakening of encryption systems and/or "backdoors", is a false dichotomy.
Trigger Happy (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I would imagine more than a few officials went running for their "Edward Snowden has blood on his hands" fanfiction with their tongues cartoonishly flapping out the sides of their mouths the second news of the attack broke.
James Clapper did this morning on NBC, that's for sure.
Everyone is using encryption (Score:4, Insightful)
Nowadays encryption becoming the norm. Most sites use https when dealing with private data, and if you are looking for something more secure, there are plenty of easily accessible end-to-end encryption tools. It's pissing off government agencies BTW.
There are people who use strong encryption for their cat pictures. For terrorist to communicate without encryption is almost like wanting to be discovered and should be seen as very suspect.
Also "encrypted technology" is so wide that it is like saying that they used "vehicle technology" for movement. Watching a DVD is using encryption technology, even though it is just a totally broken DRM.
high-tech (Score:4, Insightful)
the Paris attackers had used some kind of encrypted communication
Which requires the incredibly rare high-tech skill of installing a readily available app on your smartphone.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Which authorities can and routinely do tap. That's obviously not the kind of encryption they are referring to.
If it's true, print it (Score:2)
Did I miss something here or are we trying to protect people from an idea that they might "misunderstand"? If we're going to ban the word encryption from discussions about security, then we're no better than those monsters in our paranoid dreams.
They did it to themselves... (Score:5, Insightful)
What is lost on all of them (agencies, law enforcement) is THAT THEY DID THIS TO THEMSELVES either way. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies have been "hoovering up" all available communications data and metadata. They demanded and got kangaroo courts (FISA - I'm looking at you) where secret search warrants are being executed. There is no regulation by the citizenry, only by government "you can trust us" types who don't understand that when the stories about this stuff break, consumers begin to demand secure communications. Every time the government executed these warrants on the communications and computer industries, they gave them both an incentive to ditch the whole cooperation thing, and finally those companies started encrypting things in a way that they did not have the ability to "listen in" because lets face it, that is a pain in the neck and takes them away from their core mission.
Now they are crying about encryption, without understanding that the ship already sailed... And they are the ones that kicked it out of the harbor.
Stop complaining on slashdot (Score:2)
Complain to the media directly. Ask them why they won't hold intelligence services responsible for a lack of human intelligence.
weight watchers (Score:2)
The attackers may have been friends who met at Weight Watchers. Holy shit, ban Weight Watchers!
hmm no proof of that OR of the attackers using encryption.
Especially stupid because ENCRYPTION (Score:5, Insightful)
Come to Paris in three days. Bring AK-47 and ammo. Akmed will provide suicide vests to attack the restaurants and concert hall. Allah Akbar!
Seriously, nobody with a brain is going to use actual encryption, that's a red flag. They'll come up with a code first, something that sounds normal. I can just see the CIA now: "Oh no, these two people say they're going to the movies! Code Red! Code Red!"
Sure, It Was Encryption (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3)
It's a blame game (Score:4, Interesting)
The Newspaper of Record (Score:2)
You got it half-right. They deserve no "kudos" for hiding a mistake. Once upon a time, this was supposed to be "the newspaper of record", now they regularly let the text of stories morph for inscrutable reasons, without so much as a "Correction" notice appended to it.
Encryption the new terror (Score:2)
The new war on Encryption. Watch it live!
Smith Mundt act (Score:2)
New York City police commisioner blamed encryption (Score:2)
Re:Of course they'd blame technology (Score:5, Informative)
In the USA, "treason" is defined in the Constitution, and has a very narrow meaning. Do keep that in mind when tossing the word about.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I believe the poster was pointing to strict concealed laws there. I am not entirely sure, but I am guessing New York, Illinois, and California either do not allow concealed carry firearms or have extremely low percentage of carriers. I assume you are referring to the illegally carried firearms which I am sure the cities have plenty of due to gang activity. I work in a rocky mountain state, and I know that over half of my coworkers are armed most days (and myself included). An event like the Paris attack ha
Re: (Score:2)
"And? is he fiddling with the trigger or something? or is it properly holstered and you're more likely to die from a freak lightning strike than it going off?"
Have you never had an accident of any kind? Never bumped into a door, tripped, snagged your clothing on an object?
I would guess that having a loaded weapon pointed at your face 8 hours a day, even if there is no malicious intent, has a higher likelihood of you being harmed than a lightening strike.
This site (http://smartgunlaws.org/gun-deaths-and-inju
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Of course they'd blame technology (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you fit the fact that all of the identified attackers so far are european nationals into your narrative?
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I would maintain that by their actions they have pretty much excluded themselves from any reasonable definition of "national" or "citizen".
Indeed, this is the nub of the problem; different peoples from different regions - both within and outside what we now call Europe - have integrated more or less well over the centuries. Frequently their differences, at first feared, enriched our cultures.
But there were always a few who did not bring postives, and instead violently fought their new homes...
The fau
Re: (Score:3)
Re:How do I explain it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, look at the attackers. None of them came with the recent wave of refugees (the one Syrian passport found has since been identified as a fake). So closing the borders now accomplishes - pretty much nothing.
We need to figure out why there are people living in our countries that hate those same countries so much they are willing to die just for the joy of expressing their hatred.
We didn't and we let it foster, that is our first fault.
Our second fault was not facing the problem, believing too much in a peaceful co-existence and multi-cultural society to not see that some parts of the same want to fucking kill us.
Re: (Score:3)
You know your definition with "ancestors...for centuries" describes just about every European-descended person in North America short of the few with family lines back to before the American Revolution, right?
The whole point of having a path to becoming a citizen (any country) is flushed down the toilet with your post.
Speaking about the U.S., until you amend the Constitution -- too fucking bad. That is the system we have and your whining about it is counterproductive.
Re:Of course they'd blame technology (Score:4, Insightful)
ISIS would have access to their streets whether or not refugees were accepted; what, you think an ISIS terrorist is going to take his chances going across the Mediterranean in a swamped, sinking refugee boat? They've got the money, documents, and connections needed to take a plane and rent an apartment like any normal person. He'll be wearing a nice suit, carrying quality luggage, and probably show a student visa or EU passport or something.
The main problem with the refugees is that if, rather than integrating and educating them, they dump them into refugee ghettos and don't provide them with decent opportunities then in 30 years there will be a whole new crop of "home grown" converts to whatever extremist cult is popular at that time.
The only long-term solutions to extremism are integration, education and wealth. Period.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Yes, I absolutely do (Score:4, Interesting)
If ISIS actually had 1000, or even 100, hardcore fighters who could be integrated into the refugee streams without the cat being let out of the bag somewhere along the way, then Europe is fucked no matter what.
Re: (Score:2)
he only long-term solutions to extremism are integration, education and wealth. Period.
Many of the 9/11 terrorists were well-off educated people. I recall at least one of them was an engineer, apparently assimilated.
I don't know what the long-term solution is, short of things decent people don't want to contemplate. My biggest fear is that, at some point, a solid majority is going to decide that decency is overrated.
Re: (Score:3)
Because that is easier than blaming Merkel and like-minded leaders for self-righteously taking a position that they knew, beyond any reasonable doubt, would give ISIS incredibly easy access to their streets. The FBI director admitted that they have literally no meaningful body of information by which to screen our "refugees" for terrorist ties, and our president is likewise bringing them in anyway.
You are aware that since the beginning of Syrian crisis there have been 200,000 refugees in Germany alone and millions overall. From what we know, 8 men were involved in the attacks. Of those 8, the latest information I have is that we are not sure even IF any of them were refugees. But let's go with your argument from ignorance.
A handful of men did this attack in Europe. How many more "handfuls" of similarly capable men got through? Probably a lot.
So you admit a "handful" of people did this but then are willing to extrapolate to all of the refugees. I see. And handful of Christians have bombed abortion clinics in the US. S
Re:Of course they'd blame technology (Score:4, Insightful)
And when the police are 10 minutes away, there will be a body count identical to Paris or worse.
This attack killed 129 people [1] [wikipedia.org], but let's get some perspective. France has a traffic-related death rate of 4.9 per 100,000 per year [2] [wikipedia.org], and Paris has a population of 2.24 million [3] [wikipedia.org]. A naive estimate suggests that roughly 110 people die a traffic-related death in Paris every year. That's comparable to the death toll resulting from this attack.
ISIS could commit an attack like this in Paris every single year and it wouldn't be significantly worse than the death caused by motorists. Let's keep some perspective, please. While this attack was despicable, it doesn't represent anything like an existential threat. Giving ISIS "incredibly easy access to their streets" is not significantly more dangerous than allowing people to drive cars. "Bordering on treason" may sound like a level-headed analysis of the situation to some, but I question how accurate it is.
Re: (Score:2)
ISIS isn't stupid.
8 people with the benefit of surprise, automatic firearms and explosives died to kill 129. I'd say that's pretty stupid, they could easily have managed that many and survived, then done it again in a couple of weeks.
Or killed 224 with 1kg of explosives.
No, ISIS is supported by a lot of stupid people. Shit, most of them are fucking delusional believers in some mythical gay sky fairy.
Re: (Score:3)
"BOO!" - you poor frightened people in the "home of the brave" unwilling to stand up and defend your freedom from your own government. Your grand experiment is dissolving into a surveillance/police state. A least in Europe there are many who will defend freedom .....even if bad things can happen. Because they know bad things WILL happen in a police state.
As you can see above, Americans these days have been frightened into valuing safety over an open society. I believe this is by design, but reasonable people can disagree.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Exactly. In March 2011, a month after the Japanese Fukushima tsunami, there was a NYTimes article critical of Japan's leadership during the disaster. However, after re-reading it 8 hours post-original online publication, I noticed that it had become watered down and so I inquired to the NYTimes public editor about the discrepancy. I received the following response a month later from the Office of the Public Editor:
"To answer your question, yes, stories can be edited if they are part of the continuous ne
Re: (Score:2)
I seriously doubt that any spy, agent or terrorist carries along encrypted plans. Even plans are not communicated. This has been understood for well over a thousand years of warfare. At best, there are a series of code words which are clues to events, but alone, are meaningless. Hence, if you are going to go through with a plan, you might communicate, "The match is on." But even that is suspicious. Probably something more along the lines of quoting some obscure text.
"Winter is coming".
Re: (Score:2)
Or ask a 7 year old kid from Montreal.
Re: (Score:2)
Or Jean-Claude Van Damme. He can cope with the ass-kicking as well.