{"id":202691,"date":"2015-11-23T19:04:02","date_gmt":"2015-11-23T19:04:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=202691"},"modified":"2015-11-23T19:04:22","modified_gmt":"2015-11-23T19:04:22","slug":"post-paris-war-encryption-opportunistic-attack-civil-liberties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/post-paris-war-encryption-opportunistic-attack-civil-liberties\/","title":{"rendered":"The Post-Paris War on Encryption Is an Opportunistic Attack on Our Civil Liberties"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>The feds have had it out for encryption for decades, but in the wake of the Paris attacks, the vilification of cryptography &#8211; the use of mathematical algorithms and other practices to protect web transactions and emails, &#8220;lock up&#8221; data at rest on a hard drive, protect the privacy of certain phone calls and more &#8211; has reached a dangerous new low.<\/p>\n<p>Since the tragedy, lawmakers from the House of Representatives, top law enforcement officials and media figures have all articulated the idea that the Paris attackers used &#8220;encryption&#8221; to elude detection and capture. Like a lot of narratives that come from Congress, law enforcement and media, this story is <a href=\"https:\/\/privacysos.org\/node\/1853\" target=\"_blank\">way off the mark<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>For example: We know that at least some of the attackers used <a href=\"https:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/articles\/20151118\/08474732854\/after-endless-demonization-encryption-police-find-paris-attackers-coordinated-via-unencrypted-sms.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">standard (unencrypted) SMS messaging<\/a> on their mobile phones. We know at least one <a href=\"http:\/\/gawker.com\/paris-attackers-left-behind-a-hotel-room-filled-with-sy-1743023869\" target=\"_blank\">used his own credit card<\/a> to book a hotel around the time of the attack, which hardly speaks to a great degree of technological sophistication. And we know that several of the eight were <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2015\/11\/15\/world\/europe\/manhunt-for-paris-attackers.html\" target=\"_blank\">known to US and French authorities<\/a> before the attack. Some of them lived in the same neighborhood. The planner <a href=\"http:\/\/grugq.tumblr.com\/post\/133337962958\/the-interview-with-the-alleged-mastermind-of-the\" target=\"_blank\">published an interview in ISIS magazine Dabiq<\/a> in February &#8211; after leaving and before returning again to Europe &#8211; that included his picture and talked about evading Belgian and French authorities. It&#8217;s not as if the ISIS attackers were invisible save for very strong math.<\/p>\n<p>Nonetheless, the rhetoric about the dangers of encryption continues unabated, with US law enforcement&#8217;s use of the Paris attacks to return to the familiar position of criticizing encryption technology as a threat to the public. The same arguments about dangers to public safety and&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/news\/item\/33750-the-post-paris-war-on-encryption-is-an-opportunistic-attack-on-our-civil-liberties\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The feds have had it out for encryption for decades, but in the wake of the Paris attacks, the vilification of cryptography &#8211; the use of mathematical algorithms and other practices to protect web transactions and emails, &#8220;lock up&#8221; data at rest on a hard drive, protect the privacy of certain phone calls and more [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":202692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,1614,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-202691","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-surveillance-big-brother","9":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}