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Afghans Delete Social Media as Taliban Seizes US Surveillance Equipment
- exogeny 5y agoIs there a more credible source available than this?
- omenlabs 5y agoIs there a less credible source than this?
- Animats 5y agoNBC News: https://archive.is/8Lwxr https://archive.is/8Lwxr Same info, but less slant.
- boomboomsubban 5y agoNot really the same info, the original article is more about the Taliban making use of US tracking tools than the social media deletion.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ionetz 5y agoinvalid journalism detected
- chriselles 5y agoI can confirm the Afghans I worked with between 2012-2014 maintaining regular contact with using Facebook and FB Messenger have all shifted coms to WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram. This all occurred rapidly in the last week due to fears stemming from rumours circulating about Pakistani ISI backed Taliban gaining technical intercept capability. True or not, the rumours had a significant effect on many Afghans.
- hypertele-Xii 5y ago> using Facebook and FB Messenger have all shifted coms to WhatsApp So... from Facebook to Facebook?
- scrollaway 5y agoFrom Facebook cleartext to e2ee.
- hansel_der 5y agoi'd say that e2ee is kinda strawman argument as long as neither end is secure (under your control).
- zelphirkalt 5y agoI would not put it past FB to cooperate with the Taliban to reveal private communication via Whatsapp to the Taliban. Then put forth some weak argument like: "Well, Taliban are now the new Afghan government and we respect wishes of governments around the world. We had no choice." when someone calls them out on it. (Edit: As was revealed before, WA told the creator of the encryption protocol used in Signal to change things about it, when implementing the protocol for WA, which enable WA in theory to hold a third party decryption key.)
- yoavm 5y agoWhere was this revealed? genuinely curious, I never heard about this.
- dTal 5y agoYou're alleging that Moxie Marlinspike deliberately compromised the security of WhatsApp on request?
- tg180 5y agoI'm very wary of Whatsapp, but I don't think that's accurate. They have a LE portal, and in the FAQ they state what they are able to provide. [ https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/security-and-privacy/information-for-law-enforcement-authorities/?lang=en https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/security-and-privacy/inform... ] > In the ordinary course of providing our service, WhatsApp does not store messages once they are delivered or transaction logs of such delivered messages. Undelivered messages are deleted from our servers after 30 days. As stated in the WhatsApp Privacy Policy, we may collect, use, preserve, and share user information if we have a good-faith belief that it is reasonably necessary to (a) keep our users safe, (b) detect, investigate, and prevent illegal activity, (c) respond to legal process, or to government requests, (d) enforce our Terms and policies. This may include information about how some users interact with others on our service. We also offer end-to-end encryption for our services, which is always activated. End-to-end encryption means that messages are encrypted to protect against WhatsApp and third parties from reading them. Additional information about WhatsApp's security can be found here. So only metadata and everything that's not e2e. Certainly, if the demands were complied with, metadata alone would be sufficient to rebuild your communication network if the Taliban already know who you are and what are you talking about.
- boomboomsubban 5y agoJon Maher comes off like a massive asshole in this article, saying basically "fingerprint tracking has been around for a hundred years, but there's nothing to worry about as the Taliban isn't 'sophisticated' enough to use it." The further claim that it's not important as they'd just get Taliban biometric data is also ridiculous. None of our tracking has ever been that accurate, false positives in the data alone would be damming.
- decremental 5y agoEveryone dismissing the Taliban as unsophisticated is in for a rude awakening. It's easy and self-affirming to say they're backwards mountain men. The hubris of the west is maybe its greatest weakness.
- christophilus 5y agoI remember hearing how the Chinese couldn’t innovate; only copy. It’s like… You do realize that the Chinese are humans, not Neanderthals, right? Humans are intelligent and innovative. Scrappy humans (which the Taliban are) frequently surprise with how much they can accomplish with so little. Granted, the system and culture does make a massive difference in terms of the trajectory and compounding effects of a populace. But these remarks come off as thinly veiled racism, rather than a critique of the political systems involved— and I’m not someone who sees racism behind every blade of grass.
- decremental 5y agoI don't think it's racism. I reject the premise that because we play ourselves up and them as under us that it's racism. We do that with everyone. Canadians and Australians are beneath Americans. We "know" this in our heart of hearts. Somehow when it's people with a different skin shade these accusations of racism come up. Racism is a red herring. 99% of the time it turns out to be the case that racism is a lazy explanation for something more complicated or uncomfortable to explain.
- 5y ago
- tomc1985 5y agoWhy oh why didn't the military destroy equipment left behind in the wind-down? At least at the bases... where they keep heaps of explosives for the purpose of destroying things?
- hack-news 5y agoSo that we're back at war soon.
- lazyninja987 5y agoi am guessing there is probably some backdoor deal where US will leave equipment behind, and taliban will not take the airport.
- XorNot 5y agoThis has been the ongoing incredible thing about all of this: the US just up and leaving fully functional equipment all over the place. I would've thought "slap some C4 to the engine block" would be standard procedure if you're abandoning a base?
- hasmanean 5y agoNow you’ve left your enemy a truck and some C4. After the first one would have blown up they would have checked all the other trucks and found it.
- BBC-vs-neolibs 5y agoThe idea is to detonate it before you exit the area. Not leaving booby traps.
- XorNot 5y agoNot boobytrapping it, just literally blowing up and otherwise rendering it non-functional.
- xwdv 5y agoBecause they can go get it back any time they want, and leaving it behind gives cheap tracking data and analytics.
- kragen 5y agohttps://archive.is/sVYtu https://archive.is/sVYtu
- LeoPanthera 5y agoThe Epoch Times is a far-right newspaper and media company affiliated with the Falun Gong new religious movement. It promotes far-right politicians in Europe, and has backed President Donald Trump in the U.S. A 2019 report by NBC News showed it to be the second-largest funder of pro-Trump Facebook advertising after the Trump campaign. The Epoch Media Group's news sites and YouTube channels have spread conspiracy theories such as QAnon and anti-vaccine misinformation. In 2020, the New York Times called it a "global-scale misinformation machine". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epoch_Times https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epoch_Times I'm not claiming this means the story here is false, but frankly I'm surprised posts from this source are even allowed on HN.
- the_other 5y ago> but frankly I'm surprised posts from this source are even allowed on HN. Surely a venue such as this, with its careful moderation and strong commitment to civil discourse, would (should) be very tolerant of such content. The only risk to posting such material is the poster should expect a lot of well-researched and thoughtful opposition. Personally I believe (but rarely practice, because I’m lazy) that reading content from sources you disagree with is useful. Occasionally you’ll spot that you agree with your “enemy”. That’s the gateway to reconciliation, tolerance. We all gotta live here. Also, I hadn’t encountered The Epoch before. Thanks for the heads up.
- axiosgunnar 5y ago> In 2020, the New York Times called it a "global-scale misinformation machine". Some call the New York Times that
- cbsmith 5y agoYou have to admire the bravery of the Taliban using that surveillance equipment, fearlessly facing the likelihood it has been compromised by a retreating enemy...
- ajsnigrutin 5y agoCOmpromised? The "retreating enemy" left behind actual weapons, cars and planes... and people... what do they have to be afraid of by using some surveillance equipment?
- runawaybottle 5y agoEspecially when the retreating army has no appetite to go back and deal with them.
- cbsmith 5y agoYeah, if I had no appetite to go back and "deal" with an organization that provides safe harbour for terrorists from time to time, there's no chance I'd try to compromise them.
- pixel_tracing 5y agoThese social media companies have blood on their hands. It makes me all the more disgusted when I get emails, texts and phone calls from their recruiters and the “benefits” and amazing work perks and all the carrots they can dangle in my face.
- jms703 5y agoHas Twitter encrypted their DMs yet?
- zeruch 5y agoIt's the |Epoch Times...sorry, but that is pretty much ignorable.
- _imnothere 5y agoDid you even check what they wrote? Your comment is just as "ignore-able" as what you consider Epoch Times' post is.
- sigmar 5y agoSurprised their articles aren't knee-capped on HN yet. The Epoch Times is well known for using hundreds of sockpuppets to get traffic from social media sites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epoch_Times#Social_media_bans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epoch_Times#Social_media_b...
- dang 5y agoThe site is banned. This article was unkilled by user vouches.
- potamic 5y agoThis is why the argument that lack of privacy is justified for good intentions is moot. Time moves on, ideals change and people in charge get replaced. There is no guarantee that principles held when collecting information will remain. Every single piece of information about you can and will be used against you by people in power if it hampers their agenda. The only reasonable thing to do when it comes to privacy is to share nothing, unless the situation absolutely needs it. Anonymous identity is very critical for the functioning of a healthy society and the biggest evil Google and Facebook have done was to really erase this off the internet.
- danjac 5y agoThis reminds me of the fate of Jews in occupied Holland in WW2. Prior to the war, religious affiliation was collected by the Dutch authorities for tax exemption purposes - perfectly benign and harmless. Those same records of course fell right into the hands of the Gestapo soon after the Nazis occupied the Netherlands, providing them with a convenient list of names to round up for deportation to the camps.
- josefx 5y agoThe Jewish Community in Germany uses the state assisted church tax collection. It seems that convenience beats history in that case.
- jd115 5y ago
- zelphirkalt 5y agoThe previous stance of some social media like FB was, that they do not need to delete all conversation, because they declare them as valuable content for other users, with whom a conversation was done, not as a content related to only one user, who sent a message. I wonder how much more stays on FB and other social media, if Afghans request deletion of their account for FB and others. Is it an effective measure at all? How strong is the "right to be forgotten"?
- Eszik 5y agoFWIW, this is the policy on HN. But I agree it's irresponsible.
- everdrive 5y agoI don't think the seized US surveillance equipment is actually going to allow the Taleban to view the social media data of people anywhere. Perhaps if a watchlist fell into the open, then you wouldn't want to be discoverable on social media via normal means. (ie, if someone finds me on a list in the US embassy, I'm safer if I'm a ghost on social media.)
- bawana 5y agoStoopid, naive question: Why do we care about Afghanistan? If the world is so concerned about the 'evil' there, why not just build a big fence around it (electronic-military). Anyone crosses they get tased by a drone. Embargo them. Does anyone in the world object to this? Is it really a market that will benefit any industrialized country?
- robcohen 5y agoI too have wondered about this. Not sure why we didn’t do something like this from the beginning. Is this even feasible?
- jmvoodoo 5y agoThere are actually a lot of good and decent people there, including children. People that have hopes and dreams for a better life. People who, if given the chance, would love nothing more than to raise their children in a peaceful country with all of the things you take for granted in your industrialized country. That isn't a naive and stupid question, it's a heartless and insensitive one. Just because they can't make you an iPhone doesn't mean they should be left for dead.