

Europol chief warns on computer encryption - neokya
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32087919

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jacquesm
So, encryption is bad because our doo-gooder international police forces can't
read the messages of the terrorists?

I find it hard to believe that someone this high up the totem-pole would not
be able to come up with better arguments about why the government (especially
the UK one) has lost the 'hearts and minds' of its constituents and what could
be done about it when it comes to encryption.

If you make _everybody_ a suspect without prior cause then people will start
to behave as if they're under suspicion.

When in the past 'encrypted communications' probably counted as some kind of
red flag the value of that flag has been diminished or even eradicated because
the government has driven ordinary people to be worried about their
conversations to the point that so many people use encryption now that just
using encryption is no longer a signal.

So they're going to have to expend a ton of computing power on monitoring
networks of ordinary people in order to catch a few miscreants. On the whole
the only things they've achieved is that the haystack is now much much larger
than it used to be and that people trust their governments less than ever
before when it comes to privacy issues.

Well done! I'm curious what they'll come up with next, outlawing of encryption
is probably high up on the agenda in at least a few countries.

The thinly veiled message to tech firms to give Europol and the likes
unfettered access to un-encrypted messages will surely be received with open
arms, I think all those companies whose logos featured prominently on Snowdens
documents still remember those disclosures fondly.

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fit2rule
Something should be said about the radicalization/brainwashing that security
personnel in the GCHQ/NSA/&etc. services must endure in order to keep their
jobs.

I'm familiar with a few folks in this industry, and what they have been
through - in the form of an internal training regimen designed to condition
them for their positions - can only be described, at best, as brainwashing.

They're given repeated exposure to highly graphic videos depicting the results
of terrorist activities. They're exposed to extremely highly polished videos
and presentations on the subject of attacks against Western society. They're
expected to demonstrate that they can handle these artifacts and still
maintain their position on posts that will be secret, and highly sensitive.
All the while, they are expected to continue their embedded lives in these
societies.

A great deal of psychological manipulation is required to keep these people in
their positions - it is not nearly well enough scrutinized by the public, in
my opinion.

Those who give themselves the right to psychologically program the security
operatives who maintain that terror is the #1 reason for the usurpation of
civil rights, _must be investigated further_ by the public at large. There is
much radicalization occurring within the halls of GCHQ that is highly
offensive to our western values and society at large suffers when these secret
psyops are allowed to continue to occur within the inner circles of security
power.

That it has become industrialized as a means of producing "qualified
personnel" is something that must, without question, be addressed by the
public at large - too much trust is being placed in people whose principle job
is to manipulate the psychology, and thus the motivation, of the military-
industrial security elite.

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u23KDd23
We should all be really concerned given that a majority of the technologies
being funded to fight terrorism are nothing but pseudoscience in addition to
being contrary to respecting civil liberties. The inability to question the
legitimacy of any of these programs is doing more public harm than good.
Beyond that, we are putting an enormous amount of power in the hands of a few
individuals who despite having the best intentions can still make poor
decisions or even cognitively make decisions that knowingly jeopardize public
safety. I am worried that there is now no economic incentive for these
individuals to prevent violence if their failures and abuses are only awarded
with more power and resources. Instead we will just continue to write blank
checks for psuedoscience that will further promote a growing divide between
the public and their governments.

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mineshaftgap
This doesn't bode too well for Europe having strong privacy protections.

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touristtam
Should really read the Guardian instead: [http://www.theguardian.com/uk-
news/2015/jan/12/david-cameron...](http://www.theguardian.com/uk-
news/2015/jan/12/david-cameron-pledges-anti-terror-law-internet-paris-attacks-
nick-clegg)

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danpelota
Really, we need to be rethinking the legality of combination safes and
deadbolt locks - they're being leveraged in terrorist operations as well.

