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Edward Snowden and spread of encryption blamed after Paris terror attacks

89 points by NN88 11y ago

forgotmypassw 11y ago
I'll quote Kim Dotcom as a counter argument: >Our Governments: "We spy on all of you to keep you safe". But why have your mass surveillance systems failed to prevent the Paris attacks?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- fsiefken 11y ago
  The assumption is that governments (and the people supporting it) assume mass surveillance keeps people 100% safe. That is not necessarily the case, anything higher then 0% if you disregard social costs is a win in their view.
  - gotchange 11y ago
    Then they should publish annual or quarterly reports detailing their counter-terrorism ops and how many terrorist attacks they foiled thanks to the surveillance and smart data algorithms and how many they failed to avert and why that happened and who are responsible for the fiasco and what measures to be taken in the future to avoid this outcome, you know a true and functioning democracy in a free society.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- anonbanker 11y ago
  The cycle of government: 1. We need this tool to stop terrorists. if you don't give up liberty for safety, the terrorists win. 2. (Inevitable terror attack happens) 3. Our tools weren't strong enough to stop the terrorists. We need _more_ tools and a larger mandate to stop them. I've been told that, due to the above cycle, we should all realize that the primary purpose of government is to pretend to fail.
  - nickff 11y ago
    Why do you say their purpose is to only pretend to fail? Governments have very little incentive to succeed in many areas. Terrorism appears to be much like regular crime in that if there is little, the government is lauded, and if there is a lot, the government is given more money and power to fight it. *edit: I do not mean to say that government officials were willfully negligent; they have been given an impossible task, and their jobs depend on believing that a little more money and power will allow them to succeed.
    - mike_hearn 11y ago
      I don't think we need complicated conspiracy theories that demonise intelligence workers to explain this sort of narrative. There's now a group of people whose job is to use bulk data intercept to predict and stop crimes before they happen, essentially a Minority Report but real (they do other things too, but let's ignore that for now). As no group of people can be 100% effective, they will always occasionally fail even if they succeed most of the time, and when they do their explanation for their own failure will always be "we needed more". And they will truly believe that! No secret agenda needed. From their POV it's the only answer they can possibly give. I fully expect in the coming weeks to learn (shock) that the terrorists had Facebook accounts, used WhatsApp, searched on Google, used iPhones and the DGCE will undoubtably claim that if they had access to all those things the plot could have been detected earlier and stopped. What else are they gonna say? "Whoops, our bad"?
      - nickff 11y ago
        I completely agree with all of your points, and did not mean to imply that governments caused these attacks, or were willfully negligent. I apologize if I did not express this in my previous post.
    - mike_hearn 11y ago
      I don't think we need complicated conspiracy theories that demonise intelligence workers to explain this sort of narrative. There's now a group of people whose job is to use bulk data intercept to predict and stop crimes before they happen, essentially a Minority Report but real (they do other things too, but let's ignore that for now). As no group of people can be 100% effective, they will always occasionally fail even if they succeed most of the time, and when they do their explanation for their own failure will always be "we needed more". And they will truly believe that! No secret agenda needed. From their POV it's the only answer they can possibly give. I fully expect in the coming weeks to learn (shock) that the terrorists had Facebook accounts, used WhatsApp, searched on Google, used iPhones and the DGCE will undoubtably claim that if they had access to all those things the plot could have been detected earlier and stopped. What else are they gonna say? "Whoops, our bad"?
- mahouse 11y ago
  I hear on the news from time to time that terrorist attacks in my country are stopped from time to time thanks to surveillance systems, I guess it's the same for France, so I don't see what the problem is.
  - collyw 11y ago
    propoganda
- mwti 11y ago
  If you've ever seen the spies running those programs you'll understand why it happened. They look and act much like the terrorists. Drunk on power with a feeling of invincibility (e.g. sociopaths).
  - ilaksh 11y ago
    They ARE the terrorists.
- Joeri 11y ago
  The argument shouldn't be that mass surveillance doesn't work. It clearly does something or they wouldn't want it. The point is that even if it does work, we shouldn't do it because it goes against our values. Freedom has a price.
- hokkos 11y ago
  There is currently no law for mass surveillance in France, and the soon to be voted laws are the application of lawful wire phone tap to the 21 century : IMSI catcher and computer spyware
rwmj 11y ago
A few cherry-picked tweets form the basis for an article now?
- J_Darnley 11y ago
  Of course. Where have you been for the past few years?
- Foy 11y ago
  Riding the public interest wave about the attacks in Paris makes making click-bait easier than ever! Additionally the article can be summarized as: "We don't know how the attacks were co-ordinated... so maybe strong encryption, and by proxy, Snowden, are to blame?"
- jnbiche 11y ago
  Well, a tweet from a former press secretary of a US president. I'd say it's pretty news-worthy, since this seems to be a coordinated campaign by some (albeit a disgusting one).
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    It's probably more germane that she makes a living on Fox News, hosting a show that more or less spends it's time pandering to a segment of the American population that is afraid of everything (I don't mean Republicans or the right wing of American politics, I mean the people who watch "The Five"...). It's not entirely clear to me if the hosts themselves are afraid of everything or simply effective in their cynicism.
return0 11y ago
More propaganda from the american Gestapo?
Tharkun 11y ago
Well that didn't take long ...
- MindTooth 11y ago
  I waited as well :'(
- etiam 11y ago
  Many of the people orchestrating it have probably been pining for this for years. Insinuations like "When the next attack comes, maybe some people will start to think differently about these leaks" was in the talking points from the start. Tangentially related: https://theintercept.com/2015/09/11/today-14th-anniversary-enormous-opportunity/ https://theintercept.com/2015/09/11/today-14th-anniversary-e...
SeanDav 11y ago
Political Interference, Religious intolerance, Social injustice - no those had nothing to do with terrorism - it's all about encryption.... /sarcasm
6Jr9FvafEjvg 11y ago
"Blame Snowden and Encryption" is starting to look as coordinated as the Paris attacks.
- scrollaway 11y ago
  Exactly what I was thinking. Goodie on the media, using the bad guys' tactics on their audience. This day is really not getting better.
myth_buster 11y ago
This is expected response if you follow the American media. There is a very interesting video [0] of Noam Chomsky, after the 9/11 attacks, where he says that any government and regime worth it's salt will use 9/11 as an excuse to push their agenda over the public. And they will do so using their fear. [0] <For the life of me, I couldn't locate the video. Will update the post if I do.>
- nickff 11y ago
  Perhaps 9/11 allowed the bureaucracy to push its agenda, but it is very clear that it took Bush completely off his plan; Bush campaigned for a less activist foreign policy (which many criticized as being isolationist).
  - kr4 11y ago
    You may wish to read this [0] and this [1]. 0: http://rethink911.org/ http://rethink911.org/ 1: http://www.globalresearch.ca/twenty-six-things-about-the-islamic-state-isil-that-obama-does-not-want-you-to-know-about/5414735 http://www.globalresearch.ca/twenty-six-things-about-the-isl...
  - khed 11y ago
    How often do you think a politicians campaign platform represents their actual intentions. You should read about the project for a new american century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_C... 10 of 25 signing members of PNAC were high level bush administration workers. PNAC was explicitly neoconservative and most definitely wanted to be involved in more wars abroad.
    - nickff 11y ago
      I have come to believe that most politicians believe their platforms and campaign speeches. This may sound difficult to believe given all the doublespeak, contradictions, and fallacies they recite on the campaign trail, but it is the simplest way to explain how they can keep up all these strange ideas while encountering challenging questions, tough situations and dilemmas. It seems to me that just as the NBA is full of (some of) the tallest people in the country, the Congress and White House are full of the people who are most capable of believing whatever they have to at any given moment.
pheroden 11y ago
Yea, Snowden is responsible. Because we never knew about phone monitoring before?? Glad the terrorists never watched the wire or any other police procedural going back to the 70's.
- mwti 11y ago
  Interferometry on the microwave background allows the U.S. military to track all people, weapons, and aqueous objects bigger than a thimble throughout an entire city such as Paris. Advanced technologies allow them to know when these things are brewing, but per game theory they allow them to happen to not reveal that capability. Encryption and Snowden have nothing to do with it. They are limited hangouts to gaslight and decrease the power of the lower echelons of government (you know, the regular people who might actually have stopped this).
  - gambiting 11y ago
    >>Advanced technologies allow them to know when these things are brewing, but per game theory they allow them to happen to not reveal that capability. And you know about them.....how? If you haven't realized, I'm asking you to provide a source for these extraordinary claims.
- facetube 11y ago
  Osama Bin Laden avoided electronic communication well before the NSA's illegal domestic spying activities were revealed. He passed notes and relied on trusted couriers. This is nothing but political opportunism.
  - NN88 11y ago
    This isn't true. The NSA had bin laden's sat-phone line in the 90s. I've seen documentaries on it.
    - jnbiche 11y ago
      Yes, in the 90s. After 2001, Bin Laden switched to couriers, which is one reason he was so hard to catch. Snowden confirmed the extent of NSA surveillance in 2013. So that's 12 years for which the GP's statement was true.
ck2 11y ago
Oh f* people who even think that way, let alone proclaim it. France has porous borders. They spent $1 BILLION over the past year on security "enhancements". If evil people want to be evil, they are going to find a way.
- rogeryu 11y ago
  Closing borders isn't going to help if you have thousands of people who have no future and who are looking for revenge out of frustration. This is not to blame anyone, but it's more a matter of fact. Paris has seen many riots in the past years, where hundreds of cars have been destroyed by these people. It's not surprise that you can find some people in that group that are vulnerable or attracted to the tactics of IS.
  - zazazazu 11y ago
    Germany partially suspended registration of refugees, the head of one of the parties in government is on record saying that currently about 40-50% of them are not even registered at all. (http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/spd-chef-gabriel-40-bis-50-prozent-der-fluechtlinge-werden-derzeit-gar-nicht-registriert_id_5056930.html http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/spd-chef-gabriel-40-...) Supposedly, this is not a problem - even though it is people from the country where ISIS terrorists operate. At the same time, we have a continuous push for and actually new surveillance laws such as the dreaded 'Vorratsdatenspeicherung'. That doesn't really fit together at all anymore...
uniclaude 11y ago
That smells pretty bad. First we lose our friends, then we'll lose our privacy? I was horrified by the reaction of some of my acquaintances back home in France: "Let's imprison all those who went to Syria", "We should forbid Tor if this is what those terrorists used to kill our people", and the now classic "if you don't do anything wrong, you shouldn't have anything to hide". What's next?
- belorn 11y ago
  Transparent government, justice, and open elections. Likely in that order.
- Canada 11y ago
  While I'm emotional thinking of those who were killed and their loved ones, realistically this attack is not a credible threat to France. I hope the government lets the state of emergency expire doesn't lower itself to the level of these criminals by taking any further action to undermine justice.
- RealGeek 11y ago
  > What's next? Ban Internet because terrorists use it to communicate.
- tomjen3 11y ago
  Why shouldn't we imprison those who went to Syria to fight? They were fighting for the enemy, so they could be charged with treason, but even if not they could be charged with war crimes. Unless I missunderstood the question and they wanted to imprison all those who have been in Syria.
  - dingaling 11y ago
    > Why shouldn't we imprison those who went to Syria to fight? You could certainly do that on the basis of membership of a proscribed organisation, but... > They were fighting for the enemy Which enemy is that? The USA and UK are not currently at war with anyone in a legal sense.
- 11y ago
Sealy 11y ago
I blame Bush for declaring war in the middle east for what happened in Paris. Not Edward Snowden. Note how the government also uses times like these to rush through new policies around privacy. Did phone tapping stop the US from preventing 9/11? No.
- kleiba 11y ago
  Well, some argue that if not the war itself then some of the decisions made by the US in Iraq in the aftermath of the war helped forming ISIS, such as, dismantling the Iraqi army [1]. [1] http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/did-george-w-bush-create-isis http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/did-george-w-bush-cr...
- atmosx 11y ago
  Not only Bush, the entire western political class: https://twitter.com/LatuffCartoons/status/665541417763123200 https://twitter.com/LatuffCartoons/status/665541417763123200
- chroma 11y ago
  > I blame Bush for declaring war in the middle east for what happened in Paris. Not Edward Snowden. Wait, what? It's been almost seven years since Bush left office. 100% of the blame rests on the men who donned suicide vests and massacred innocent Parisians. It doesn't matter how horrific US foreign policy is. Responding by killing a bunch of French civilians is not even remotely reasonable. Seriously, how does someone go from "US foreign policy killed my countrymen" to "let's slaughter random French people"?
  - hV7en 11y ago
    Rationally predicting that N people will try to do terrible things is definitely not the same as condoning the people who have done terrible things [aside: this emotive conflation may partly explain why western media are serially unable to analyze or reflect on the root causes of terrible events]. Predicting that the civil wars in Iraq and Syria would give a fertile ground for extremism to develop is no leap, and certainly doesn't condone it, and focusing on the guilt of specific extremists in each case won't teach us anything either.
Canada 11y ago
Before Snowden came along no terrorist ever heard of electronic surveillance, right? If anything, mass surveillance is to blame for lack of intel. Before spying was so ubiquitous, terrorists might have said something on the phone or by email.
drdeca 11y ago
Ok, (edit: not new. Idk why I said new.) New conspiracy theory: the attacks were allowed to happen (not intentionally caused, just allowed to happen, or perhaps just not worked quite as hard to prevent) in order to get public support for further government powers. It's known that governments have had plans as to how to get support from a tragedy if one happens. Is it that far fetched that preventing tragedies which are more likely but have a benefit to them for the government, would be considered at a somewhat lower priority than one which is less likely, but does not have any side benefit for the government? Now, I'm not claiming that this is the case, not really, but it is something that comes to mind, and the most likely version of it does not seem that absurd?
- beedogs 11y ago
  We'll know you're right when they strong-arm Apple et al into providing backdoors to their encryption. (Which will of course do absolutely nothing at all to stop people from obtaining and using strong crypto.)
- jusben1369 11y ago
  Is this really a new conspiracy theory? This is pretty much the same thing we hear after any major terrorist attack.
  - drdeca 11y ago
    Yes, that's true. I suppose it isn't new. I guess it's new in the sense that it was applied to a particular attack, but that's not really a great reason to call it new. Good point. However, I do think the minimal form of it I expressed in a way that seemed more likely than most of the time I see it?
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
  As another commenter mentioned, that's an old conspiracy theory. It's already being discussed in the press (see link below). It's problematic that even when you have a growing surveillance state, the state has less incentive to act to protect or attempt to prevent attacks on "soft targets" ie: the public at large even when they have solid information supporting an imminent attack. Or worded a bit more strongly, a state hoping to garner support for more sweeping anti-civil liberties measures has an incentive to allow such attacks to happen even when they could be prevented. As a practical matter of how this could occur, a small group of intelligence analysts could selectively withhold important information from decision makers, or decision makers could selectively ignore key pieces of information. Either can get you the result of allowing an attack while leaving plausible excuses as to why it wasn't deliberate. http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/paris-attacks-raises-questions-about-what-french-authorities http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/paris-attacks-raises-quest...
beedogs 11y ago
That article reminded me once again what an utter scumbag Dana Perino is. The worst press secretary for the worst President of all time.
gtpasqual 11y ago
That's actually an amazing scapegoat! Blame encryption and omit the violent nature of Islam.
tokai 11y ago
I thought that security through obscurity was no security at all.
tdkl 11y ago
They forgot to blame Russia in this one.
ciokan 11y ago
So we fight for liberty and privacy but blame the ones that risk their lives bringing it. I fear these attacks will convince everyone that mass surveillance is a necessary thing. Surprisingly, you only need a few terrorists to change international laws and double those military budgets. Snowden or not, it's the virus that comes first and the anti-virus after. I don't think any mass surveillance program can stop such actions unless you become a militia state which I highly doubt (and hope not) will ever happen.
jimrandomh 11y ago
It's barely been twelve hours - too soon for the results of any real investigation to have influenced the editorials coming out. What we're hearing is the positions that were prepared prior to the attacks themselves. It's possible that the perpetrators evaded surveillance with encryption. It's also possible that the perpetrators did have their phones tapped, but investigators dropped the ball. It's possible that they avoided phones and did all their planning in person. It's even possible that someone made an executive decision to not intervene and stop them, for political reasons. As far as I know, none of Snowden's criticisms have been addressed at French organizations. While there's some possibility US intelligence agencies could have picked up on this, it's primarily a European matter and not the NSA's responsibility. This makes Snowden's having undermined the NSA quite unlikely to have been relevant.
- tonfa 11y ago
  When the article says: > In response to the Charlie Hebdo attacks that hit Paris in January of 2015, France adopted one of the most aggressive surveillance laws in the Western world. That was not enough to stop these attacks. That's very misleading, as the law was just voted and isn't in application yet.
- mikeash 11y ago
  All the reactions are just existing positions being repeated. The NSA fans attack Snowden. The gun nuts blame gun control. The tech crowd criticizes surveillance. And all throughout, almost no information about the actual events is available. It's all quite tedious.
rdancer 11y ago
Fuck off already, fearmongers!
hal9000xp 11y ago
I remember an article written by Pavel Durov (founder of Telegram) which I read a few months ago. The name of the article calls for itself: Dragon Slayer Becomes The New Dragon https://medium.com/@durov/dragon-slayer-becomes-the-new-dragon-1881b7f67080 https://medium.com/@durov/dragon-slayer-becomes-the-new-drag...
ilaksh 11y ago
Eye-witnesses report trained soldiers in uniforms that then were allowed to escape. This is a false flag attack that serves a number of purposes. Slowing the push for encryption and generally boosting surveillance and domestic operations is one. As the western debt grows and the military position becomes thinner, it will become increasingly difficult to maintain the fiat that demands massive resource distribution imbalances. This will lead to serious shortages in western countries. In order to maintain power, the state turns its guns and spies inward. But in the meantime the covert operations in Syria have not been completely successful, and since they need to do Syria before Iran (as has been planned for many years) they need to move to overt operations. This requires the propaganda to motivate it which needs a real event behind it.
dmihal 11y ago
I'm only comforted by the fact that there's really nothing any government can do to stop crypto. The technology has become simple enough that anybody can encrypt their communications or files with open-source software, and that's basically impossible to stop.
- elipsey 11y ago
  They can criminalize it, so that only criminals use crypto by definition. Think about tor. As a fraction of network traffic, almost no one uses it, so if you do you have singled yourself out. Running an exit node is already a great way to end up in jail, and I would not have a warm fuzzy feeling about using tor for innocent traffic at this point, although it's perfectly legal. Imagine how easily flagged users could be singled out if simply using crypto were a crime, and probable cause for search: e.g. you get caught using FDE on your phone or laptop at a traffic stop or the airport. Either your info is trivially purused at will by LE, or you've committed a crime by makeing it difficult and can be compelled on that basis. Either way, they're reading your mail if they feel like it. The real value of this would be that almost no normal person would want to risk prosecution, so the overwhelming majority of user data could be easily mined. These are just a couple of crypto tools, but the technical details don't really matter here, I think this is a legal and social strategy that will generalize well, and it I think this is where we're inevitably headed.
  - shkkmo 11y ago
    Your game theory is accurate, but I think your systems design understanding is lacking. We will have an extremely difficult time making all crypto illegal. Cryptography is crucial to important pieces of infrastructure we use for trust and security. We may reach the point where certain implementation or tools are outlawed. In which case people with stuff to hide will piggyback it inside legal tools. I suspect we will be more likely to see a combination of these approaches: 1) Forcing entities that sell products that provide encryption capabilities to maintain access for the government. 2) Pass laws that make it illegal to avoid or materially assist others in avoiding government surveillance without authorization
mikeash 11y ago
Blamed... by whom? Oh, idiot talking heads on TV news. Who cares? If I wanted to know what idiots on TV think, I'd watch TV.
njharman 11y ago
Terrorists don't randomly spawn. They are made. Much terrorism is an externality of Western foreign policy and a nation's abuse of it's citizens (domestic). Whether Snowden or encryption enabled terrorism or not is TOTALLY missing or deflecting the real conversation that should be occurring. Do not fall into the trap of arguing. Ignore statements like OA. Instead ask "Why are people willing to kill themselves and others?" "What has France done / is doing so that people believe that is their best redress?" "Why do people become terrorists?". Most import of all (and the only way we will end terrorism). "How can we change the world so less people are compelled to such drastic action?"
- netcan 11y ago
  I this "western foreign policy" plays a complex role, some of it has been negative. In some cases, like Iraq, it is more a failure of that policy that has had a negative effect. However, I think this features far too prominently in a lot of people's outlooks than it should. Nothing, including terrorism is born in a vacuum but I don't think American involvement in Middle Eastern conflicts is the primary cause. Various Tsarist policies at the turn of the century are responsible for the conditions that gave rise to revolutionary communism in Russia, but communism was a greater force than Tsarist policies. We are talking about a spectrum of religious-nationalist beliefs that are turning other wars, conflicts, slights, frustrations, rivalries and any other available fuel and putting it to use. This includes American policies in Iraq. They are fuelling it, but I really do not think they are creating it.
elipsey 11y ago
That was quick.
joesmo 11y ago
An article reporting what FOX News said is not an article worth posting, let alone worth reading. FOX News is not news and other news outlets need to stop quoting them as if they were legitimate. They're not. In fact, very few American based "news" organizations are news. Other sites need to stop giving such faux news organization credibility by completely ignoring their comments or at the very least publicly ridiculing them without mercy.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

89 points by NN88 11y ago

I'll quote Kim Dotcom as a counter argument: >Our Governments: "We spy on all of you to keep you safe". But why have your mass surveillance systems failed to prevent the Paris attacks?

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
fsiefken 11y ago
The assumption is that governments (and the people supporting it) assume mass surveillance keeps people 100% safe. That is not necessarily the case, anything higher then 0% if you disregard social costs is a win in their view.
- gotchange 11y ago
  Then they should publish annual or quarterly reports detailing their counter-terrorism ops and how many terrorist attacks they foiled thanks to the surveillance and smart data algorithms and how many they failed to avert and why that happened and who are responsible for the fiasco and what measures to be taken in the future to avoid this outcome, you know a true and functioning democracy in a free society.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
anonbanker 11y ago
The cycle of government: 1. We need this tool to stop terrorists. if you don't give up liberty for safety, the terrorists win. 2. (Inevitable terror attack happens) 3. Our tools weren't strong enough to stop the terrorists. We need _more_ tools and a larger mandate to stop them. I've been told that, due to the above cycle, we should all realize that the primary purpose of government is to pretend to fail.
- nickff 11y ago
  Why do you say their purpose is to only pretend to fail? Governments have very little incentive to succeed in many areas. Terrorism appears to be much like regular crime in that if there is little, the government is lauded, and if there is a lot, the government is given more money and power to fight it. *edit: I do not mean to say that government officials were willfully negligent; they have been given an impossible task, and their jobs depend on believing that a little more money and power will allow them to succeed.
  - mike_hearn 11y ago
    I don't think we need complicated conspiracy theories that demonise intelligence workers to explain this sort of narrative. There's now a group of people whose job is to use bulk data intercept to predict and stop crimes before they happen, essentially a Minority Report but real (they do other things too, but let's ignore that for now). As no group of people can be 100% effective, they will always occasionally fail even if they succeed most of the time, and when they do their explanation for their own failure will always be "we needed more". And they will truly believe that! No secret agenda needed. From their POV it's the only answer they can possibly give. I fully expect in the coming weeks to learn (shock) that the terrorists had Facebook accounts, used WhatsApp, searched on Google, used iPhones and the DGCE will undoubtably claim that if they had access to all those things the plot could have been detected earlier and stopped. What else are they gonna say? "Whoops, our bad"?
    - nickff 11y ago
      I completely agree with all of your points, and did not mean to imply that governments caused these attacks, or were willfully negligent. I apologize if I did not express this in my previous post.
  - mike_hearn 11y ago
    I don't think we need complicated conspiracy theories that demonise intelligence workers to explain this sort of narrative. There's now a group of people whose job is to use bulk data intercept to predict and stop crimes before they happen, essentially a Minority Report but real (they do other things too, but let's ignore that for now). As no group of people can be 100% effective, they will always occasionally fail even if they succeed most of the time, and when they do their explanation for their own failure will always be "we needed more". And they will truly believe that! No secret agenda needed. From their POV it's the only answer they can possibly give. I fully expect in the coming weeks to learn (shock) that the terrorists had Facebook accounts, used WhatsApp, searched on Google, used iPhones and the DGCE will undoubtably claim that if they had access to all those things the plot could have been detected earlier and stopped. What else are they gonna say? "Whoops, our bad"?
mahouse 11y ago
I hear on the news from time to time that terrorist attacks in my country are stopped from time to time thanks to surveillance systems, I guess it's the same for France, so I don't see what the problem is.
- collyw 11y ago
  propoganda
mwti 11y ago
If you've ever seen the spies running those programs you'll understand why it happened. They look and act much like the terrorists. Drunk on power with a feeling of invincibility (e.g. sociopaths).
- ilaksh 11y ago
  They ARE the terrorists.
Joeri 11y ago
The argument shouldn't be that mass surveillance doesn't work. It clearly does something or they wouldn't want it. The point is that even if it does work, we shouldn't do it because it goes against our values. Freedom has a price.
hokkos 11y ago
There is currently no law for mass surveillance in France, and the soon to be voted laws are the application of lawful wire phone tap to the 21 century : IMSI catcher and computer spyware

rwmj 11y ago

A few cherry-picked tweets form the basis for an article now?

J_Darnley 11y ago
Of course. Where have you been for the past few years?
Foy 11y ago
Riding the public interest wave about the attacks in Paris makes making click-bait easier than ever! Additionally the article can be summarized as: "We don't know how the attacks were co-ordinated... so maybe strong encryption, and by proxy, Snowden, are to blame?"
jnbiche 11y ago
Well, a tweet from a former press secretary of a US president. I'd say it's pretty news-worthy, since this seems to be a coordinated campaign by some (albeit a disgusting one).
- maxerickson 11y ago
  It's probably more germane that she makes a living on Fox News, hosting a show that more or less spends it's time pandering to a segment of the American population that is afraid of everything (I don't mean Republicans or the right wing of American politics, I mean the people who watch "The Five"...). It's not entirely clear to me if the hosts themselves are afraid of everything or simply effective in their cynicism.

return0 11y ago

More propaganda from the american Gestapo?

Tharkun 11y ago

Well that didn't take long ...

MindTooth 11y ago
I waited as well :'(
etiam 11y ago
Many of the people orchestrating it have probably been pining for this for years. Insinuations like "When the next attack comes, maybe some people will start to think differently about these leaks" was in the talking points from the start. Tangentially related: https://theintercept.com/2015/09/11/today-14th-anniversary-enormous-opportunity/ https://theintercept.com/2015/09/11/today-14th-anniversary-e...

SeanDav 11y ago

Political Interference, Religious intolerance, Social injustice - no those had nothing to do with terrorism - it's all about encryption.... /sarcasm

6Jr9FvafEjvg 11y ago

"Blame Snowden and Encryption" is starting to look as coordinated as the Paris attacks.

scrollaway 11y ago
Exactly what I was thinking. Goodie on the media, using the bad guys' tactics on their audience. This day is really not getting better.

myth_buster 11y ago

This is expected response if you follow the American media. There is a very interesting video [0] of Noam Chomsky, after the 9/11 attacks, where he says that any government and regime worth it's salt will use 9/11 as an excuse to push their agenda over the public. And they will do so using their fear. [0] <For the life of me, I couldn't locate the video. Will update the post if I do.>

nickff 11y ago
Perhaps 9/11 allowed the bureaucracy to push its agenda, but it is very clear that it took Bush completely off his plan; Bush campaigned for a less activist foreign policy (which many criticized as being isolationist).
- kr4 11y ago
  You may wish to read this [0] and this [1]. 0: http://rethink911.org/ http://rethink911.org/ 1: http://www.globalresearch.ca/twenty-six-things-about-the-islamic-state-isil-that-obama-does-not-want-you-to-know-about/5414735 http://www.globalresearch.ca/twenty-six-things-about-the-isl...
- khed 11y ago
  How often do you think a politicians campaign platform represents their actual intentions. You should read about the project for a new american century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_C... 10 of 25 signing members of PNAC were high level bush administration workers. PNAC was explicitly neoconservative and most definitely wanted to be involved in more wars abroad.
  - nickff 11y ago
    I have come to believe that most politicians believe their platforms and campaign speeches. This may sound difficult to believe given all the doublespeak, contradictions, and fallacies they recite on the campaign trail, but it is the simplest way to explain how they can keep up all these strange ideas while encountering challenging questions, tough situations and dilemmas. It seems to me that just as the NBA is full of (some of) the tallest people in the country, the Congress and White House are full of the people who are most capable of believing whatever they have to at any given moment.

pheroden 11y ago

Yea, Snowden is responsible. Because we never knew about phone monitoring before?? Glad the terrorists never watched the wire or any other police procedural going back to the 70's.

mwti 11y ago
Interferometry on the microwave background allows the U.S. military to track all people, weapons, and aqueous objects bigger than a thimble throughout an entire city such as Paris. Advanced technologies allow them to know when these things are brewing, but per game theory they allow them to happen to not reveal that capability. Encryption and Snowden have nothing to do with it. They are limited hangouts to gaslight and decrease the power of the lower echelons of government (you know, the regular people who might actually have stopped this).
- gambiting 11y ago
  >>Advanced technologies allow them to know when these things are brewing, but per game theory they allow them to happen to not reveal that capability. And you know about them.....how? If you haven't realized, I'm asking you to provide a source for these extraordinary claims.
facetube 11y ago
Osama Bin Laden avoided electronic communication well before the NSA's illegal domestic spying activities were revealed. He passed notes and relied on trusted couriers. This is nothing but political opportunism.
- NN88 11y ago
  This isn't true. The NSA had bin laden's sat-phone line in the 90s. I've seen documentaries on it.
  - jnbiche 11y ago
    Yes, in the 90s. After 2001, Bin Laden switched to couriers, which is one reason he was so hard to catch. Snowden confirmed the extent of NSA surveillance in 2013. So that's 12 years for which the GP's statement was true.

ck2 11y ago

Oh f* people who even think that way, let alone proclaim it. France has porous borders. They spent $1 BILLION over the past year on security "enhancements". If evil people want to be evil, they are going to find a way.

rogeryu 11y ago
Closing borders isn't going to help if you have thousands of people who have no future and who are looking for revenge out of frustration. This is not to blame anyone, but it's more a matter of fact. Paris has seen many riots in the past years, where hundreds of cars have been destroyed by these people. It's not surprise that you can find some people in that group that are vulnerable or attracted to the tactics of IS.
- zazazazu 11y ago
  Germany partially suspended registration of refugees, the head of one of the parties in government is on record saying that currently about 40-50% of them are not even registered at all. (http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/spd-chef-gabriel-40-bis-50-prozent-der-fluechtlinge-werden-derzeit-gar-nicht-registriert_id_5056930.html http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/spd-chef-gabriel-40-...) Supposedly, this is not a problem - even though it is people from the country where ISIS terrorists operate. At the same time, we have a continuous push for and actually new surveillance laws such as the dreaded 'Vorratsdatenspeicherung'. That doesn't really fit together at all anymore...

uniclaude 11y ago

That smells pretty bad. First we lose our friends, then we'll lose our privacy? I was horrified by the reaction of some of my acquaintances back home in France: "Let's imprison all those who went to Syria", "We should forbid Tor if this is what those terrorists used to kill our people", and the now classic "if you don't do anything wrong, you shouldn't have anything to hide". What's next?

belorn 11y ago
Transparent government, justice, and open elections. Likely in that order.
Canada 11y ago
While I'm emotional thinking of those who were killed and their loved ones, realistically this attack is not a credible threat to France. I hope the government lets the state of emergency expire doesn't lower itself to the level of these criminals by taking any further action to undermine justice.
RealGeek 11y ago
> What's next? Ban Internet because terrorists use it to communicate.
tomjen3 11y ago
Why shouldn't we imprison those who went to Syria to fight? They were fighting for the enemy, so they could be charged with treason, but even if not they could be charged with war crimes. Unless I missunderstood the question and they wanted to imprison all those who have been in Syria.
- dingaling 11y ago
  > Why shouldn't we imprison those who went to Syria to fight? You could certainly do that on the basis of membership of a proscribed organisation, but... > They were fighting for the enemy Which enemy is that? The USA and UK are not currently at war with anyone in a legal sense.
11y ago

Sealy 11y ago

I blame Bush for declaring war in the middle east for what happened in Paris. Not Edward Snowden. Note how the government also uses times like these to rush through new policies around privacy. Did phone tapping stop the US from preventing 9/11? No.

kleiba 11y ago
Well, some argue that if not the war itself then some of the decisions made by the US in Iraq in the aftermath of the war helped forming ISIS, such as, dismantling the Iraqi army [1]. [1] http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/did-george-w-bush-create-isis http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/did-george-w-bush-cr...
atmosx 11y ago
Not only Bush, the entire western political class: https://twitter.com/LatuffCartoons/status/665541417763123200 https://twitter.com/LatuffCartoons/status/665541417763123200
chroma 11y ago
> I blame Bush for declaring war in the middle east for what happened in Paris. Not Edward Snowden. Wait, what? It's been almost seven years since Bush left office. 100% of the blame rests on the men who donned suicide vests and massacred innocent Parisians. It doesn't matter how horrific US foreign policy is. Responding by killing a bunch of French civilians is not even remotely reasonable. Seriously, how does someone go from "US foreign policy killed my countrymen" to "let's slaughter random French people"?
- hV7en 11y ago
  Rationally predicting that N people will try to do terrible things is definitely not the same as condoning the people who have done terrible things [aside: this emotive conflation may partly explain why western media are serially unable to analyze or reflect on the root causes of terrible events]. Predicting that the civil wars in Iraq and Syria would give a fertile ground for extremism to develop is no leap, and certainly doesn't condone it, and focusing on the guilt of specific extremists in each case won't teach us anything either.

Canada 11y ago

Before Snowden came along no terrorist ever heard of electronic surveillance, right? If anything, mass surveillance is to blame for lack of intel. Before spying was so ubiquitous, terrorists might have said something on the phone or by email.

drdeca 11y ago

Ok, (edit: not new. Idk why I said new.) New conspiracy theory: the attacks were allowed to happen (not intentionally caused, just allowed to happen, or perhaps just not worked quite as hard to prevent) in order to get public support for further government powers. It's known that governments have had plans as to how to get support from a tragedy if one happens. Is it that far fetched that preventing tragedies which are more likely but have a benefit to them for the government, would be considered at a somewhat lower priority than one which is less likely, but does not have any side benefit for the government? Now, I'm not claiming that this is the case, not really, but it is something that comes to mind, and the most likely version of it does not seem that absurd?

beedogs 11y ago
We'll know you're right when they strong-arm Apple et al into providing backdoors to their encryption. (Which will of course do absolutely nothing at all to stop people from obtaining and using strong crypto.)
jusben1369 11y ago
Is this really a new conspiracy theory? This is pretty much the same thing we hear after any major terrorist attack.
- drdeca 11y ago
  Yes, that's true. I suppose it isn't new. I guess it's new in the sense that it was applied to a particular attack, but that's not really a great reason to call it new. Good point. However, I do think the minimal form of it I expressed in a way that seemed more likely than most of the time I see it?
fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
As another commenter mentioned, that's an old conspiracy theory. It's already being discussed in the press (see link below). It's problematic that even when you have a growing surveillance state, the state has less incentive to act to protect or attempt to prevent attacks on "soft targets" ie: the public at large even when they have solid information supporting an imminent attack. Or worded a bit more strongly, a state hoping to garner support for more sweeping anti-civil liberties measures has an incentive to allow such attacks to happen even when they could be prevented. As a practical matter of how this could occur, a small group of intelligence analysts could selectively withhold important information from decision makers, or decision makers could selectively ignore key pieces of information. Either can get you the result of allowing an attack while leaving plausible excuses as to why it wasn't deliberate. http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/paris-attacks-raises-questions-about-what-french-authorities http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/paris-attacks-raises-quest...

beedogs 11y ago

That article reminded me once again what an utter scumbag Dana Perino is. The worst press secretary for the worst President of all time.

gtpasqual 11y ago

That's actually an amazing scapegoat! Blame encryption and omit the violent nature of Islam.

tokai 11y ago

I thought that security through obscurity was no security at all.

tdkl 11y ago

They forgot to blame Russia in this one.

ciokan 11y ago

So we fight for liberty and privacy but blame the ones that risk their lives bringing it. I fear these attacks will convince everyone that mass surveillance is a necessary thing. Surprisingly, you only need a few terrorists to change international laws and double those military budgets. Snowden or not, it's the virus that comes first and the anti-virus after. I don't think any mass surveillance program can stop such actions unless you become a militia state which I highly doubt (and hope not) will ever happen.

jimrandomh 11y ago

It's barely been twelve hours - too soon for the results of any real investigation to have influenced the editorials coming out. What we're hearing is the positions that were prepared prior to the attacks themselves. It's possible that the perpetrators evaded surveillance with encryption. It's also possible that the perpetrators did have their phones tapped, but investigators dropped the ball. It's possible that they avoided phones and did all their planning in person. It's even possible that someone made an executive decision to not intervene and stop them, for political reasons. As far as I know, none of Snowden's criticisms have been addressed at French organizations. While there's some possibility US intelligence agencies could have picked up on this, it's primarily a European matter and not the NSA's responsibility. This makes Snowden's having undermined the NSA quite unlikely to have been relevant.

tonfa 11y ago
When the article says: > In response to the Charlie Hebdo attacks that hit Paris in January of 2015, France adopted one of the most aggressive surveillance laws in the Western world. That was not enough to stop these attacks. That's very misleading, as the law was just voted and isn't in application yet.
mikeash 11y ago
All the reactions are just existing positions being repeated. The NSA fans attack Snowden. The gun nuts blame gun control. The tech crowd criticizes surveillance. And all throughout, almost no information about the actual events is available. It's all quite tedious.

rdancer 11y ago

Fuck off already, fearmongers!

hal9000xp 11y ago

I remember an article written by Pavel Durov (founder of Telegram) which I read a few months ago. The name of the article calls for itself: Dragon Slayer Becomes The New Dragon https://medium.com/@durov/dragon-slayer-becomes-the-new-dragon-1881b7f67080 https://medium.com/@durov/dragon-slayer-becomes-the-new-drag...

ilaksh 11y ago

Eye-witnesses report trained soldiers in uniforms that then were allowed to escape. This is a false flag attack that serves a number of purposes. Slowing the push for encryption and generally boosting surveillance and domestic operations is one. As the western debt grows and the military position becomes thinner, it will become increasingly difficult to maintain the fiat that demands massive resource distribution imbalances. This will lead to serious shortages in western countries. In order to maintain power, the state turns its guns and spies inward. But in the meantime the covert operations in Syria have not been completely successful, and since they need to do Syria before Iran (as has been planned for many years) they need to move to overt operations. This requires the propaganda to motivate it which needs a real event behind it.

dmihal 11y ago

I'm only comforted by the fact that there's really nothing any government can do to stop crypto. The technology has become simple enough that anybody can encrypt their communications or files with open-source software, and that's basically impossible to stop.

elipsey 11y ago
They can criminalize it, so that only criminals use crypto by definition. Think about tor. As a fraction of network traffic, almost no one uses it, so if you do you have singled yourself out. Running an exit node is already a great way to end up in jail, and I would not have a warm fuzzy feeling about using tor for innocent traffic at this point, although it's perfectly legal. Imagine how easily flagged users could be singled out if simply using crypto were a crime, and probable cause for search: e.g. you get caught using FDE on your phone or laptop at a traffic stop or the airport. Either your info is trivially purused at will by LE, or you've committed a crime by makeing it difficult and can be compelled on that basis. Either way, they're reading your mail if they feel like it. The real value of this would be that almost no normal person would want to risk prosecution, so the overwhelming majority of user data could be easily mined. These are just a couple of crypto tools, but the technical details don't really matter here, I think this is a legal and social strategy that will generalize well, and it I think this is where we're inevitably headed.
- shkkmo 11y ago
  Your game theory is accurate, but I think your systems design understanding is lacking. We will have an extremely difficult time making all crypto illegal. Cryptography is crucial to important pieces of infrastructure we use for trust and security. We may reach the point where certain implementation or tools are outlawed. In which case people with stuff to hide will piggyback it inside legal tools. I suspect we will be more likely to see a combination of these approaches: 1) Forcing entities that sell products that provide encryption capabilities to maintain access for the government. 2) Pass laws that make it illegal to avoid or materially assist others in avoiding government surveillance without authorization

mikeash 11y ago

Blamed... by whom? Oh, idiot talking heads on TV news. Who cares? If I wanted to know what idiots on TV think, I'd watch TV.

njharman 11y ago

Terrorists don't randomly spawn. They are made. Much terrorism is an externality of Western foreign policy and a nation's abuse of it's citizens (domestic). Whether Snowden or encryption enabled terrorism or not is TOTALLY missing or deflecting the real conversation that should be occurring. Do not fall into the trap of arguing. Ignore statements like OA. Instead ask "Why are people willing to kill themselves and others?" "What has France done / is doing so that people believe that is their best redress?" "Why do people become terrorists?". Most import of all (and the only way we will end terrorism). "How can we change the world so less people are compelled to such drastic action?"

netcan 11y ago
I this "western foreign policy" plays a complex role, some of it has been negative. In some cases, like Iraq, it is more a failure of that policy that has had a negative effect. However, I think this features far too prominently in a lot of people's outlooks than it should. Nothing, including terrorism is born in a vacuum but I don't think American involvement in Middle Eastern conflicts is the primary cause. Various Tsarist policies at the turn of the century are responsible for the conditions that gave rise to revolutionary communism in Russia, but communism was a greater force than Tsarist policies. We are talking about a spectrum of religious-nationalist beliefs that are turning other wars, conflicts, slights, frustrations, rivalries and any other available fuel and putting it to use. This includes American policies in Iraq. They are fuelling it, but I really do not think they are creating it.

elipsey 11y ago

That was quick.

joesmo 11y ago

An article reporting what FOX News said is not an article worth posting, let alone worth reading. FOX News is not news and other news outlets need to stop quoting them as if they were legitimate. They're not. In fact, very few American based "news" organizations are news. Other sites need to stop giving such faux news organization credibility by completely ignoring their comments or at the very least publicly ridiculing them without mercy.

deleted 11y ago

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