Paris, jihadis, tech giants ... What is David Cameron's speechwriter banging on about now? An article by the UK Prime Minister's chief speechwriter suggests Silicon Valley is happily aiding "tech-savvy jihadists." It echoes demands we've heard since the killings in France this month. A UK law professor and an infosec academic have helped us dismantle the piece. The ludicrous article in question, written by Clare …
... apart from Telegram which is broken anyway. From Schneier's blog...
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/11/paris_terrorist.html
http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/11/paris-police-find-phone-with-unencrypted-sms-saying-lets-go-were-starting/
Now why ever would politicians come out the woodwork and start on about their favourite subject?
Ex-CIA director James Woolsey wants to see him hanged for enabling terrorists
From bottom-feeding screechwriters to zero-ethics psychos nominally "in charge" to "progressive neocons" angling for the presidency ... getting rid of these people (and by this I mean, a one-way trip to the Fletcher Memorial Home) is becoming a requirement to survival fast.
"So only people with advanced tech knowledge are allowed to write about technology? Even though it's pretty important these days?
My response to that would be that I would hope that those that believe the topic is important and wish to take part in the debate might actually take the time to learn something about the it before they start pontificating.
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt."
I also note that she believes that the "democratically elected governments" are being frustrated by "non elected companies" who are "obstructive and adversarial". So no government is ever wrong?
I have to wonder what democratically elected counts for, when as soon as they get in they 180 on the policies that got them elected.
So which of the policies in a manifesto are the ones that got them elected?
Or which of the wild statements uttered during election time are the ones that got them elected?
""So only people with advanced tech knowledge are allowed to write about technology? Even though it's pretty important these days?"
Of course not, but in the absence of such knowledge they have to realise that what they write might be complete bollocks. Might be? Almost certainly will be!
And as for "adversarial", start looking closer to home.
"So only people with advanced tech knowledge are allowed to write about technology? Even though it's pretty important these days?"
So Clare Forges-Ahead-Without-Knowledge (apparently distant relative of Tim Nice-But-Dim, but without the nice bit) can shoot her mouth off but she denies others the free speech right of stating she is wrong? Part of free speech is that others are allowed to disagree with you. Maybe she needs to read up on human rights, not just technology
> ""So only people with advanced tech knowledge are allowed to write about technology? Even though it's pretty important these days?"
No less obvious than if it were medical matters and not technology. I'm sure medical professionals would definitely have something to say if a speech writer started pontificating on medical matters, even though that's always 'pretty important'.
Perhaps it's time to rethink letting unqualified people use technology, they are starting to believe they know everything when all they know is how to self-administer the occasional aspiriin.
"So only people with advanced tech knowledge are allowed to write about technology? Even though it's pretty important these days?"
Considering her position of influence, I would have said a resounding "YES!!!" to that first question. My biggest gripe is the way she is ultimately equates the progression of encryption technologies with aiding terrorists. It's absurd. The things that spring to mind are:
a). By creating a backdoor to all encryption algorithms for government use only, you will also create the biggest threat humankind has ever seen. Keys will be available to the highest bidder, paranoia will dictate policy and national security services will become untenable.
b). Terrorists would communicate via carrier pigeon if it would help their cause. The focus needs to be at the social level and root out extremism while it is in its infancy, not by taking away the little security the Internet has natively.
c). At least try to make it a little less apparent what agenda you are actually pushing; it looks stupid and it makes the government appear completely incompetent.
Rant over.
"We need to have a mature debate" ... NO! I literally don't want to hear what you have to say you totalitarian bastard. Nothing good comes after that political key-phrase.
"So only people with advanced tech knowledge are allowed to write about technology? Even though it's pretty important these days?"
Yes, only people with knowledge get to have an opinion. Everyone else needs to STFU. I know it's quite popular these days that everyone gets an equal say regardless of merit, but that simply won't do.
massivelySerial wrote: "We need to have a mature debate" ... NO! I literally don't want to hear what you have to say you totalitarian bastard. Nothing good comes after that political key-phrase.
Whilst I agree with the sentiment, you have to remember that some of these people actually do believe they're protecting the general public. So I invoke C. S. Lewis:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
The sample of comments in the Crappygraph's article, plus another demolition job on it in Techdirt will get wider circulation than the original article, I expect. Not to mention all the blowback on Twitter. The riposte will be complete if she gets this:
CF: Hello, I'm Clare Foges
A.N.Other: Ah yes, the clueless idiot. Can I interest you in a copy of 'Cryptography for Dummies'?
Give credit to the Torygraph commentards: they had demolished Foges long before El Reg picked up the case.
And yes, Rik Myslevsky, they really are right wing, as opposed to Reg commentards who seem to be mainly left.
[My tech comments generally get upvoted, but my political ones go down.]
"And yes, Rik Myslevsky, they really are right wing, as opposed to Reg commentards who seem to be mainly left."
Splutter! Really? El Reg's commentards are generally a pretty anarchic bunch though the general tone of the politics is substantially to the right of where I sit. But then again I am _properly_ left wing, not this light weight left wing "I'm so radical I've grown a Stalin beard" nonsense.
Rosie
Official Spokesperson for the People's Free Liberation Army of El Reg, NOT the Free People's Army of El Reg - who are slackers.
Good to hear from you, Rosie.
If you think the Reg is right wing, I have an Ars Technica you might want to avoid.
I think people are not so much anarchistic as that they have seen the Emperor so often and every time he seems to be as naked as the day that he was born. Drawing attention to the fact is not so much anarchistic as wishing, with Dante, that
"Convenne rege aver che discernesse della vera cittade almen la torre" - a King should come who can at least see the tower of the True City.
The present lot can't even see through the front page of the Sun.
"Cameron's speeches have traditionally been dreadful: one-sentence paragraphs full of assertions rather than rational argument. They look good on an autocue but not in print."
Sadly they were good enough to get him elected party leader rather than David Davies. Or maybe it was because they were so mesmerised by Blair that the looked for the closest match they'd got.
Our "democratically elected" governments are using every excuse to take away our dearly-bought freedoms, and because we are more interested in what's on TV after the news, we aren't getting our fat(tening) asses of the couch and shouting a resounding "STOP!" in the streets.
"Maybe they're providing cover, to distract us, while something else is going on?"
I believe they are, and that 'thing' is the end of diseases that can be treated with anti-biotics, which should literally scare the piss out of everyone.
http://www.cdc.gov/features/AntibioticResistanceThreats/index.html
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/hospitals-given-28-days-to-make-plan-for-antibiotic-resistance-1.2441826
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2015/11November/Pages/Last-line-in-antibiotic-resistance-under-threat.aspx
http://who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/antibiotic-resistance/en/
Ask yourself why this isn't on the mainstream news channels. Let me know if you come up with a good answer that isn't "The government are scared to tell people about something that will probably kill them or someone they love, and that there's absolutely fuck all they can do about it".
I've been mentioning this to people for years. Cheap hamburgers bought with future deaths. Tens of thousand of tons of antibiotics pumped into livestocks each year.
Med father would opine on whether supurating bone infections or gangrenous guts smelled worse. You betcha he thought antibiotics a blessing, having lost too many patients after too long struggles.
Now we've lost again to short-sighted economic interests - farmers and pharmers.
(BTW: if you are killing millions and millions, but without regard to race/class/nationality/etc, if that can't be called genocide, then what is it called?)
The problem is that people who know what they're talking about say that you can't break the laws of mathematics, but that really cuts no ice with a government, as Chancellors have been making 2+2 = 5 or 6 or 1 or 3.5 or whatever for donkeys years. If it works with money, why not encryption?
"So only people with advanced tech knowledge are allowed to write about technology? Even though it's pretty important these days?" -- Clare Foges
Interesting that you interpret criticism as prohibition. Your focus on being "allowed" to do things is both revealing (it reveals you as an authoritarian by nature) -- and self-defeating, as your complaint appears to be that people are "allowed" to criticise you for being wrong.
And you aren't just whacky, creationist, homeopathically, moon-hoax wrong but actually mathematically, provably "pi is really rational, point nine recurring isn't equal to one," wrong.
The problem is that there is a (possibly quite large) section of society that will hear her words and think "Argh! the sky is falling!" and suddenly the government has the figleaf it requires because the chattering classes are all screaming "yes! surveil me 24./7 to keep me nice and safe"
I hate the way politicians jump on any kind of terrorist act and use it as a way of leveraging more power for themselves, they don't seem to realise they are doing the terrorists job for them... well, its more accurate to say they know and don't care.
Well isn't *that* a surprise, boys and girls!
Get your lies in first, make them big and tell them often and ensure your friends in the Press give them much more prominence than any arguments to the contrary and you'll soon have the sheeple going "Meh, let them do whatever they want, we don't want to think about it, we just want to get back to watching Britain's Got the X-Factor Strictly Coming through a Hole in the Wall on Ice"
"Encryption" , "cryptography" are increasingly being used in the same sentences as "terrorism", "paedophile" etc.
Governments and their slimy mouthpieces know that 99% of the population will very soon associate these words as synonymous if they keep on using them together long enough. Next the Daily Mail will start a campaign to rid ourselves of these terrorist devices. Laws will be passed and the majority will think it a good thing.
Defend/use encryption and you'll be a terrorist/paedophile sympathiser. Job done.
"So only people with advanced tech knowledge are allowed to write about technology? Even though it's pretty important these days?"
No Clare, you don't need advanced techNOLOGY knowledge to write about it. As far as encryption goes, an understanding of the basics would have deterred you from writing that drivel in the first place. I suspect that deep down, you knew yourself that you were talking crap, which is why you reacted so strongly to being criticised by someone whose knowledge was greater than yours.
A while back, I started drafting a paper on secure electronic comms that don't use the Internet, but I'm not sure I should carry on with it, as I'd be likely to be banged up for possessing an article that could be useful to trrrists.
I think she should first learn about the basics of Mathematics, cryptography and freedom before spouting out such tosh!
"Paris must be a wake-up call," she thundered. "If they had any conscience at all, these great Western powerhouses of the 21st century would be joining the fight to preserve our way of life – not helping to facilitate Islamic State's way of death."
Erm I think they are fighting to preserve our way of life, by stopping us being illegally spied upon.
What an awesomely bad article written by an idiot, in a newspaper run by nasty idiots. I'm glad I don't pay to read such rubbish, as I'd hate to think I was contributing to her fee. The comments below the article in the DT are surprising in their reasoned condemnation, because usually they consist of rants blaming muslims / immigrants / paedophiles / Jeremy Corbyn for everything that's wrong with the world.
Best of all is that I have now discovered Techdirt. Thanks El Reg!
I really struggle to understand the reasoning behind pretty much any political decision/intention recently; from "the war on terror" up to mandatory backdoors, Investigatory Powers Bill, opposition to encryption, and air strikes in Syria. Nothing they (the powers that be) do or say seem to make any sense whatsoever, and the only beneficiaries appear to be the companies providing war machinery and snooping tech.
Obviously they are exploiting Paris for that, so let's stick with it for a moment...
"We need more snooping" (I'm paraphrasing) -- No you don't. The perpetrators were known to several intelligence agencies in Europe, but they failed to connect the dots. If anything, they have too much data to handle already. They possibly had (or could easily have obtained) warrants to keep tabs on them with the current legislation.
"Bad guys use encryption, therefore encryption is bad." (Paraphrasing again, of course) -- You could counter that by saying: "Some politicians are bad, corrupt and criminal, therefore let's remove all politicians." This obviously doesn't make sense. Fun fact: The alleged (and now dead) Paris mastermind's phone was entirely unencrypted; it's likely that the same applies to much of the comms between the perpetrators.
"Okay, maybe it's good to have encryption in certain places, but we need to be able to remove it on demand / by backdoor." -- What a brilliant idea. And to avoid that nation states like China use them, you create an anti-hacking pact? This idea, if implemented, is (possibly literally) going to blow up in your faces dramatically, and in a very short time. Mark my words.
But the worst thing of all, which I really don't get at all, and which will costs human lives, is additional air strikes on Syria in the name of fighting IS/ISIS/ISIL (or whatever the acronym du jour might be). The perpetrators in the recent Paris attacks lived in France and Belgium, some were able to cross the borders (outbound to Syria and returning) despite being known. If they managed to slip under the radar despite being known to intelligence, how many more live in Europe, which we don't know about (or maybe failed to connect the dots again)? You can flatten Syria in its entirety, and yet you have many more potential perpetrators living in our midst. They'll regroup and carry on. Air strikes can't possibly solve the problem. Air strikes alone can't even win a conventional war, where the territory is limited to countries and not scattered all over the place, like ISIS.
I don't have a solution, either, but doing the obvious wrong thing just so you appear to be doing something, accepting a lot more "collateral damage" -or "fog of war"- than we already caused, is just wrong.
What I find most shocking is that the UN signed off on airstrikes in Syria, and that many MPs, most vocally Labour, said they wouldn't approve of airstrikes unless there was a formal UN resolution. That's politics and decision making by proxy. "If everybody else says jump, let's jump."
This is all very frustrating. Democracy seems fundamentally broken, because the only beneficiaries of all of this are power-hungry politicians, lobbyists (and the companies they do the lobbying for). Everybody else loses. The evidence that giving up privacy and rights helps in voiding terrorist plots is flimsy at best -- we don't get to see details; we have to take gov's/agency's word for it. For me, that's nowhere near good enough, but the majority of people doesn't seem to care a lot; maybe that's because the BBC or CNN aren't asking a lot of questions at all. "Propaganda channel" may be an exeggeration, but as a licence payer I'd expect better from them.
Finally, it's worth keeping in mind the huge numbers of civilian casualties that *we* have caused (be it by mistake as "collateral damage" or pretty much deliberately, like the MSF hospital). We are fighting terror by inflicting terror. We really are no better.
Maybe my take on all this is too pessimistic. $government should have better intel and insights than $citizen, granted. It's just that whatever they utter these days doesn't strike me as particularly credible. But why does the general public not care about it? We're all made to bend over; quite literally at airport security soon!
"She also accused Google supremo Eric Schmidt of "extraordinary arrogance" for seemingly refusing to create a useful secure encryption system that can be unlocked on demand by governments, despite the mathematical infeasibility of such a technology."
Dear Clare,
Please find enclosed a very, very big stick. Unfortunately, however, while I can point you in the direction of the Moon, I can't actually provide you with the Moon already attached to the stick. And nor can anybody else.
Especially if you want the Moon to continue being, well, the Moon.
One alternative possibility would be to transport the stick to the Moon, and implant the stick in its surface - but firstly, that would be the other way around (a stick on the Moon) and, secondly, you would then have neither the stick nor the Moon.
Unless you went there with the stick - but if you did, and wanted to retain possession, I'm afraid it would be a one way trip. Considering that possibility, however, I have CC'd this letter to NASA, ESA and Space X. Perhaps between us, we can make this possibility a reality.
All the best,
Eric.
"The question many of us are asking is why this piece was commissioned in the first place – to say that the author of it is out of her depth is a massive understatement, while The Telegraph has access to journalists and others with great expertise, who could have written on the subject with both more knowledge and more clarity."
Let's face it, they could have found someone from YouTube or the Daily Mail comments to write with more knowledge and clarity. The various governments who are calling for this have repeatedly demonstrated their lack of knowledge and incompetence at the task...missing data centres; unpatched top-secret databases; laptops and USB sticks left on trains etc. etc. etc. Even ignoring the physical impossibility of having secure systems with a backdoor...if it were possible they are just not fit for the purpose of holding that responsibility.
In short; it's my data so fuck off. Call for -and even legislate- what you like; it ain't happening.
These are also the people who hook up infrastructure -like nuclear power stations, for fuck's sake- to the internet. I blame it on the subsidised bar in Westminster. And fucking idiocy.
If the Illuminati existed, which of course we don't, we wouldn't bother. We would just have ensured that every cryptographic system has backdoors as a matter of course. And not told anybody.
No, if there's a single body pulling the strings, it's Rupert Murdoch.
"In the wake of those tip-offs, tech companies faced a massive PR headache on privacy. And so Google, Apple, Facebook and the rest have been falling over themselves to offer products that no government can break into."
I must say, this is an astoundingly honest, if somewhat roundabout summary of what the "Snowden affair" is about! :D
This discussion follows the same boring and frustrating groove of every other tech thug talk on encryption, with the same boring tech thug talking points -- and I thought The Register is better than that -- I thought The Register would be at least as critical of encryption mania as it is of copyleftism. Sadly, it's not.
What's not only frustrating but in fact deadly, given the terrorists and Telegram, is this invocation of math as a sacred force that only high priests can handle -- I've even heard a crypto-anarchist say "mathematics makes the state obsolete" -- yet in the next sentence claiming that the math is in fact flawed, filled with holes, not all that, so that we need to be so upset about maximum encryption. Well, which is it, guys?
We're supposed to accept the totalitarian proposition -- and no, it's not like gravity because it is in the hands of humans and that means politics -- that we "can't" do anything about "math" and that if a system generates random numbers to make encruption and that obviously can't be easily cracked or cracked at all, we must throw up our hands. What happened to the claim by the Snowdenistas that the NSA "weakened" encryptions? Building "back doors" is a political decision and one Silicon Valley's titans didn't take because they want to make sure they keep their street cred and fight The Man. Meanwhile, a new version of CISPA quietly passes anyway.
The tech thugs who invoke "math" all the time aren't thinking through the consequences of their totalitarian proposition, whatever its "science" -- that law-enforcers are therefore likely to become more brutish and use more physical methods of coercion which is why your friend -- and I say your friend because you invoke "math" like he does as a weapon -- Julian Assange built RubberHose -- which was taken away from him as classified by the NSA, prompting him to wage hacker jihad on the USG ever since. The consequence of more "math" are more racial profiling, more intrusiveness, less permission for travel, more kinds of other surveillance. And that's how you -- and Bruce Schneier -- want to leave it -- you get to be in the 21st century, the police have to be in the 19th.
And any time anyone, especially a woman raises the slightest critique of this thug-world, you can only disparage them as stupid, not getting "the math" and pursuing an agenda by some evil force.
The government, of course, can make the same efforts to regulate as it did Clipper Chip and PGP and fail because of the connivings of the crypto set, then double back and become more deadly in other ways -- and as you say, your math is weak in places. Of course, there's another path whereby tech companies secure general privacy and don't cave to governments lightly without a warrant, but under which they cooperate on the basics; after all, the user can't encrypt the view of his actual form of payment and ID from the company providing the service, right guys? They have to see it to serve him.
Perhaps they will have to adapt a willingness to not encrypt the metadata of geographical places. Once you open up a free debate without the hobbling of disparagement over your perception of math, some solution might become visible -- never the 99/1 that the binary geek mind insists on, but good enough.
Telegram was made by a Russian who fled Putin's persecution (supposedly) and who doesn't care if his product is used by terrorists (Bazarov, call your office). Putin isn't bombing ISIS but propping up Assad. This is all science, not math. It matters who the humans are who establish the "math" institutions and how accountable they are to the public.
Maybe it will turn out that like the lead in the Romans' cups, encryption will be the thing that killed the arrogant tech class who thought they would usher humanity in the future.
And, assuming your diagnosis is correct, do you have any proposals?
"Putin isn't bombing ISIS but propping up Assad."
You mean he's propping up the only elected regional player who has a functioning, disciplined Army with a hope of defeating ISIS. And now the US is reluctantly supporting the Kurds, who are fragmented but are also attacking ISIS, thus adopting the same methodology.
"Of course, there's another path whereby tech companies secure general privacy and don't cave to governments lightly without a warrant, but under which they cooperate on the basics;"
The issue is that the Government's security agencies do not play nicely, even with the Government. (During his years as PM, Harold Wilson was spied on and undermined by the security agencies despite being the head of a legitimate elected government.)
"And any time anyone, especially a woman raises the slightest critique of this thug-world, you can only disparage them as stupid"
In this case the person concerned doesn't know anything about security and more or less admits it. How can she comment on a subject she so clearly doesn't understand?
She is apparently an English graduate. How would she react if the Daily Telegraph paid me to write a column of literary criticism? Not, I imagine, politely.
The evidence seems to be growing that the Paris attacks were facilitated by throwaway phones, not encryption; that the supposed Daesh security manual is just a commonly available guide to basic internet security; and that the "Helpdesk" is a fantasy. Someone is passing this garbage onto the media. It's reasonable to assume that it is the TLAs briefing to support their agenda. And that your post is just more of the same.
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