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Comment by CIPHERSTONE | Hacker News Reader

Everyone talks about how this was orchestrated by some masterminds. What am I missing?

Nine assholes get together in a room and decided to hit nine different places at X time. How hard is it to synchronize watch times?

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I agree completely.

"Masterminded" or "sophisticated" would be to assassinate Hollande in the stadium.

There does not seem to be a very strong "theme" in the attack, which would have been sophisticated, like targeting predominantly Jewish population, or a group that offended the Islamic fundamentalist sensibilities.

Among other things you might be missing are the reports that Iraqi intelligence had warned Western governments shortly before the attacks that they had information, non-specific as to the target, of attacks ordered in one or more Western nations involved in anti-IS operations by the IS to be carried out imminently. [0] Its not that attacks like this could not be carried out locally without a remote command, its that there are reports of specific information indicating that this was not carried out locally without a remote command.

[0] e.g., http://www.haaretz.com/world-news/1.686257

But that's not addressing the statement that the attacks themselves were masterminded. It just seems to sensationalize it.

That makes sense with 1 or 2 people, but when you start talking about 9+ people willing to blow themselves up that typically requires some prodding. Then there is target selection, and bomb making abilities. I know the bombs were 'simple' in relative terms, but making that many for the first time means they were very lucky or someone experienced helped. They also needed money for guns and other equipment.

For bombs and guns a simple dead-drop would do.

That's right: nine assholes IN A ROOM. You'd have to be stupid to plan something like this online, even with encryption. For one, the implementation of the encryption could be wrong. Second, the computer on which the encryption is running could be compromised.

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