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Comment by clay_to_n | Hacker News Reader

Yes. The difference is that today, about Paris, people are suggesting that cryptography (or Xbox games??) were used by the bombers.

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I'm trying to find a source. But when I was first introduced (well, investigated and made brief use of) PGP years ago I read an article on the history of it and Zimmerman. Terrorists were found to be using PGP in the 1990s. That they're using encryption is not new, the same discussion was around back then as we're having today, with many of the same features.

EDIT:

http://interviews.slashdot.org/story/01/09/24/162236/philip-...

I posted that link on another comment. But it addresses this one to some extent, he also mentions that the terrorist use of encryption was a significant issue in the 1990s. Still can't find the source for my original comment.

Would the unavailability of cryptography had prevented the bombing? Cryptography helps the general public more than it helps terrorists.

Is this[0] suggestion of reporting confusion and misapplied quotes not applicable anymore ?

[0] http://kotaku.com/reporting-error-leads-to-speculation-that-...

Is there any credible data to support that?

The NYT seemed to be the source for that claim, and they quietly pulled that story. It's still repeated by media outlets elsewhere.

Not that it would change my opinion that government mandated crypto backdoors are a bad idea if they had.

I don't know. My impression (from the few articles I saw mentioning crypto / video games) was that it was total speculation (probably before most facts were known) from some "official" source.

French intelligence has heavily infiltrated the regional extremist Muslim community and they had no idea about these attacks in advance. Ergo, the terrorists were using encryption.

That was the speculation I heard the other evening on NPR, by someone lobbying to put limits on private citizens' use of strong crypto.

I would disagree with this reasoning.

Yes, french HUMINT has heavily infiltrated extremist organizations, and failed to prevent this attack. It does not mean that it was the use of encryption that allowed ISIS/extremist organizations to execute this attack on french soil.

The french secret service approach is fundamentally different from the US, as they historically rely less on SIGINT.

I am not sure where I read it, but in presume the number of prevented attack is in the thousands.

> I am not sure where I read it, but in presume the number of prevented attack is in the thousands.

Then why don't we have thousands of prosecuted and convicted terrorists in our jails?

I am not speaking necessarily about prevented live assaults, but about pre-emptive action as well.

But I get your point. I need to check that article back then.

> they historically rely less on SIGINT.

But they still happily installed only-now-legal "black boxes" at major providers to siphon data, don't you worry.

Does this claim really need to be verified? I mean, pretty much everybody who has Internet access uses crypto these days, whether they're aware of it or not. Even some phones come with full-disk encryption by default now.

No, though there's very good evidence to the contrary: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151118/08474732854/after...

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