Aletho News

Paris attackers did not use encryption, according to reports

Privacy SOS | November 18, 2015

Even before the victims of the Paris attacks had been moved from the scene or their bodies identified, members of the US national security state began speculating that encryption was likely part of the reason the terrorists were able to plot and execute their deadly mission without getting caught. Former CIA director Mike Morrell was one of the many people who advanced this theory.

“I think what we’re going to learn is that these guys are communicating via these encrypted apps, this commercial encryption which is very difficult or nearly impossible for governments to break, and the producers of which don’t produce the keys necessary for law enforcement to read the encrypted messages,” he said.

Well, Morrell and his fellow deep state power-pushers appear to be wrong. New reports indicate that the attackers actually used text messages to communicate—plain text text messages.

But does it even matter? The point the spooks are trying to make is that encryption is too dangerous for a free society to tolerate. If bad guys use it to hurt us, it means law enforcement should be able to break encryption technology that billions of people on earth use to securely transfer money, communicate, and share sensitive data.

That’s absurd. Encryption is a tool. Like many tools, it can be used by people who have good motivations or bad ones. Every security specialist worth her salt says that weakening encryption, or installing “backdoors” for cops and spies, would actually put people at greater security risk. That’s because encryption is a security technology.

This time, when the spies tried to smear security technologies in the wake of these horrific murders, they were factually wrong—these attackers didn’t even encrypt their communications. But someday we will likely find evidence that other terrorists indeed did use encryption to plot their attack. It doesn’t matter. Those terrorists will probably also use cars, face to face communication, and walks in the woods to speak without risking that the prying ears of government agents can hear them. And furthermore, investigators in France—which last spring implemented broad new snooping powers—failed to intervene in the Paris plot when the attackers didn’t use encryption. In France, encryption was not the problem.

In the United States, the Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect us from unwarranted government intrusion into our private lives. That bedrock principle of American law makes it harder for police to figure out who is up to no good. That’s by design.

There may very well someday be a case where ISIS operatives use encryption tools to plan a nefarious attack. But when that day comes, the basic facts about encryption, security, and the law won’t have changed. Encryption protects the security of billions of transactions and communications every day—from hackers, foreign governments, and cops who skirt Fourth Amendment law by using stingrays to wiretap people’s private conversations.

When we are confronted with despicable acts like the Paris attacks, our response cannot be to throw our values out the window in a fearful stupor. There are people with bad intentions in the world, yes. But weakening our digital security in response to their violence has the ultimate effect of punishing ourselves. It won’t work, and it’s not smart. Remember that the next time you hear spies spewing fact-free hysteria before the blood has even dried.

November 19, 2015 - Posted by aletho | Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Encryption, Human rights, United States