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If that phone was properly secured then those messages wouldn't have been accessible.

by Canada 11y ago

jacquesm 11y ago
That's roughly equivalent to 'if those documents had not been properly shred that data would not have been available'. Each and every operation of this magnitude leaves a trail. The party perpetrating it will try what they can to erase that trail but that will always be an imperfect process. Maybe next time the phone will be secured, they will scrub themselves of parking tickets, they will burn up their escape vehicle after a few minutes ride and so on. All the media has succeeded in doing is educate the terrorists about how to be more successful in evading capture and possibly being more successful in carrying out the attack in the first place.
mike_hearn 11y ago
True, I thought the same. But then, if they'd used a CB radio, there'd have been no records on the device at all. You can go both lower and higher tech to avoid leaving a trail. The fundamental issue our society faces is that the world people thought existed, pre-Snowden, wasn't all that bad. There are controls, a system of laws and warrants, judges have to approve requests for data, and companies hand it out only in cases where it's really justified. Terrorist used WhatsApp to send a message to his buddy before blowing up a football stadium? It is - literally - warranted. Post Snowden we know that world didn't really exist, it was more a sort of theatre governments put on when they didn't care much about the outcome. So now the data is disappearing so nobody has it. It's not obvious that this is an improvement over restoring the world that was previously thought to exist, but that was apparently too unstable to survive.
junto 11y ago
You'd still have a telephone number. From that telephone number you could go to a judge and request a warrant for the telephone records. From there you could look at all the numbers dialed and received. Now you get a warrant for the addresses of the subscribers. No bulk surveillance required, just honest police work within the confines of a valid and acceptable legal framework.

If that phone was properly secured then those messages wouldn't have been accessible.

by Canada 11y ago

If that phone was properly secured then those messages wouldn't have been accessible.

That's roughly equivalent to 'if those documents had not been properly shred that data would not have been available'. Each and every operation of this magnitude leaves a trail. The party perpetrating it will try what they can to erase that trail but that will always be an imperfect process. Maybe next time the phone will be secured, they will scrub themselves of parking tickets, they will burn up their escape vehicle after a few minutes ride and so on. All the media has succeeded in doing is educate the terrorists about how to be more successful in evading capture and possibly being more successful in carrying out the attack in the first place.

mike_hearn 11y ago

True, I thought the same. But then, if they'd used a CB radio, there'd have been no records on the device at all. You can go both lower and higher tech to avoid leaving a trail. The fundamental issue our society faces is that the world people thought existed, pre-Snowden, wasn't all that bad. There are controls, a system of laws and warrants, judges have to approve requests for data, and companies hand it out only in cases where it's really justified. Terrorist used WhatsApp to send a message to his buddy before blowing up a football stadium? It is - literally - warranted. Post Snowden we know that world didn't really exist, it was more a sort of theatre governments put on when they didn't care much about the outcome. So now the data is disappearing so nobody has it. It's not obvious that this is an improvement over restoring the world that was previously thought to exist, but that was apparently too unstable to survive.

junto 11y ago

You'd still have a telephone number. From that telephone number you could go to a judge and request a warrant for the telephone records. From there you could look at all the numbers dialed and received. Now you get a warrant for the addresses of the subscribers. No bulk surveillance required, just honest police work within the confines of a valid and acceptable legal framework.