Signs Point to Unencrypted Communications Between Terror Suspects | Hacker News Reader

Signs Point to Unencrypted Communications Between Terror Suspects

theintercept.com

226 pointsapress96 comments

I don't mean to downplay the importance of this tragedy for the people involved, but it's interesting to observe the media reaction to this event with a more detached frame of mind than I was capable of as a child.

The attacks have played right into the hands of parties with political interests lying in wait. For months articles on one or the other side of the encryption "debate" have been produced by news organizations at a low hum. Now that something, anything, loosely relevant has occurred, they can now point to this as further evidence in support of whatever position was espoused over the course of the preceding months. It strikes a person who pays attention to such things as rather methodical.

> It strikes a person who pays attention to such things as rather methodical.

There's a reason journalists are also referred to as vultures.

If you're interesting in how media spin works, I have found Trust Me, I'm Lying by Ryan Holiday eye opening. It focuses more on the marketing aspect, but it works for anything. He for instance described how you can spin controversy out of nothing in order to promote products.

I agree with the general comment about people rushing to politicize events, but it doesn't seem just "loosely relevant" either. Governments claim they need to backdoor software or outlaw encryption to prevent attacks. They're spending hundreds of billions of dollars (just in the US) and still failing to do so. Some people think allowing refugees will lead to more violence. Others don't want millions left to suffer because of the actions of a few radicals.

These are all pretty big issues directly related to the events. How long should we wait before it's appropriate to analyze them in public discourse? Imo, worse than appearing eager to capitalize on others' suffering is all the speculation before having hard details about the matter. But some pundit inevitably lights a match in a room full of fireworks (figuratively speaking), and everyone else rushes to defend their position as well.

They're spending hundreds of billions of dollars (just in the US) and still failing to do so.

How do you know how many attacks would have taken place if not for that spending?

I realize the statement was ambiguous between "prevent some attacks" or "prevent all attacks." It was an attempt to state one position taken by those actively involved in the debate: multiple terrorist attacks have still occurred (Paris, Boston marathon, etc), despite massive growth of the national security complex. Which makes discussion of the efficacy of intelligence agencies relevant to current events - my response to the comment I was replying to.

But to answer your question, to the best of my knowledge, it's widely reported that there is no evidence of terrorist attacks that have been prevented. NSA claims of 54 terrorist attacks being prevented are widely reported as false[1], mass surveillance and security theater is considered by (at least some) experts an ineffective way to stop terrorists[2], and most of the people arrested for terrorism seem to be mentally ill individuals entrapped by law enforcement[3], as well as a whole host of other sources effectively implying "none" that I don't think are worth taking the time to exhaustively cite. You can always search for "terrorist attacks prevented by NSA." If there are any examples, I'd be interested in knowing.

Alternatively, it could be that efforts of law enforcement raise barriers to terrorism such that much is prevented indirectly, but that would be a speculative conclusion until there's some evidence it's actually the case. Successful terrorists able to plan and communicate in plaintext using SMS and discussing their goals in their English-language propaganda (Dabiq) doesn't really lend credence to the preventative costs argument, either.

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/claim-on-attacks-thwarted...

[2] https://digg.com/2015/why-mass-surveillance-cant-wont-and-ne...

[3] https://www.ted.com/talks/trevor_aaronson_how_this_fbi_strat...

Basically, everyone has already made up their minds whether encryption/guns/drugs/etc are good or bad, and use global events as "proof" of why they are right. It's not just the news anchors that do it.

When was the last time you read someone say, "And this latest attack has changed my mind...". Almost never. Mostly it's "And this latest attack proves my agenda is right..."

Presumably there's a large amount of people undecided or unopinionated about these topics, being browbeaten by the telescreen.

It can't all be sociological normalization, can it?

I think very few people are undecided about these things. These are "gut feeling" judgments. What is the appropriate trade-off between security and freedom? What is an acceptable amount of immigration and how much should we require people to integrate? Nobody sits there and does a cost-benefit utilitarian analysis of those questions, if one was even possible. They start with broad principles (e.g. surveillance is per se bad) and interpret facts to fit into their preconceptions.

Honest question, people say this a lot, but why do we just have to do it without resisting it? I'd hope that the point of education to avoid that kind of reasoning (or lack thereof) as much as possible, not just to give our preconceived notions a tapestry of intellectualism.

The fact is that for these sorts of high-level questions, there is no educated answer. There are no double-blind studies you can rely on to come to an educated conclusion. So instead you have people, even educated people, viewing everything through the lens of their chosen principles.

This is a simplification of the issue. If some think surveillance is per se bad, who is it who thinks surveillance is per se good?

I don't imagine that anyone thinks that surveillance is per se bad, but I'd bet there are lots of people who just see it as a possible option without necessarily assigning a negative reaction to it.

> I don't imagine that anyone thinks that surveillance is per se bad.

Really?

Based on the rest of the thread, that's probably a typo. It's an interesting slip, however, because he already set up this so-illuminating contrast between a simpleminded "durhh, surveillance bad" straw man and those wise dispassionate thinkers who are willing to consider any state action in its proper context.

Because apparently it's necessary to burn the straw, no one is against e.g. the surveillance required on the part of police in order to avoid indiscriminately arresting everyone all the time. I.e., if police have good reason to believe that a law has been broken, it's probably appropriate to make an arrest. If they don't, it's probably not. Some targeted surveillance is appropriate to distinguish those two situations.

Some do.

The good parts of academia, policy journals, think tanks, etc.

But that doesn't get into mainstream media because it's boring.

(Whether that stuff affects actual policies undertaken is a good question. I think it does, both directly, I.e. politicians read them, and indirectly by influencing the elite, who influence politicians.)

There's also government agencies who make decisions based on public comments, both in law and in policy. There may be other influences, but I think the actual argument do matter somewhat.

The definitive, still relevant satire on this is http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.9.12.102423.271.... : "Why the Bombings Mean That We Must Support My Politics"

To give this a better framing, say after Sandy Hook, I'd wager that the first response in the mind of a liberal was, "Fuck! See, guns kill! If we didn't have the 2nd ammendment, so many children wouldn't have had to die!" For a conservative, their first response might have been, "Fuck! This is why teachers need guns to protect their children from crazymen! More children didn't have to die!" May be I'm a little too naive, but I really don't think people are insincerely manufacturing rage, both are upset about the tragedy, they just rationalize it in the mental framework they already have, and they sincerely respond with that mindset.

I think the better question is why can't we be more rational/scientific about this. Forget gut feelings, put down a spreadsheet (at least) how many instances of this statistic correlate with this hypothesis. If it doesn't work, clearly your intuition is wrong, and there's nothing wrong with that, you just need to sharpen your intuition. I'd like to see government work like that, but neither side seems to want to do something like that.

Partly it's because people don't agree on what a rational basis would consist of. For example, pro gun enthusiasts consider a suicide by gunshot to not count as a "gun death", whereas pro gun control folks generally do. This different turns out to be an enormous problem, because suicide by gun makes up approximately half of all gun deaths, thereby making gun deaths either seriously dangerous when compared to motor vehicle accidents, or not dangerous at all.

be more rational/scientific about this. Forget gut feelings, put down a spreadsheet

But that already presupposes the answer to one of the major arguments. There's a fair philosophical case to be made for "it doesn't matter if the empirical net is positive or negative: the bottom line is that I have a natural right to defend myself and my family, even if other people cannot or choose not to do so themselves".

Sorry, I don't mean to start the actual gun debate here. I'm just trying to show that the underlying question presents a false choice fallacy. It's incorrect to simply ask, "should the government make this regulation or not?". There's space for a lot more nuance in there: "is this a good idea or a bad idea? If it's a good idea, is it something that should be part of the private sector's purview? If not, can government do it effectively?"

The basic argument I have against this is that people say things that make assumptions they don't realize and those assumptions can be testable. Let me give an example.

Say you have a liberal who says, "regardless of whether we go into debt or not," since that is an objectively measurable observable, "we should spend more on education because education is something I value." That already has a problem: it assumes spending more on education increases the quality of education; therein lies a testable hypothesis that we can demonstrate true or false. If a liberal is offended by that notion, that is what I'm arguing against--for me, ideas just aren't "so obvious" that they can't be demonstrated, if it's true, there better be evidence for its truth. If, for example, we spend more on education than other nations and we still have subpar outcomes (which is true, actually), then the stated reasoning "go into debt because we value education anyway" contains a false assumption and thus the argument is fallacious.

Also, other assumptions could be violated here. To further use my analogy, another assumption the liberal has underpinning his arguments is that a state exists to provide education. If you're in debt to the point where your government bonds are considered crap by the market, your decision to spend more money on education could threaten the existence of your state. Therefore, once again, you're making an argument and not rigorously considering whether assumptions are/will remain true or not.

Of course, you could change the "axioms" of the universe of discourse and just enshrine "spending on education is good regardless of whether it actually improves education or not," as a true, and at that point, you're right that I can no longer argue with you. However, I almost always hear an argument with a "because": "the right for free speech for the press is good because it ensures they report fairly and honestly and make their fellow citizens," or, "health-care as a right is good because the government providing healthcare to citizens increases the quality of their care and wellness." Whenever someone says this, there is something in there that is testable and they'd better be willing to demonstrate it, especially if my tax dollars are going to fund their ventures.

There's a whole production line devoted to the manufacture of outrage. It's not entirely spontaneous, it occurs along primed fracture lines defined by talking points which are carefully crafted to appeal to existing prejudices, morality, and tribal identification. The emotional response of the individual member of the public may be sincere from their point of view, but it's not independently arrived at.

Hypothesis testing suffers from being very easy to put a thumb on the scales. Especially if you manufacture a lot of slightly variant hypotheses and pick the ones which are significant. This turns into whataboutery.

There are a lot of arguments or catch phrases which seem like wise words of neutral balance, but are kind of bullshit.

"Let's not rush to politicize events" is just a defense of the status quo. It's only as noble as the status quo.

"Both sides are obstinate in their positions" ignores the fact that sometimes one side is right. If I'm obstinate about A and you're obstinate about B, it matters a hell of a lot whether there is a definitive correct answer between A & B. Whether we have lots of guns or no guns in society is a matter of preference and subject to debate, but whether there would be more mass shootings or less mass shootings if we had more or less guns, there's a definitive answer to that question.

It's not a sin to be obstinate about asserting a truth just because some people are obstinate about asserting falsehoods.

All of the Paris terrorists who have been identified so far were European citizens. Yet countries are closing their borders to Syrian refugees all the same.

Just try to find a public figure, any public figure, on any side, who has changed their mind on any policy question as a result of recent events or the information that has come to light from them.

It's obvious if you pay any attention that approximately nobody is examining facts and then reaching conclusions. They all reached their conclusions long ago, and now they use facts to justify those conclusions when suitable.

That's all you need to say about Washington. Fix that and most/all of the other problems would evaporate.

Reminds me of reading about the drug decriminalization in Portugal. I was astounded that a bi-partisan committee just decided to look at the facts instead of doing the usual thing. Portugal seems lightyears ahead of the US, in this regard.

It's nothing Washington-specific. It is about very well-known biases intrinsic to the human condition. Sometimes, some people rise above the crude tribal politics and things like Portugal happen.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/kasic...

That's one....

I admit my statement is a bit hyperbolic, but those who actually change their minds make up a frighteningly small minority.

The moment my wife and I heard about the attacks in Paris I said to her, "the spooks are going to use this as an excuse to take everyone's rights away."

The media response on this was so predictable it was like clockwork:

* Conservative media immediately kicks off talking points in regards to, "if more people were carrying guns this wouldn't have happened!"

* "Where's the outrage from Muslims?"

* "Outraged Muslims say the attackers aren't true Muslims because Mohammed forbids killing innocents."

* "It had to have been Syrian refugees!"

* "Can't we just bomb the fsck out of Syria?"

* All manner of insinuations that all Muslims are dangerous and we should "kick them out" or prevent them entry into the our country.

...then, attempting to time things just right the spy organizations all over the world ask for everyone to give up their privacy so they can "stop terrorists".

What we won't see in the major news media/popular talking heads:

* Outrage that despite the billions upon billions invested in spying programs no one was able to predict or stop this attack. Proving that the vast spying powers granted to governmental organizations don't work.

* Factual stories pointing out that encryption with back doors won't be used by terrorists so it's useless against terrorists by definition.

* Investigations into why the mass collection of everyone's personal details didn't work and can't work to stop these kinds of attacks.

* Informative stories about what every-day people or politicians can do to hurt terrorists and stop terrorism. For example, there will be no one even remotely connecting the dots between oil usage and terrorism. Or how there's a direct link between a country's oil revenues and democracy.

> * Outrage that despite the billions upon billions invested in spying programs no one was able to predict or stop this attack. Proving that the vast spying powers granted to governmental organizations don't work.

In fairness, we don't exactly find out about the successes...

We can't know, because that back-channel carries information that could be useful to the enemy.

This is a really serious problem. There's a reason why the normal process of justice involves presenting evidence in public rather than just saying, "We know this guy is guilty because reasons we can't tell you. Don't worry, we've already executed him."

The fight has to be done procedurally or we'll end up shelling Parisian suburbs.

I can assure you that if they had any success, they'd be taking out full-page ads in the NYT and WaPo. When the Snowden revelations happened, after searching far and wide, they came up with 1 name: David Headley. It turns out, he was already well known to the US agencies, and it was a lie.

In fairness, we can't exactly trust professional spies to tell us the truth regardless...

Yes, we do. The FBI has to send provocateurs to gin up prosecutions is most of what we know about "successes." That the real successes are kept secret when the lame ones are publicized is not credible.

Why not?

You would think that the spooks are dying for some good PR given the hits they have taken post-Snowden.

We don't know if France spent "billions upon billions invested in spying programs". But for anyone over there politically who was hoping to start up the "French NSA", they will point to this incident for justification.

Actually, we do:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/06/world/europe/french-legisl...

The "French NSA" already exists. There's nothing to "start up".

Their budget isn't on par with the US but they already have more leeway than US authorities when it comes to invading everyone's privacy. I'm actually quite curious what more they could possibly want in terms of legal authority to spy on everyone.

French security forces already have their own surveillance program. And a controversial history of state-sponsored terrorism, from blowing up the Rainbow Warrior to enabling the Nigerian civil war. Not to mention Algeria.

I'm not sure how much of this is "media response". Politicians and people on the street are also blaming refugees, advocating bombinb Syria... at a certain level, the media is just reporting that.

(of course, talking about "The Media" is always problematic because it's difficult to sum up as one blob. There are, of course, bad actors in the blob)

People are easily manipulated. It's why marketing works so well.

That sounds pithy, but what does it even mean?

In relation to the parent it means which came first? The chicken or the egg? We've all been conditioned by media for our entire lives so to say that the media are 'just reporting' is to ignore/deny the power/impact they have and also to discredit the power of words.

I'd like to see it become taboo to exploit tragedies for political gain like this. Take every opportunity to call it what it is: profiteering off the death and suffering of others.

I guess that is a taboo, although one we seem to have forgotten. Respect the tragedy, do not cheapen the suffering, the appropriate action is to stay silent for a moment, be solemn, accept that their might not be a solution, ask if the cure isn't worse than the disease. All this is ours, all this sustained us so far. So why do I feel like we have forgotten it?

  > Or how there's a direct link between a country's oil revenues and democracy.

Yeah, oil prices drop and Alberta and Canada promptly elect left-of-center governments.

There's a well-known link between oil revenues (well, natural resource revenues) and democracy:

http://www.voxeu.org/article/oil-and-democracy-new-insights

Well-established democracies with diverse economies such as Canada are mostly immune to these effects.

More reading:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-east/2011-08-...

What's interesting about that article is how it predicts unrest in the Middle East surrounding the control over oil resources. By obtaining control over oil resources Daesh has secured their ability to continue operating. Take away that resource and they're likely to die off pretty quickly.

Spotted on Twitter:

"If banning encryption would stop terrorists using it, why don’t they just make terrorism illegal and be done with it?"

Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10591621 -

> I love how Republicans believe that outlawing guns won't stop criminals from having guns while at the same time believing that outlawing encryption will keep criminals from using encryption.

> Encryption methods are far easier to transport and spread illegally than gun are.

Don't assume all, or even many, Republican voters believe this. Those of a more libertarian bent unequivocally do not.

Sure, many of the politicians seem to support outlawing encryption. But that's true of both parties is it not?

Considering the average age of Republicans I doubt the majority of them even understand what encryption is let alone what the impact of outlawing it would be...

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/05/the-gop-is-dy...

http://www.people-press.org/2015/04/07/a-deep-dive-into-part...

Stop spreading partisan crap. Read the first response to that comment.

It's true that many, if not most, Democratic politicians could be termed "anti-encryption." Diane Feinstein is perhaps the most notorious example of a Democrat who has promoted this and other "authoritarian" views. But the fact remains the hypocrisy noted is more applicable to Republicans, who tend to oppose gun control much more frequently than Democrats.

Yeah, but the democrats also want to ban guns, so they aren't hypocrites, they are just wrong.

My favorite is the hippies who argue that we should legalize drugs because outlawing them didn't stop people from getting drugs- while also arguing that we should outlaw guns to stop people from getting guns.

One of these things is designed to hurt other humans, while the other is not.

But both of them do hurt other humans, regardless of the design.

That's a misleading comparison. I think the argument is that if you have a gun you can protect yourself from another person with a gun. A better analogy would be how some jurisdictions make bullet proof vests and gas masks illegal because they can be used (by bad people) to thwart police.

Dianne Feinstein isn't a Republican and she wants to take away our encryption, too.

The point of banning encryption isn't too stop criminals from using it, it's to stop non-criminals. At which point the problem of "find the criminals" is reduced to the problem of "find the encryption users". Encrypting your tweets will make them relatively identifiable.

The output of good encryption algorithms is indistinguishable from noise. And you can embed noise in anything, like in images, or in audio or video streams. And this is a worst case scenario, assuming the US convinces the whole world to ban encryption, which is highly unlikely. I mean besides the terrorists meeting the old fashioned way, in person.

I'm pro-encryption, but I think your argument is lazy and not fact-based. We see from this article that criminals are not particularly skilled at hiding their communications.

You and I both want a world where encryption is ubiquitous and easy to use. Where text messages are somehow encrypted-by-default. That does mean in this instance police would have had to use some other means to apprehend Abaaoud. That's a cost of everyone having privacy. Banning encryption will stop the majority of violent/petty criminals who are not educated and poorly funded from using it. I won't claim otherwise. I think the answer, as always, is educating people and making sure they have decent responsibilities and resources at their disposal so they won't want to do harm. People who can trust their government to give them privacy and protect their interests won't lash out.

Sorry but I have no idea how that addresses my comment. Not that I disagree with what you're saying, it just seems orthogonal or as if you meant to reply to someone else.

> The point of banning encryption isn't too stop criminals from using it, it's to stop non-criminals.

It's not an either/or situation, banning encryption is designed primarily to stop criminals from using it. It is also effective. It's obviously not 100% effective, it's probably more like 75% effective. I think you're assuming that most of the people arguing for prohibition are dreaming of a police state, and I think you're constructing an oversimplification that doesn't acknowledge the facts.

Oh yeah my post was half joking, half playing devil's advocate to the oversimplification of the tweet it was replying to. But either way, the point was that getting (only) non-criminals off encryption still makes spotting criminals easier, which I don't think is an oversimplification.

This is my response to the "but I have nothing to hide" argument. You may not have an obvious reason to want your identity hidden, nor may I. But someone else may have a legitimate reason. A whistleblower, a victim of domestic violence, a political refugee, a newspaper reporter investigating corruption in a police department. Do you think these people should be able to make use of encryption and anonymity? Of course. But if they are the only ones trying to stay private, that privacy is a spotlight shining on their actions. It draws the attention of people who would take advantage of them and threatens their ability to protect themselves.

Privacy, anonymity, and encryption protect the people who need them only when they are pervasive. The same way vaccines protect people who are susceptible to infection. Saying "I have nothing to hide" is akin to not getting a flu shot because you feel healthy. That's not how it works. You need that herd immunity or the virus will find cracks to survive in. When you refuse a vaccine or allow invasion of privacy because you don't feel threatened you're putting yourself ahead of people who are most at risk of being harmed by the disease or put in danger by having personal details become known.

Not to mention gay youths fearing the wrath of their community or family.

Well, yes: encryption is hard to use and sticks out a mile. Whereas good old codewords defeat dragnet surveillance and are easy to use. For every single concert and sporting event there are thousands of people discussing meeting up and going there over SMS, discussing times, locations and who's going to be there. How do you determine who has malicious intent?

What a prescient and logical observation.

Meh. What matters are the principles; even if you could show that 100% of terrorists always used encrypted communications without exception..I would still not be in favour of outlawing encrypted messages.

I agree 100%. Getting into arguments over practicality with these slime balls lands you right where they want you, debating with them in order to earn rights you already have.

Rights are established and protected by constant legislative and judicial battle.

There are obviously a lot of people who think that hard-encryption shouldn't be available to the public. If you're not willing to engage with them you're just going to get steamrolled. In matters of law, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Thomas Jefferson disagrees :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights

Time to ban unencrypted communication I guess

Over the wire? I'm in. :)

I found this to be a very interesting article on ISIS with insights to their communications,

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/11/-sp-isis-the-in...

When people left Bucca, they had written each other's names & numbers on the elastic of their underwear.

They also responded to Anonymous' threat toward ISIS by suggesting techniques to secure Comms and what to avoid.

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/isis-anonymous-statement-2...

I would suggest that this cell did not use protection but I am confident the larger ISIS network is not so transparent. My suspicions would be that most Comms is via word of mouth.

Agreed. Word of mouth is still a very viable method of communication and, given the organization's value of human life, I wouldn't be surprised if runners are frequently used to disseminate critical communication.

Please don't use this news as a point if you're making a defense for encryption. Because there are going to be bad people who plan bad things using encrypted communication, and when that happens your point is gone and people will blame encryption.

Telegram is the dominant communication app in Middle East and most people prefer unencrypted massaging because of multi-device capabilities. I don't think ISIS people are any different

I don't like either result of discussing whether or not terrorists use encryption.

Terrorists used unencrypted communication -> government will want to spy on everyone's unencrypted content more.

Terrorists used encryption -> Government wants to restrict encryption.

Instead discussion should be around what is already legal but wasn't done and why.

Whether or not this particular attack happened with unencrypted vs. encrypted communications is irrelevant. I'm sure if we look at terror suspects and attacks in the past year across the world --- some of them used unencrypted means to communicate and others that use encrypted means to communicate. 99.999% of people aren't terror suspects. The real question is the following: how do we fight against the remainder without comprising our values?

I've been calling it for years: welcome to the return of the cryptowars. The 90's were just a stalling tactic, as admitted by a DoJ attorney to Eben Moglen back then. Expect creeping legislation to appear declaring more encryption "munitions grade", or some other such similar nonsense.

How soon till we get a staged terrorist event, or a staged communication from a legit one where the focus is on how they used encrypted communications?

Clearly people in power want this level of control, so the question is what lengths they will go to in order to ensure they get it.

I agree: people in power, from a large number of factions inside the group of people in power, want this level of control. The question is "Why"?

If encryption is banned, how are the surveillance people going to filter all the communication in the world when they can't even filter the currently limited unencrypted traffic correctly?

Looking at this differently though -

Encryption or not, signs point to meta data collection being absolutely essential to tracking down these pricks' location.

But they used cell phones. So we need to ban cell phones. Ban cell phones, or the terrorists win!

Oh, nobody's arguing for doing that? Hmm, why not?

Not really relevant, the day will come when no terrorists communicate in the clear. I'm not suggesting we outlaw encrypted communications, but I do wonder how law enforcement is supposed to track terrorist communications after they go dark.

The big point of this article is, given all of the NSA spying and mass surveillance of pretty much all phone networks worldwide, they still failed to detect anything related to this attack.

It shows two main things:

1) Mass drag-net style surveillance programs are not very effective.

2) Banning encryption will have minimal-to-no effect on improving mass drag-net style surveillance programs.

This means, to date, the only "terrorist plot" thwarted by the NSA mass drag-net style surveillance program remains that one guy who tried to send $8,500 to the Taliban (and was promptly arrested)[1].

[1] http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/10/nsa-spying-did-not-re...

Absolutely, so we as community, seeing these problems, need to be pro-active in helping government discover more effective ways to protect the people of this world from extremists.

The hands-up "Well, terrorism happens. Nothing to do about it." sentiment of many in our community is obviously not resonating with the general public. If we don't provide serious alternatives, they will continue pushing these sorts of methods to greater and greater extremes.

The general public are not the ones calling for encryption bans and regulations, or really much of anything. They're virtually disenfranchised in such matters, especially national security.

We absolutely do not owe the government to protect anyone from anything. You have more to lose from government agents like police forces than terrorists.

If those governments were trying to get terrorists, they'd be investing on something that catches terrorists.

They are investing in total surveillance because they want to make their civilian population submit to their wills. Just stop giving credence to their lies.

While I question the effectiveness of current practices, a number of people identified the ringleader but it was ignored.

I suspect he was identified because there was a person on the ground, talking and interacting with real people. Anyone that thinks this war will be won in an armchair using a PC or by dropping bombs is deluding themselves.

The ringleader (Abdelhamid Abaaoud) was already on counter-terrorism watchlists from previous activities, including a previous terror attack in Belgium.[1]

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/16/abdelhamid-abaa...

The same way they track them now -- with all the other investigation and intelligence methods they have now. It's not like cyrpto makes investigation impossible or magically makes terrorists immune to OpSec errors that enable the authorities to find them.

Well they haven't got a good track record when it comes to unencrypted communication so...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com