Irreal

Yesterday I wrote about Clare Foges’ ludicrously dishonest op-ed in the Telegraph. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has a more sober article that describes how the terrorists really operated. Here’s a nice summary by Mike Rundle

Paris attackers used real names, real IDs, and unencrypted, simple messaging to make plans. https://t.co/0ioaOMaQy2

— Mike Rundle (@flyosity) November 27, 2015

No super-secret encryption transmitted on Play Stations just a bunch of people going about their business using their own names and documents. Most were European citizens traveling legally with their own passports. They rented the vehicles used in the attacks, again legally, using legitimate driver’s licenses.

Most disturbingly, many of the terrorists were already on watch lists but were nevertheless able to operate openly without detection. Yet, somehow, this is all Snowden’s and Apple’s fault. Or maybe it’s just that our governments are lying to us. Again.

The UK’s Telegraph has published what is certainly the year’s most ignorant and dishonest op-ed. Clare Foges, until recently PM David Cameron’s chief speechwriter, weighs in on the encryption wars and calls out Apple and Google for putting profit before public safety.

The dishonesty of the article starts with the Telegraph’s failure to mention that fact that Foges is Cameron’s ex-speechwriter. That fact, ipso facto, doesn’t affect the validity of her arguments but honest articles always mention such connections so that readers can evaluate the writer’s preconceptions and vested interests.

The ignorance lays over the entire piece smothering it with a thick coat of fail. The worst bit of ignorance is her insistence that Apple and the others could, if they wanted, provide a safe “back door” but don’t do so because they’re more interested in profit. Left unsaid, is the fact that every knowledgeable cryptographer agrees that it can’t be done. That includes cryptographers who are independent of the commercial sector and can’t be said to have a profit motive.

To me, the most infuriating part of the op-ed is Foges’ failure to see government’s culpability in what she sees as a crisis. Before Snowden—yes, really, it’s all his fault—the government could get a warrant and the bad guys were caught. Even accepting that fairy tale, that’s not what was going on. Instead, government abused terms, used secret courts, and questionable interpretations of laws to snoop on everyone’s communications. They did that because they wouldn’t have been able to get legitimate warrants.

Trust us, Foges says, but the government has repeatedly lied and abused the powers we gave it. Why in the world would we trust it? Now, when people fight back and demand to be left alone in the absence of reasonable evidence of wrong doing, the government whines that we want Isis to win and that Apple, Google, and other tech companies care only about filthy lucre and are willing to sell out the public’s safety to get it.

The op-ed, as I said, is full of errors. Rather than list them here, I’ll point you to this righteous takedown from Techdirt. It’s a thorough fisking of an article that is almost too dumb to merit the effort.

UPDATE: be → we

The New York Times editorial board has a nice editorial on why mass surveillance is not the answer to terrorism. Like the New Yorker article that I wrote about yesterday, the Times calls out Brennan and Clapper for their past and current lies to the American public. They call Brennan’s attempt to take advantage of the Paris attacks to advance his pro-surveillance agenda disgusting and cynical. You should definitely give it a read.

On the one hand, it’s a “Well, Duh!” moment but it is, I think, significant that a main stream organ like the New York Times—not a libertarian bastion by any means—is editorializing in favor of our right to privacy. Perhaps it will give pause to those politicians who see the debate as an opportunity to posture.

In a similar article, Tech Crunch has a nice piece on how encryption is being scapegoated to mask the failures of mass surveillance. As anyone who’s been paying attention knows, the intelligence agencies have been unable to point to a single case of the mass surveillance program helping prevent a terrorist incident. Rather than rethink their policies, Brennan and his cabal are pretending that Apple and Google are enabling terrorism. Terrorism that somehow managed to thrive long before ubiquitous strong encryption.

To channel I.F. Stone, these people are liars and nothing they say should be believed. They know, and we know, that outlawing Apple’s and Google’s secure chat applications would make no difference at all. There are plenty of open source applications available and even if there weren’t terrorists could easily build their own. It’s not like the technology is arcane.

After the tragedy and outrage in Paris last week, the usual suspects are running around saying, “See? This is what happens when things go dark.” Except, of course, there’s no evidence that the perpetrators used encryption and plenty of indications that they didn’t. The cell phone that led authorities to Abdelhamid Abaaoud’s safe house was unencrypted as were the text messages coordinating the start of the assault.

This is why calls to ban encryption are so misguided. Terrorists don't need it. https://t.co/NuryGowzl5

— Matthew Green (@matthew_d_green) November 18, 2015

As bad as Brennan and the others are, a great deal of the blame goes to the press, which, as the Washington Post reported a senior government official as saying, was lead around by nose by law enforcement. They even had breathless stories blaming Snowden and claiming the terrorists were so sophisticated they were using Play Stations to communicate. It was all nonsense, of course, as later stories reported. No play stations, no encryption just credulous journalists swallowing whole the government’s baloney.

Some news outlets did remember that the United States doesn’t have a Ministry of Truth and bothered to do a little investigation of their own. The aforementioned WAPO piece conceded that if we get increased surveillance out of the Paris attacks, the press will share much of the blame. The New Yorker called out Brennan and Clapper and reminded us that they aren’t paragons of veracity. Both lied to Congress—Clapper under oath; why isn’t he in jail?—and have consistently spread nonsense and fear in their efforts to be able to spy on everyone all day.

Brennan and his cohorts aren’t idiots and they know, just as we do, that ISIS and their fellow Jihadists couldn’t care less what laws a feckless Congress passes. There’s plenty of open source crypto available so beating up on Apple and Google won’t do a damn thing except make the rest of us less safe. Really, it’s time to tell these guys to cut it out and start using the information they already have instead of whining about the fact that ordinary citizens may not want their government snooping on everything they say or do.