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The myth of the ISIS encrypted messaging app
- MCRed 11y agoBY the way, they don't talk about it now, but originally in 2001 the media reported that "al queda" was a code name used by the CIA for their database of mujahideen fighters. Somehow the narrative later morphed into "al queda" being a massive global conspiracy of "cells" with a leader, and all that, a big old boogeyman. But they forgot that for this to be the case, we have to believe that Osama Bin Laden -- Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible One style-- stealth his way into CIA headquarters and found this top secret code name they used for the Mujahideen fighters they were funding in the 1980s, and decided to name his secret, global, hidden, evil genius organization after it. It's kinda nonsensical. But fortunately for the government, most people don't pay much attention. At any rate, the propaganda/misinformation efforts are very real and ongoing.
- ceejayoz 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda#Name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda#Name
- kombucha2 11y agoYour link appears to tell a different and unclear story: Bin Laden explained the origin of the term in a videotaped interview with Al Jazeera journalist Tayseer Alouni in October 2001: The name 'al-Qaeda' was established a long time ago by mere chance. The late Abu Ebeida El-Banashiri established the training camps for our mujahedeen against Russia's terrorism. We used to call the training camp al-Qaeda. The name stayed.[83] It has been argued that two documents seized from the Sarajevo office of the Benevolence International Foundation prove that the name was not simply adopted by the mujahid movement and that a group called al-Qaeda was established in August 1988. Both of these documents contain minutes of meetings held to establish a new military group, and contain the term "al-Qaeda".[84] Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook wrote that the word al-Qaeda should be translated as "the database", and originally referred to the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen militants who were recruited and trained with CIA help to defeat the Russians.[85] In April 2002, the group assumed the name Qa'idat al-Jihad, which means "the base of Jihad". According to Diaa Rashwan, this was "apparently as a result of the merger of the overseas branch of Egypt's al-Jihad (Egyptian Islamist Jihad, or EIJ) group, led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, with the groups Bin Laden brought under his control after his return to Afghanistan in the mid-1990s."[86]
- warmwaffles 11y agoplease be a little more informed, http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wars-Afghanistan-Invasion-September/dp/0143034669 http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wars-Afghanistan-Invasion-Septem...
- mikeash 11y ago"All of the media articles on the Alrawi app showed screenshots of a different app entirely, one that is a glorified RSS reader with a totally different name." There was an article on the front page of HN recently about this "glorified RSS reader." This article actually described that functionality, and made no mention of any encrypted messaging. Despite that, it was submitted with a title that indicated it was an encrypted messaging app, and the comments were full of discussions about encrypted messaging and the eternal conflict between privacy and anti-terrorism efforts. It really confused me. I guess this is an app that people really want to exist.
- gill984 11y agoLink to HN post? I can't find it searching for "Alrawi" or "ISIS encrypt".
- mikeash 11y agoHere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10916731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10916731 I believe the title was changed afterwards to better reflect the article's content. You can see lots of comments that think it's a chat app.
- jacquesm 11y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10916731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10916731
- x5n1 11y ago“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.” -George Orwell or propaganda in this case.
- r3bl 11y agoDon't know why, but I am not surprised by this at all. In fact, it kind of amuses me to see this myth debunked.
- squozzer 11y agoWhat's the phrase - a lie can go halfway around the world before the truth has even tied its shoes? Just another fabrication by our overlords, I mean benevolent protectors, designed to force the rabble, I mean the civilians, into sending everything clear text. The government won't be happy until they can execute random people on the street with impunity. You know it, they know it, the whole fucking world knows it. And anyone who down votes me I hope they make you lick freshly squashed dog shit off their boots in front of your kids before they execute all of you.
- squozzer 11y agoJust kidding about the last part.
- belorn 11y agoReminds me of the Nayirah testimony, in that stories have high risk to be manufactured if it plays perfectly into the narrative of an political interest.
- aaron695 11y agoCause I have to much karma points I'll also mention this also happened during the Nuremberg trials. Really ridiculous stories taken as fact at the time and people still believe even though historians now discount. We keep getting played.
- Retric 11y agoThis never really stopped happening. If you want to read intelligence to support viewpoint X, you can always find someone willing to say X.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoSomewhat related: there's an online German opsec magazine aimed at mujahideen, named Kybernetiq.[0] It's pretty slick. The first issue[1] included a GPG tutorial and a review of a "jihadi" messaging app (they don't recommend it). [0] https://twitter.com/kybernetiq https://twitter.com/kybernetiq [1] https://archive.org/details/kybernetiq_magazin https://archive.org/details/kybernetiq_magazin
- ufmace 11y agoYeah, it's pretty believable that it's a myth, but do you ever get the feeling that people in the tech community want it to be a myth a little bit too much? Just like people on the other side really want it to exist. The idea of it certainly poses an interesting dilemma, especially if you are invested in being for strong encryption and against Government surveillance. How well will those idea hold up if it ever turns out that evil terrorist armies really are using strong encryption to carry out mass murder and acts of War in the West?
- 0xdada 11y agoI don't see the link between terrorist armies using strong encryption and government surveillance. Is there one, besides the fact that people like to use terrorism as an argument? "Encryption" to "math" should be the next popular browser extension.
- ufmace 11y agoTerrorists need to communicate with each other to plan attacks. Governments need to gain intelligence on terrorist activity to thwart attacks. Much of that intelligence reportedly comes from electronic surveillance of communication. If terrorist groups were to start using strong encryption well, it would presumably make it significantly harder to gain information on their activities and thwart their attacks. A lot of this necessarily happens in the dark, so we may not know for sure exactly what's happening until decades after the fact. You don't exactly want to advertise to the enemy that you can or cannot intercept their communications - that would tell them how to be more effective in attacking you. Many national governments do indeed use strong encryption to protect their communications, and the outcome of many battles, and arguably of some entire wars, has hinged on the ability to crack that encryption, or lack thereof, and the ability to keep the fact that you have done so secret from the enemy.
- chrismcb 11y agoThe government can barely thwart attacks that are communicated in plain text. So I don't see how using encryption will actually change anything.
- daodedickinson 11y agoObviously they are using encryption, but it is a very ad-hoc movement so computer literacy will be very uneven. I think suggesting no one in ISIS uses encryption can only be wishful politicized thinking... being in ISIS doesn't automatically mean you are cow level stupid and you shouldn't think so.
- daodedickinson 11y agoDoesn't make sense to make such an obvious target of an app; you'd use stuff with a crowd of other uses and users to hide in. This could be a decent honey pot.
- daodedickinson 11y agoDoesn't make sense to make such an obvious target of an app; you'd use stuff with a crowd of other uses and users to hide in. This could be a decent honey pot.