
San Bernadino suspects were discussing jihad online as early as 2013 - anigbrowl
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/us/san-bernardino-massacre-fbi.html?_r=0
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anigbrowl
In the light of this news I'd expect further resistance to end-to-end
encryption from law enforcement. Considering that one leading Presidential
candidate currently enjoys strong support for a blanket ban on entry to the US
by adherents to a particular religion, it doesn't seem so far fetched to
imagine that use of secure communication by private individuals might come to
be considered as probable cause to believe that a criminal conspiracy is
taking place.

While that outcome would be pendant to an unknowable election result a year
from now, it's hard to ignore the fact that encryption has become an
equalizing factor for would-be terrorists, and that mass surveillance/metadata
examination is not as effective as we'd hope (in this case it failed to throw
up a red flag on international communication between the US and Saudi Arabia
(where there's an elevated probability of religious extremism) at a time when
the program was still in full swing, as far as we know and most people hadn't
heard of Edward Snowden.

Internet firms ignore these political considerations at their peril, as any
secure channel could conceivably become a nexus for terrorist communication,
and retroactive discovery could bring severe legal or political consequences.
I don't think it's the responsibility of the tech industry to help governments
discover, monitor, or interrupt terrorism, but politically the tech industry
is a soft target compared to, say, the arms manufacturing industry.

