France Says Fight Against Messaging Encryption Needs Worldwide Initiative (reuters.com) 446
An anonymous reader shares a Reuters report: Messaging encryption, widely used by Islamist extremists to plan attacks, needs to be fought at international level, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Thursday, and he wants Germany to help him promote a global initiative. He meets his German counterpart, Thomas de Maiziere, on Aug. 23 in Paris and they will discuss a European initiative with a view to launching an international action plan, Cazeneuve said. French intelligence services are struggling to intercept messages from Islamist extremists who increasingly switch from mainstream social media to encrypted messaging services, with Islamic State being a big user of such apps, including Telegram. "Many messages relating to the execution of terror attacks are sent using encryption; it is a central issue in the fight against terrorism," Cazeneuve told reporters after a government meeting on security. "France will make proposals. I have sent a number of them to my Germany colleague," he said.
Just like trying to ban guns (Score:5, Insightful)
People will just make their own.
Re: Just like trying to ban guns (Score:3, Insightful)
The difference is if you make encryption illegal and someone uses their own, you can arrest them. This basically ensures the only ones using encryption will be part of ISIS and makes it much easier to track them. Now actually figuring out what is actually encrypted (when they start using non traditional methods) will be difficult.
Re: Just like trying to ban guns (Score:4, Interesting)
There are many kinds of encryption. During WWII British radio was using previously agreed phrases to activate French resistance. Can you arrest someone for sending message: "Uncle Henry is sick today" ? Where do you draw a line? What if I encode message into RAW camera image such that it does not affects how an eye see the image but otherwise has fully encoded text in the lower bits of the image pixels (text itself still encoded by cipher)? Those in many cases might be indistinguishable from normal camera noise and it will be very hard to prove that the image has a hidden message inside it and that it is breaking the law. Cameras typically have 14 bit deep RAW images and human eye only distinguishes 8 bit. So for each pixel of the image I can encode (naively) 6 bits of message and still have an image that the eye will not see the difference. Obviously the example is naive. In real life less bits with smarter algorithm would have to be used to make impossible to prove that the image has hidden message beyond noise.
Re: Just like trying to ban guns (Score:4, Informative)
The use of phrases is called a code. That is a very simple verbal form of a cipher. Read up on the basics of codes and ciphers and you have a lot of the basic information you need on encryption.
The other process you are describing is also well known, it's called "steganography". There are already algorithms written to not only encode data that way, but also to detect patterns of encoded data in an image. Read up on "stegbreak".
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Steganography isn't perfect - thus far it seems you can always statistically distinguish between "random" bits in images, sound files, etc, from "random"-seeming encrypted data. There's no proof that this is necessarily true, however, so it may be lack of public-sector work in the area.
If the goal is to send encrypted messages without going to jail for it, methods like you describe could work in a nation with jury trials and presumption of innocence, as the complex technical arguments and probabilities wou
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A one-time pad is a long as the message. If you have a method to securely send the one-time pad, why not use it to send the message instead?
The point, however, is that the low-order bits in images and sounds aren't as uniformly random as encrypted data. Now, you could generate a one-time pad using the same sort of data you're trying to hide in, and that can sometimes work, but there's that practical difficulty mentioned above. If you just want to send short, simple messages, use a code instead of a cyphe
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"There are many kinds of encryption."
So what? Law is not about technology, but about definitions.
"Where do you draw a line?"
You basically don't need it. France has a long standing tradition on what Foucault described at Discipline and Punish to be alike a panopticon: this is the kind of "crimes" you put in place for "just in case" scenarios. You generally don't prosecute them but, by being vague and very difficult to avoid one way or another, you throw them at whomever you like, be it political dissent o
Islam is the problem, not encryption (Score:4, Insightful)
We blame terrorism on encryption because we don't want to admit the real problem. The same is often true for gun control, especially recently. Why do people get offended when I say that Islam is evil? Why is this considered bigotry?
Islam isn't a race or an ethnicity. It's a religious belief. Specifically, it's a belief that Allah is the only god, Mohammed is his prophet, and the Qur'an is the literal word of god. We wouldn't call Christianity a race, so why would we act like Islam is a race? A large number of Muslims are either Arabs or Persians, which are two different ethnicities.
Not all religions or beliefs are equal. Would the belief that the Earth is flat be equally as valid as believing that the Earth is round? Is a belief that the moon landings were faked as valid as believing that they really happened? Is it equally as valid to believe that humans aren't causing global warming as it is to believe that humans are causing a lot of the warming? In each case, one belief is obviously right and another is wrong. And then there are religions like Scientology, which is clearly a scheme to profit rather than a sincerely developed belief. Again, it is not to be taken seriously.
While religions are never supported by testing hypotheses, they can still be judged on how they teach believers to act. Islam clearly teaches that non-believers should be given the choice to either convert or die. This is stated in the Qur'an and echoed in present day Islamic teaching. It is also clearly wrong. A significant portion of Muslims genuinely believe they need to kill non-believers. This is not true of Christianity, which teaches to love your neighbor and love your enemy. Even the most perverted forms of Christianity such as the Westboro Baptist Church don't believe in killing people. They are perverted, no doubt, but they stick to offensive speech and claim that their god is punishing people for sins, usually homosexuality. They are perverted, but unlike Islam, they're not killing anyone.
Virtually all Christians are taught that if they committed acts of terror like what is frequently done by Muslims, they would get an instant one way ticket to hell. Islam could discourage terrorism by teaching the same thing, but instead they teach that it results in a trip to heaven where they get 72 virgins. Unlike Christianity, Islam clearly condones violence and terrorism.
Why, then, do we pretend that Christianity and Islam are equally valid and call anyone who objects a bigot? Islam is objectively worse than Christianity. It is a belief system that needs to cease to exist. Some beliefs are so harmful that they need to be eradicated. Islam is at the top of the list.
Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a belief system that needs to cease to exist.
How do you suggest we achieve that? Do you think we should just go ahead and kill 25% of the world's population? Would you suggest that the way to counter an ideology that believes in "convert or die" is to tell all of them that they need to either stop believing or die? What would that make us? Otherwise, what do you think is the best way to go about getting a couple billion people to abandon their beliefs that are over a millennium old, beliefs which form the foundation for the power structures in their countries, beliefs that people would rather fight and kill you over to preserve the power structure instead of abandon? And, for that matter, why stop at Islam? It seems like religion has been holding back real global progress, why not a push to take religion in general out of society?
Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption (Score:5, Insightful)
'Cease to exist' doesn't automatically imply genocide. If the bulk of the world's 1.6B Muslims stopped believing in Islam and switched to anything else - be it Atheism, Christianity, Scientology, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, et al, we'd all be better off. After the Soviet Union was defeated, Communism almost ceased to exist - if one recognizes that Chinese Communism is just one party rule, nothing more, nothing less, and that the ones in North Korea, Cuba & Venezuela are statistically insignificant.
Islam can be stamped out the same way that Nazism was stamped out after WWII. Normally, we wouldn't tell people anywhere what to believe. But when a belief system advocates hatred and violence against its non members, it goes beyond a simple argument about rights, and gets into that libertarian cliché about 'Your rights end where mine begin'. And it's not even like Muslims are geographically contained anywhere, the way Taoists or Shintos or Rastafarians are: they are all over the world. So it's perfectly valid to start dictating what they can believe if they don't want to be either incarcerated or expelled or otherwise ostracized
Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption (Score:5, Funny)
Why not a push to take religion in general out of society?
Well... that worked well in the USSR. The state became the religion, that saved lots of lives under Stalin and Friends.
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25% is not nearly enough. Make it about 80%, pus or minus...
Leave the religious bullshit outside the door. If you want to stop the terrorists, you have to at least reduce their pay [time.com]
Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption (Score:4, Funny)
pus or minus
That's the name of my Gwar cover band.
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Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption (Score:4, Insightful)
Not that I'm advocating what "geek" did, but it sounds less like genocide and more like ideocide (or "meme"-o-cide?).
Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption (Score:5, Insightful)
I see nothing in your post pertaining to self defense. All you did was to state your support for mass killing, and then in your reply to me, you literally doubled down.
They have clearly stated they wish to irradicate western civilization.
Well yes, this is to be expected from terrorist fucktards, not from supposedly college-educated middle aged white males such as yourself.
There is simply no rational basis to allow them to do so.
Just as there's no rational basis to perform even worse atrocities as a preventative measure.
but fuckwits like you seem hell bent on importing them into every civilized country on Earth
And now you've jumped to straight assumptions. Truth be told, I'm relatively agnostic on immigration in general (which to you probably makes me just as bad as who you thought I was, correct?)
Truth be told I would have no problem adding you to the 25% also.
Oh, looks like I was being kind to you. Apparently your worldview is twisted enough that I'm worth being added to the mass grave because I'm insufficiently compliant to that very idea in the first place. Stay classy.
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Re:Islam is the problem, not encryption (Score:4, Insightful)
Not Islam in general, but the death cult interpretation of it being pushed by the Saudis. Read up on the story of Sayyid Kutb, the influential Egyptian imam who also pushed this movement along and as an aside, founded the Muslim Brotherhood. You'll find out why the Egyptian military had to round them up and shoot them to avoid the fate of Syria and Iraq.
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Well said.
ANY belief that teaches mass genocide is evil / satanic / definitely NOT holy.
Jesus taught compassion first, repentance later. "Your sins are forgiven. Go and sin no more."
He **never** attempted to convert anyone.
Radical Muslims seem to forget one KEY verse: "all who draw the sword will die by the sword."
However, the REAL problem is not the radicals; it is the silent majority [youtube.com] who do NOTHING to stop this evil of intolerance.
--
cult, noun, the belief that our belief is the only way. Religion and Sci
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Christians have killed doctor and bombed clinics where abortions were performed, that's terrorism, guess we have to ban all christianity too.... hmmmm... we may be on to something here, banning all religion...
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Re: Islam is the problem, not encryption (Score:4, Insightful)
Christianity has a New Testament, and a Reformation, is the thing. Theocracies of all stripes have done horrors, but then that's true of most forms of government, and I think is more about government than religion. But if you look at the rules and advice actually contained in scripture, there's a reason that "Old Testament" is slang for harsh and unyielding. And Islam only has an Old Testament, full of "put the infidel to the sword", without the moderating influence of a Scripture 2.0 full of needed patches about how being nice to people is really desirable.
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. . . or they'll steg it inside a picture, and post the picture to social media. Or they'll use a word code with a one-time pad. Or any of a number of other techniques.
I've heard stories of alleged terrorists communicating within a MMORPG, or via a private TeamSpeak or Ventrilo server.
There are multiple ways to hide information. There's no way to stop them all, and no way to stop ANY if free speech is the law of the land.
Re: Just like trying to ban guns (Score:4, Informative)
You cannot make a gun with only 300 lines combined of JavaScript, HTML and php (given cryptojs). You can make a barebones secure messaging system requiring only a standard Lamp stack that easily. I did one out of boredom in about two hours, most of that looking up APIs, the result of which I dumped at http://pgen.chalisque.org/ssms... [chalisque.org] - too easy.
Re:Just like trying to ban guns (Score:5, Informative)
Home-made guns almost never happen? Like the 10% of captured guns in Australia [thefirearmblog.com] ??
And if you're talking improvised firearms, it's even easier. Hell, there are videos on YouTube showing you how [google.com]. . .
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Almost all the time I make it to work safe and sound. Only 1 out of 10 time I get beaten to a pulp by robber.
Re:Just like trying to ban guns (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost all the time sounds like a fair description of 90%. so that other 10% fits nicely in almost never
NO, those two things are NOT the same.
If 10% is the same as "almost never", then surely you wouldn't mind being shot only 10% of the time, right?
FFS, you're as brain-dead as servicescope_minor.
Re:Just like trying to ban guns (Score:4, Informative)
Perfectly legal...Example Here [80-lower.com]...
Widely Used!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
>Messaging encryption, widely used by Islamist extremists to plan attacks
And much more widely used by spouses to talk to their spouses to remind them to pick up milk from the supermarket because the bottle is almost empty.
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But there is nothing illegal about buying milk... so why does this message need to be encrypted?
Unless the government does not like that brand of milk...
Re:Widely Used!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets see.
So that network it goes through can not sell my need for milk and eggs to advertisers.
So that things that do need to be encrypted do not stand out.
Because in some places the things you talk with your spouse about have a semi privilege.
I want to insure it's realy my wife not somebody impersonating her.
That's just for starters.
Re:Widely Used!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Because, if you know when a guy's at the supermarket instead of at home, you can exploit that knowledge to do things at his house during that time.
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BINGO!
give that man a virtual cigar or beer.
info leaking is info leakage. even simple things may betray you.
the proper way to deal with modern life: you have to convince me WHY I should have to give you about about me. its not the other way around; anyone asking 'why NOT give me that info?' is an evil sonofabitch and does not deserve the time of day, in fact.
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When the car's not in the driveway and the lights are out... it's likely I am not home. ;)
I do have my attack cat though. He will protect... his food bowl.
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He will protect... his food bowl.
We all protect our food bowls...
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I agree with you 100% I was making a point above. In the spirit of the topic at hand, here is the "Man's" answer to you: (Tongue in cheek)
Lets see. So that network it goes through can not sell my need for milk and eggs to advertisers.
But, you will miss out on good, money saving deals!
So that things that do need to be encrypted do not stand out.
Encryption is used by criminals, law abiding citizens do not need it. Its for the greater good.
Because in some places the things you talk with your spouse about have a semi privilege.
Talk at home.
I want to insure it's realy my wife not somebody impersonating her.
That's just for starters.
You can't tell how she communicates?
Re:Widely Used!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
But there is nothing illegal about buying milk... so why does this message need to be encrypted?
Unless the government does not like that brand of milk...
Because that's no one else's fucking business, that's why.
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In Soviet America, the Serf's business is the State's business.
What is this individualistic concept of "your"? We are all one. Comrade.
It's for the greater good. The needs of the many (protecting the children) outweigh the needs of the Serf.
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Exactly. How dare we buy milk from "unapproved" sources!
There are deep pockets that need to be filled, mansions to be bought.
The rich are hurting. They come first.
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Because of the right to privacy?
ie fuck off
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My point exactly. My sarcastic remarks above describe the twisted logic the powers have used to convince people they do not need privacy...
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You have given away that you are going to the supermarket and that you are going to buy milk. This can be used and/or exploited in a number of ways you may not wish, and in some cases may actually be dangerous (if say, you recently won the lottery).
It really doesn't matter, if you are a private and paranoid person, you should have the ability to keep your shit private. I don't particularly want to live in such a paranoid society that we let the government do whatever it wishes just because terrorists. Let's
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A new amendment coming to a dictatorship near you:
You have the right to remain silent, because encryption is illegal. Anything you communicate will be used for the State's benefit and our corporate handlers, and to your detriment.
Good day citizen.
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But there is nothing illegal about buying milk... so why does this message need to be encrypted?
Unless the government does not like that brand of milk...
It shouldn't matter one bit why someone wants their messages about groceries to be encrypted. It's called freedom. You should try it.
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I use WhatsApp... to communicate securely what I want on my Subway sandwich. I'm not worried my decision to not add spinach will land me in jail for violating "Eating Healthy" laws (well at least not yet), but I enjoy knowing there is some measure of privacy present.
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Because it does not logically end there. As soon as some terrorist disseminates a plan through an online game, the comments section on an Amazon product page, writing stuff in notepad over and RDP session, whatever; the list of things which can't be encrypted or must be backdoored will grow. Pretty soon it will be more or less impossible for regular people to have authentication, and integrity to say nothing of privacy in any kind of digital communication or transaction. I don't think its hyperbolic to s
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The Internet has done so much to give "the little man" a voice, in a world where mass media was an unchallenged king. We loose that, we loose a lot more than just economic gain - we drive, very quickly into a new dark age.
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Because sometimes "buying milk" is pillow talk between spouses and that's no one's damn business except for me and my wife. There's not a convenient "keep this private" vs "OH SURE GO AHEAD AND READ THIS ONE" toggle, so I opt for keeping all my interactions private.
I value messaging privacy for the same reason I have a door on my bathroom. I'm not doing anything illegal in either case, but damned if I want someone observing me while I use them.
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Agreed! I close my bathroom door and use end to end encryption. Sometimes, at the same time!
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There is nothing illegal about me checking my bank account or credit card accounts online either.
But I'll be damned if I have those account numbers and financial information running around in plain text between me and the bank.
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Sadly we have seen far to many secure transmission exploits, and nearly every government and Dark Net for sale site has all that info and more already.
(perhaps that is slightly exaggerated)
But, yes. I will not send that kind of data unencrypted any more than I will yell it across a crowded room.
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But there is nothing illegal about buying milk... so why does this message need to be encrypted?
Listen, you: It's got nothing WHATSOEVER to do with the content, it is the PRINCIPLE of the thing that matters here. You, I, and everyone else should be free from being surveilled, spied on, or monitored in any way, shape, or fomr. PERIOD. Or would you enjoy being treated like a small child your entire life, or like a criminal in prison, or like an animal in a zoo? That's what it will be like living in a world where governments can see, hear, and read everything you're doing every minute of every day, cradl
Paris terrorists used burner phones (Score:5, Informative)
Paris terrorists used burner phones, not encryption, to evade detection [arstechnica.com]
"Everywhere they went, the attackers left behind their throwaway phones."
Glyn Moody (UK) - 3/21/2016, 6:39 AM
New details of the Paris attacks carried out last November reveal that it was the consistent use of prepaid burner phones, not encryption, that helped keep the terrorists off the radar of the intelligence services.
As an article in The New York Times reports: "the three teams in Paris were comparatively disciplined. They used only new phones that they would then discard, including several activated minutes before the attacks, or phones seized from their victims."
The article goes on to give more details of how some phones were used only very briefly in the hours leading up to the attacks. For example: "Security camera footage showed Bilal Hadfi, the youngest of the assailants, as he paced outside the stadium, talking on a cellphone. The phone was activated less than an hour before he detonated his vest." The information come from a 55-page report compiled by the French antiterrorism police for France’s Interior Ministry.
Outside the Bataclan theatre venue, the investigators found a Samsung phone in a dustbin: "It had a Belgian SIM card that had been in use only since the day before the attack. The phone had called just one other number—belonging to an unidentified user in Belgium."
As police pieced together the movements of the attackers, they found yet more burner phones: "Everywhere they went, the attackers left behind their throwaway phones, including in Bobigny, at a villa rented in the name of Ibrahim Abdeslam. When the brigade charged with sweeping the location arrived, it found two unused cellphones still inside their boxes." At another location used by one of the terrorists, the police found dozens of unused burner phones "still in their wrappers."
As The New York Times says, one of the most striking aspects of the phones is that not a single e-mail or online chat message from the attackers was found on them. That seems to be further evidence that they knew such communications were routinely monitored by intelligence agencies. But rather than trying to avoid discovery by using encryption—which would in itself have drawn attention to their accounts—they seem to have stopped using the Internet as a communication channel altogether, and turned to standard cellular network calls on burner phones.
That authorities are only now discovering this fact shows how well the strategy worked.
As Ars has reported, along with other countries the UK government is pushing for ways to circumvent or weaken encryption because it claims strong crypto creates a "safe space" for terrorists. This new information that the Paris attackers did not routinely use encryption, if at all, but turned instead to the tried-and-tested technique of burner phones, undermines the argument that everyone's communications must be weakened in order to tackle terrorism.
The New York Times article suggests that there was some evidence of encryption software being used elsewhere. A witness reported seeing a terrorist with a laptop, and told the investigators that as the computer powered up, "she saw a line of gibberish across the screen: "It was bizarre—he was looking at a bunch of lines, like lines of code. There was no image, no Internet," she said." The New York Times writes: "Her description matches the look of certain encryption software, which ISIS claims to have used during the Paris attacks."
But as many were quick to point out online, the witness probably wasn't looking at some encryption software in action, because such systems show the decrypted message, not the encrypted form. The former Ars Technica editor Julian Sanchez wrote on Twitter: "It's suggestive of a verbose boot. Using encryption looks like 'reading a message' because you decrypt it first."
Until we have stronger evidence to the contrary, it seems likely that encryption played little or no part in the Paris terrorist attacks.
This post originated on Ars Technica UK
Re:Paris terrorists used burner phones (Score:4, Informative)
Belgium and Germany are now outlawing non-registered prepaid cards in response to that. They can for the time being buy Dutch prepaids but law enforcement lobbies will try to ban it there too.
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hahaha!
right you are.
that should be a common battle cry.
oh, mr. gov - if you think the right of citizens to have privacy in comms is wrong, you go first, you asswipe SOB! lets see all your pillow talk and all your chatter, first. lets do that for, oh, say 5 years. lets see if anything bad happens in this testcase.
but you go first, since you are SO SURE its good for the world and society.
wait - what's that? you don't think 'little people' rules apply to you?
ah, you have just shown your hand.
go fuck yours
Straw Man. False Dichotomy. (Score:5, Informative)
Insert bullshit excuse here. This is a call to increase encryption 10x fold. It is none of your business what I say to my wife while I am chatting. I repeat. It is NONE OF YOUR FUCKING business. I won't stop using encryption. I will kick a terrorist in the nuts. You chicken shit fuckers wanna hide in a building and do all your spying from a chair. I have an old pair of wart encrusted balls you can sniff. Germany and France should not be allowed to do anything together.
Re:Straw Man. False Dichotomy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Those that plan to do evil WILL ALWAYS find a way to communicate, plan unnoticed, and not get caught.
Short of plugging every mind into a unified collective where all thoughts are known to all, this will continue to be true.
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It's fairly trivial to put together an encrypted chat client to begin with.
IM platform and communication has off-the-shelf and/or open-source options available. Pretty much IM modules where you provide the host for the server.
Encryption modules...same thing. Tons of open source and easily integrated with above IM platforms.
While it requires some expertise...it's really, really not that hard. Things like this nonsense that france is preaching are utter BS and have very little, if any, impact on terrorism.
France ruled by idiots... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's re-word this a bit.
We know for a fact that most of the Terror attacks were planned "in the clear". Most are at a loss on how to use encryption or have the tools needed to make use of encryption.
Next, everyone using the internet for anything uses encryption, everyone. be it SSL, TLS, SSH, PGP, GPG, whatever.
What France is trying to say (and what the US and Britain as well intend) is to get people riled up over encryption so that they can make it illegal for EVERYONE to use if it doesn't have a "back-door" or "golden-key".
This would cause a complete failure for security / encryption and safety worldwide. Secure communications between traffic-control and air-towers would be subject to attack. Subway and Train communications that control track switching and timing would be vulnerable.
Identity theft would go through the roof, the stock market would crash, dogs and cats living together, mass-hysteria!!
But, then again, that is what the "Terrorists" want. And our governments are rolling over, exposing their soft, bloated underbellies to ISIS.
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This proposal did come from France, after all...
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we can only hope, this proposal, like french culture overall, "SURRENDERS"
(yes, that's a meme. but somewhat deserved, in fact. france has done many things correctly, but this one is straight-out wrong)
My fat white ass... (Score:5, Insightful)
...that this is about terrorism. FFS we have the best military intelligence in the world, and we can't stop a rag-tag bunch of third-world "militants"? Bull. Shit.
Every time the elites want more control over the populace or want to ban something, they trot out their wholly-owned and operated subsidiary ISIL (or whatever they're called this week, Taliban, Al-Qaeda, etc.) to demonize the freedom du jure and everyone bends over. Banning encryption is not "central to defeating terrorism", banning encryption is "central to defeating personal liberty".
These Reuters/AP/wire reports always read properly when you replace terrorism with liberty or freedom anyway. Liberty must be stopped. Freedom is running rampant. Liberty is at odds with modern society. The actual terrorist acts could be stopped if governments wanted them to stop, but they don't want them to, they want to exacerbate them in the name of stopping freedom.
Re:My fat white ass... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is the goal of ISIS and all who agree with them to do one thing:
BAN FREEDOM and impose strict controls over everyone.
We are literally doing the job for them. ISIS and Co. can't kill us all, and they don't have to. We are doing it to ourselves.
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Oops, that was supposed to be a reply to the Anon post below.
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Hehe. It may have been a mis-post, but it still fits! ;)
(In a twisted way)
If you do nothing wrong, then yak yak yak (Score:2, Insightful)
We have populace where they think that if you do nothing wrong, then you have nothing to worry about. The trouble is that they are ignorant of the law and don't realize that if a prosecutor were to look closely at anyone's life, they will find something that they are doing that is illegal. The people have waaayyyy too much confidence in authority.
So, there will always be support for these dragnet operations to get the "bad guy" because everyone else thinks that they are the good guy.
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We have populace where they think that if you do nothing wrong, then you have nothing to worry about.
Indeed, a disturbing number of people do seem to think that way. Humans aren't good at evaluating the risk of serious damage if it only happens rarely and has never happened to them.
Meanwhile, one of the most celebrated quotations of modern times goes something like this:
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Its origin is uncertain and it's obviously sexist phrasing by modern standards, but otherwise it's as true today as it ever was.
Here's another well-known quotation, also of uncertain origin (commonly attributed to Cardinal Richelieu but thi
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It's easy to fight a head-on attack. It's hard to sort a rag-tag bunch of misfits out of a crowd of billions of non-hostile rag-tag misfits.
What have we become? (Score:5, Insightful)
We must ban all people from meeting in groups without authorized monitoring... they could be plotting evil.
We must ban the use of paper, it leaves no lasting evidence after it's destroyed.
We must monitor everything and everyone, everywhere.
Big brother is the only way to stop terror. It is necessary, it is the only moral thing to do. We must make it a world law, all offenders will be punished.
With these wise and urgently needed social advances..finally the populace will be safe, and under control.
Totalitarian States.. (Score:2)
It is just the ever common push by those in power to extend their power and lead us to totalitarian states.
And t is working well - while they can keep peoples minds on the (almost non-existant) left versus right 'battle' we seem to happily ignore this development.
Worked for the Romans, the Nazis, the Stalinists, the Maoists, and its working for plenty more right now.
But dont worry, they wont take away your flavour of the month reality TV, so we are all happy little lemmings, right?
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But don't worry, they wont take away your flavour of the month reality TV, so we are all happy little lemmings, right?
At least the things the sheep* truly value will still be safe and sound
*Sheep: The idiots we have collectively become. Who value absurd meaningless drivel, and despise that which is truly valuable.
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Such as?
If a metaphor works, and effectively conveys a point I use it.
Please offer a new, fresh one.
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History has a maddening tenancy to repeat. In different forms mind you, but similar themes.
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The irony is that if we applied those sorts of measures to our governments, the world would probably be a better place. It is far more important that governments are transparent and accountable to their citizens than the other way around.
And the thing is, that applies at any scale. My sig around these parts used to point out that throughout human history, the greatest threat to life and quality of life has not been terrorism but the power of the state.
I agree, we need a worldwide initiative (Score:5, Insightful)
Although the worldwide initiative I have in mind involves a purging of clueless, imbecilic politicians...
Because terrorists, right? (Score:3)
Bullshit. Terrorism is only peripherally related to government's interest in compromising encryption. Governments the world over are terrified of their citizens speaking freely, for whatever noise they make about "Freedom of Speech". It's about controlling the message, which they can't do if people are communicating outside of their control.
They're using terrorism to push this agenda.
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A government should fear the people. The only other option is that the people fear the government.
I much prefer option number one.
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This is why the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States actually exists. The government was supposed to have no standing army and depend on a militia so that the government would fear the people. The Constitution literally restricts having a standing army to 2 years for this reason. Having a standing army for more than 2 years is Unconstitutional.
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So Trump was right?
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...ignorance (Score:4, Insightful)
I imagine a call for banning clueless politicians who are always framing encryption under the terrorism threat agenda would be way more benefitial to the world.
Re:...ignorance (Score:5, Interesting)
We need to control the message by reframing the dialogue. Instead of saying that politicians want to invade our privacy (which is too obtuse for most people to understand), we need to make the argument more emotional, specific, and personal:
"Senator Dumbshit wants to make us turn over our babies' bath pictures to pedophiles, by eliminating the encryption we use to protect our families."
France needs to shut up (Score:2)
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Dear France, No! (Score:3)
Dumb idea on a local scale is equally if not more dumb on a global scale.
How do I put an accent on these r's? (Score:2)
What really needs to be a worlwide initiative... (Score:2)
Anti-deuchebaggerism is actually what needs global attention.
The elimination of hypocrisy must take precedence over the patching of other societal problems, because that's what the "fight against message encryption" is just that: a patch to the failures of internal security. The real problem is what causes this terrorism, and while most people think closing borders is the solution, it is just another patch to another failure. The thing that both these have the most in common isn't actually the fact they ar
Math... (Score:2)
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Why stop there (Score:3, Insightful)
We need to BAN all types of vehicles, they are widely used by Terrorists!
We want to avoid another Nice, we need to address this on a global level.
In fact, replace "vehicles" with just about anything. Phones. Terrorists use those too. A lot.
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Food, terrorists need to eat! Ban all food for everyone!
THe joke is so sad it's not funny anymore, it's a war against the power-mongers and the fascists that the human race is LOSING....
First they came for Integral Domains... (Score:2)
Because I did not use Integral Domains.
Then they came for the Riemann Hypothesis, and I did not speak out,
Because I did not use the Riemann Hypothesis.
Then they came for the Elliptical Curves, and I did not speak out,
Because I did not use Elliptical Curves.
Then they came for Cryptography—and there was no one left to speak for Cryptography.
Complete with golden key? (Score:2)
64-bit encryption with a golden key should be sufficient?
If they do introduce a law it should probably be tied to Moore's law, such that we don't end up with something that can be broken in 20 minutes with an average BitCoin processor
France is absolutely right (Score:2)
By stating that this is a global issue. Completely true. The Internet is global and knows no borders....
This is why I expect that in the not-too-distant future, electronic borders will be just as heavily (if not more so) guarded as national borders.
That is really the only "solution" here for countries that want the Internet but also want to be able to legislate it.
The likely fallout of this will be an "instanced" Internet. Where Google in France is a completely separate network than Google in Spain (for exa
Say it with me, people: WHEN YOU OUTLAW ENCRYPTION (Score:2)
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Finally, someone who gets it.
At this rate, the only winning vote in November is for the Asteroid that wipes out all life on earth
No, just no. (Score:3)
The fight against encryption is the fight to establish a police state of tyranny and the death of freedom.
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We can't solve the real problem!
How will the government persuade the populace to surrender more and more freedoms?