Warning: Using encrypted email in Spain? Do not pass go, go directly to jail Seven people have been detained for, among other allegations, using encrypted email, a civil-rights group has said. Spanish cops investigating bomb attacks raided 14 homes and businesses across the country last month and arrested 11 people: seven women and four men, aged 31 to 36, from Spain, Italy, Uruguay, and Austria. …
".....giggles coming from Valle de los Caídos Basilica around Franco's grave....." Of course, because wanting to lock up politically naive idiots that endanger the public when they try to blow up cash machines and cathedrals just must make you a Fascist dictator, right?
About forty years of democracy thrown overboard in a few years. And I don't want to think about the way they are using the terrist attacks in France as a vindication for the removal of several (more) of our rights and freedoms.
The last government made me ashamed of being Spanish, the current one is doing the same thing.
Fuck 'em all!
Yes, and I am prepared to believe that these people really are terrorists . However, the reasons for further detaining them should be concrete bad things, like possession of illegal weapons or explosives, or maps of downtown Madrid saying helpful things like "place bomb here!". Not because they use a tool, like encryption, that is overwhelmingly used for perfectly legal and prudent reasons.
What the judge seems to be doing is akin to him saying "Well, these 7 people all speak to eachother in Navajo, and nobody around here understands what they are saying, so they must be up to no good."
I'm sorry, but I regret to say that I do not personally know a single Navajo who is working on the side of the angels. Not one single individual. And while I would normally hesitate to extrapolate from personal experiences I think in these uniquely perilous times (for when else in recorded history have we faced such dangerous threats?) we cannot waste time collecting further evidence or following antiquated ideas of personal liberty and justice.
Thanks to your useful description ("nobody understands what they are saying") I'm now ready to make a citizen's arrest of the very next Navajo I meet: probably Ms Kowalski, the blonde barista at my local Starbucks.
Mongo,
Sir, I doubt your patriotism and commitment to liberty! Need I remind you that our very survival depends on success in the War on Terror and we must all be be willing to do distasteful things for the greater good! Fortunately for Western Civilization, I am made of sterner stuff than you. Especially if Ms. Kowalski is about 5'8", 35-24-35, in good health and is not the "clingy type".
Navajo,
when have 'we' faced such dangerous threats?
WHAT ARE YOU ON?
Ever heard of the IRA???
When 'on form' they were quite an unpleasant bunch (I am being uncharacteristically diplomatic here btw)
Germany and the Basque country have/had their own [un]fair share of localised nutters too you know...
WW2 was a bit nasty too, especially if you did not agree with the National Socialist Party or were Jewish/Gay/Disabled/a Gypsy etc.
Most of my mother-in-laws family were barbequed in certain death camps, this isn't really on quite the same scale is it (thankfully!)?
Feel free to do a bit of homework, or alternatively be a little more specific about the very threat to 'our' existence that has recently surfaced.
Kind regards,
j
Sorry, Mr. fruitoftheloon, but in my opinion the OP is a masterfully sarcastic piece. Because it concisely describes several of the processes and justifications used by TPTB to steamroll our rights, and an example of the motivation for the baddies is also covered in the post.. I want someone else's riches, someone else's wives or girlfriends, or someone else's lands or...
The current political climate reminds me of the preponderant climate before the beginning of the Great War. People (that is, most of us), Governments and TPTB had their heads so deep into their arses that they started a war that killed sixteen fucking million people and indirectly was the main cause for WWII. Due to some terrorist attack that killed X people, the 'lawful, honourable and just' countries- the most advanced countries in the World - engaged in a war that killed ~16,000,000 X people in both sides of the 'issue'. That was the ratio for WWI.
And episodes like the French terror attacks have a big potential for becoming the seed of the next World War. We can hear the wolves howling in our own backyards. Badly disguised Nazi chums are preparing the next cycles of ethnic cleansing, and the only difference between different bands of said Nazi chums will be the human 'races' they want to make disappear and use their suffering as a source of peerless profit & power.
Mephistro,
many thanks for your well argued narrative, have one on me.
On a related note, I was visiting my American [UK resident] mother-in-law over the crimbo break, and whilst she is a bit Puritan and a lot bonkers, she does have a valid point about her worries re how 'immigrants' are being discussed in the mainstream press and political arenas.
She is quite concerned about some of the bedfellows UKIP have 'acquired' in the European parliament, I thought she was overdoing the concern, in hindsight I think she and you are quite right.
When added to the heavy mix of stupidity in pan-European economies at the moment (absurdly high unemployment, mass emigration, ineffectual fiscal policies etc) someone living here who does not have a UK passport (A VERY long story) has a different perspective to a locally born whitey like me...
I suppose having virtually all of your extended family murdered by the Nazis is likely to make one a little more cautious in these challenging times.
Regards,
j
Possible candidate: the growing attempts to divert us from the fact that we're living in the safest moment of our collective history by creating perpetual wars (on drugs, terror, paedophiles...) that will be used to justify the gradual erosion of the remains of our liberty?
It is an investigating judge after all... They can get someone arrested with very little evidence (e.g. one or two degrees of separation from someone else) then spend ages rummaging round for further evidence while their life is on hold (remanded in custody or on bail). The four people who where released were lucky.
each time there is an atrocity perpetrated by extremists the government rolls out more demands for reducing basic rights to privacy in the name of "protecting" the citizens. Yet in almost every case the security organisations are found to have known about the suspects and either ignored them or chose not to pursue them despite evidence of nefarious activities with existing tools.
"Vote Lib Dem, UK, SNP basically anyone except Labour or Tory."
The Spanish version of this sentence would translate to English as "Vote any fucking body who hasn't had any political power in the country", as all parties with some kind of political power, both at local and national levels, have been found with their dirty hands in the cookie jar once too often.
Yep, sometimes this country sucks. The weather and the food are nice, though.
"Always look on the bright side of life..."
Not sure what is going on in France as far as spying on their citizens, but the response of their citizens to terrorism there versus the responses in Spain, UK and the US has been encouraging. Despite the reputation as "cheese eating surrender monkeys" their citizens seem to understand the meaning of freedom and its potential price a lot better than the rest of us.
I wonder if the difference between fighting the Nazis and living under a government collaborating with them might have something to do with it. Let the government know how much they value freedom so it won't be taken away. Too many people in the US and UK assume freedom is their birthright and they don't have to worry their government will take it away - which has made it easy for their government to do just that.
I could sort of understand that attitude in the US, since no war has been fought with a foreign power on US soil in a long time. The UK still has people living who remember the blitz, so I would have thought they'd remember what it is like to fight for freedom. Though I suppose there aren't too many of them left anymore...
Depends on what you mean by "not too many". To have a realistic chance of remembering the blitz bombing of the UK, you'd have to have been born before 1938. Wikipedia has figures gathered in 2012 for 5-year age bins, so let's take everyone over 75 at that date:
Years
attained Population %
75–79 2,006,000 3.2
80–84 1,496,000 2.4
85–89 918,000 1.5
90+ 476,000 0.8
That's 4.9 million people and almost 8% of the population. Of those, a proportion will have passed on between 2012 and 2015 (application of mortality rates left as an exercise for the reader) and some other proportion will not have been resident in the UK in 1940-41, but it's still a lot of people, absolutely.
I don't read much into this. It's sort of like a cop stopping you for speeding, and then adding the broken headlight. I mean, good old Gmail is totally encrypted, if you include https transport and the fact that it is offshore. This whole war on encryption is going nowhere. Everybody should aggravate them with a Tor relay.
I must disagree, because the Internets is full of articles discussing how the encryption scheme that Google is using can be/is being broken by national security services and other interested parties. It has been discussed in these same forums.
A Tor relay would probably do zilch regarding the security of your encryption, at least for some of the known attack methods, more so when those attack methods are applied by a national entity, that can bully/order/bribe their way into the "encrypted" data, by controlling several steps in the communication process .
It's sort of like a cop stopping you for speeding, and then adding the broken headlight.
It isn't - it's like a cop stopping you for (allegedly) speeding, then adding in the fact that you have headlights which could be used for nefarious purposes.
Vic.
Not sure theres any reason for Dave to come out and say that... better he took a couple of million out of the minor budget (Educatin/Health/DWP) and bought himself a few AccessData Silent Runner licenses, am sure they'd probably throw in a free training place for a couple of his mates.
AC as theres someone knocking loudly on my door...
I keep a list of countries that won't hassle me about the fact that every piece of data I carry is heavily encrypted, and every communication is done through highly encrypted links back to the office, including my sat phone. I consult for large, multinational financial institutions, so security is paramount, especially against government snooping. My list of countries I'll deal with is getting pretty small, soon it'd probably be down to Switzerland and the Caymans...
I wonder how they'd deal with the fact that every e-mail I send is PGP-encrypted before being sent over SWIFTNet? (Thanks NSA for convincing me to do that!)
...on reality. There is what's known in legal terms as: "probable cause" and authorities should be holding these crims until all of the computers they were using are decrypted. More than likely additional criminal activity will be documented in the e-mails. While some folks have a legitimate reason for encrypting their e-mails, many don't and only do so because they are crims. I have no problem what so ever with holding these documented crims until their trials are concluded.
The point being that one should not *need* a 'legitimate reason' - 'because I choose to' is sufficient.
This is the point being made in the UK - the government wants to either outlaw encryption or backdoor communications (as well as already having an offence of not revealing passwords). The thing they don't seem to realise is that in all likelihood the danger from the multitude of black hats who want my passwords and account details is both more immediate and on the average much more damaging than some demented idiot with a back-pack full of fertiliser.
If the government would actually give details of terrorist attempts foiled and how much of this was due to sigint *before* the event, they might garner some sympathy - but instead they just say 'seven major attempts foiled this year! Can I have another billion please?'
I wonder if it's time to start sending emails containing nothing but random numbers?
What has always worried me is if you have a legitimate set of data in a form that is not recognised by security services, what's to stop them assuming (wrongly) that is is encrypted, and demand the non-existent key.
There is no key so it can't be provided, and in the UK that is enough for someone to be detained.
I wonder if it's time to start sending emails containing nothing but random numbers?
For this specific case - detention on the basis of encrypted email - the answer must be for encrypted email to become the norm, and so no cause of suspicion.
For this to happen I'd think it needs to baked in to every email client, setting up the key as part of the install process. It would need to be so transparent that non-technical people wouldn't even know it was happening. I'm a bit hazy on details, but if it was public/private keys, then I guess you'd need a global key-server infrastructure, similar to dns?
In legal terms, having a probable cause doesn't make people criminals. Only a proper conviction, using a due process, would do that.
It is actually an important distinction. Presumption of innocence in criminal matters is no less than one of the major pillars of our civilization. And there are already far too many critters gnawing those pillars, blissfully unaware that pillars may crumble at any time. Don't help with that.
The Spanish criminal justice system is based on Napoleonic Law which is not at all like Common Law. They're not on trial, they're being investigated by the judge and are held in custody while that investigation is taking place. If you're in any further doubt all you need to do is read the news of groups of people being arrested, investigated, then released a few days later when nothing was found.
As for RiseUp, it uses much the same encryption as the major free providers, i.e. IMAP or POP3 encrypted with TLS and StartTLS between the source and to destination email server. Do some investigating yourself and look at their website.
<Spook Fodder>{Goebbels, politicians, civil servants, security services, weapon traffickers, cleptocracy, banks, narcs, terrists, child molesters, search engines, social networks, tapeworms}</Spook Fodder>
Trying to kill two birds with a stone here. ;-)
...that everyone is jumping on! It's not the fact that the security services need any more power to read your email - remember that anything that the UK sees is also seen by the U.S., it seems more of a question of the tools they use being better at getting the core information they need. I'll back this up with the French having the 2 brothers under survelience for a number of years but had to scale back security - probably economic crisis rather that anything else. If they had more cash then they could have had more boots on the ground Europe as a whole needs to tighten its security, something that cannot be handled on a country level as there's too much red tape.
If I choose to encrypt my work laptop and am forced to boot it up in an airport, that's fine, anything sensitive will sit in its own hidden container with a 32 character password, including email.
Any data about you is already held by every company you've signed up to for bank, insurance, utilities, council, health - and the fact that these entities leak data like a rusty bucket anyway and don't have the right funding as IT usually comes in 2nd place in budgets.
For fun, try requesting all your old banks or any company you've done business with for all the data they hold on you and ask they to delete it and verify its been deleted. Privacy rules are coming in mid to late 2015 from the European ICO and all companies in Europe will have to comply, fines up to €100m or 10% of global turnover. Data protection finally gets some teeth. I'll bet that your profile already has made its way around the globe to less enamoured countries.
In no means I approve criminals using encrypted emails to cover up their dirty work and harm people, but in regards to the RiseUP that they were using, it doesn't sound that secure. It says that all the information was kept on the server but was encrypted. That means the government will file a law suit against those criminals and can ask for those email record kept on their server and probably will be able to decrypt them. If they would have use ShazzleMail it would never happen! ShazzleMail is a free private email application that turns your smart phone into a mail server, delivering your messages directly to your receiver via an SSL encrypted channel with no server copies. ShazzleMail is installed on your mobile device and its serves as our own server! All the messages are send vie encrypted channel and kept on YOUR OWN server, aka your phone. Meaning at any time a danger occurs you can simply get rid or or destroy your phone! I would say that ShazzleMail is one of the recent and the most advanced tools to fight the spies and snoops, plus its FREE :)
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