
The myth of the ISIS encrypted messaging app - bontoJR
http://www.dailydot.com/politics/isis-alrawi-encryption-messaging-app/
======
mikeash
"All of the media articles on the Alrawi app showed screenshots of a different
app entirely, one that is a glorified RSS reader with a totally different
name."

There was an article on the front page of HN recently about this "glorified
RSS reader." This article actually described that functionality, and made no
mention of any encrypted messaging. Despite that, it was submitted with a
title that indicated it was an encrypted messaging app, and the comments were
full of discussions about encrypted messaging and the eternal conflict between
privacy and anti-terrorism efforts.

It really confused me. I guess this is an app that people really _want_ to
exist.

~~~
gill984
Link to HN post? I can't find it searching for "Alrawi" or "ISIS encrypt".

~~~
mikeash
Here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10916731](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10916731)

I believe the title was changed afterwards to better reflect the article's
content. You can see lots of comments that think it's a chat app.

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TazeTSchnitzel
Somewhat related: there's an online German opsec magazine aimed at mujahideen,
named Kybernetiq.[0] It's pretty slick. The first issue[1] included a GPG
tutorial and a review of a "jihadi" messaging app (they don't recommend it).

[0] [https://twitter.com/kybernetiq](https://twitter.com/kybernetiq)

[1]
[https://archive.org/details/kybernetiq_magazin](https://archive.org/details/kybernetiq_magazin)

------
belorn
Reminds me of the Nayirah testimony, in that stories have high risk to be
manufactured if it plays perfectly into the narrative of an political
interest.

~~~
aaron695
Cause I have to much karma points I'll also mention this also happened during
the Nuremberg trials.

Really ridiculous stories taken as fact at the time and people still believe
even though historians now discount.

We keep getting played.

~~~
Retric
This never really stopped happening. If you want to read intelligence to
support viewpoint X, you can always find someone willing to say X.

------
ufmace
Yeah, it's pretty believable that it's a myth, but do you ever get the feeling
that people in the tech community want it to be a myth a little bit too much?
Just like people on the other side really want it to exist.

The idea of it certainly poses an interesting dilemma, especially if you are
invested in being for strong encryption and against Government surveillance.
How well will those idea hold up if it ever turns out that evil terrorist
armies really are using strong encryption to carry out mass murder and acts of
War in the West?

~~~
0xdada
I don't see the link between terrorist armies using strong encryption and
government surveillance. Is there one, besides the fact that people like to
use terrorism as an argument?

"Encryption" to "math" should be the next popular browser extension.

~~~
ufmace
Terrorists need to communicate with each other to plan attacks. Governments
need to gain intelligence on terrorist activity to thwart attacks. Much of
that intelligence reportedly comes from electronic surveillance of
communication. If terrorist groups were to start using strong encryption well,
it would presumably make it significantly harder to gain information on their
activities and thwart their attacks.

A lot of this necessarily happens in the dark, so we may not know for sure
exactly what's happening until decades after the fact. You don't exactly want
to advertise to the enemy that you can or cannot intercept their
communications - that would tell them how to be more effective in attacking
you.

Many national governments do indeed use strong encryption to protect their
communications, and the outcome of many battles, and arguably of some entire
wars, has hinged on the ability to crack that encryption, or lack thereof, and
the ability to keep the fact that you have done so secret from the enemy.

~~~
leohutson
It's convenient that they can justify the risk to democracy with information
we aren't allowed to see. I guess we'll just have to take it on faith

------
daodedickinson
Obviously they are using encryption, but it is a very ad-hoc movement so
computer literacy will be very uneven. I think suggesting no one in ISIS uses
encryption can only be wishful politicized thinking... being in ISIS doesn't
automatically mean you are cow level stupid and you shouldn't think so.

------
r3bl
Don't know why, but I am not surprised by this at all. In fact, it kind of
amuses me to see this myth debunked.

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MCRed
BY the way, they don't talk about it now, but originally in 2001 the media
reported that "al queda" was a code name used by the CIA for their database of
mujahideen fighters. Somehow the narrative later morphed into "al queda" being
a massive global conspiracy of "cells" with a leader, and all that, a big old
boogeyman. But they forgot that for this to be the case, we have to believe
that Osama Bin Laden -- Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible One style-- stealth
his way into CIA headquarters and found this top secret code name they used
for the Mujahideen fighters they were funding in the 1980s, and decided to
name his secret, global, hidden, evil genius organization after it.

It's kinda nonsensical. But fortunately for the government, most people don't
pay much attention.

At any rate, the propaganda/misinformation efforts are very real and ongoing.

~~~
ceejayoz
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-
Qaeda#Name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda#Name)

~~~
kombucha2
Your link appears to tell a different and unclear story:

Bin Laden explained the origin of the term in a videotaped interview with Al
Jazeera journalist Tayseer Alouni in October 2001:

The name 'al-Qaeda' was established a long time ago by mere chance. The late
Abu Ebeida El-Banashiri established the training camps for our mujahedeen
against Russia's terrorism. We used to call the training camp al-Qaeda. The
name stayed.[83]

It has been argued that two documents seized from the Sarajevo office of the
Benevolence International Foundation prove that the name was not simply
adopted by the mujahid movement and that a group called al-Qaeda was
established in August 1988. Both of these documents contain minutes of
meetings held to establish a new military group, and contain the term "al-
Qaeda".[84]

Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook wrote that the word al-Qaeda
should be translated as "the database", and originally referred to the
computer file of the thousands of mujahideen militants who were recruited and
trained with CIA help to defeat the Russians.[85] In April 2002, the group
assumed the name Qa'idat al-Jihad, which means "the base of Jihad". According
to Diaa Rashwan, this was "apparently as a result of the merger of the
overseas branch of Egypt's al-Jihad (Egyptian Islamist Jihad, or EIJ) group,
led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, with the groups Bin Laden brought under his control
after his return to Afghanistan in the mid-1990s."[86]

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daodedickinson
Doesn't make sense to make such an obvious target of an app; you'd use stuff
with a crowd of other uses and users to hide in. This could be a decent honey
pot.

