FBI head: Social media becoming weapon for terrorists [and new word on the San Bernardino shooters]
http://www.wave3.com/story/30766297/fbi-head-social-media-becoming-weapon-for-terrorists FBI Director James Comey said the model of terrorism is changing, making it difficult for law enforcement to stop it. Speaking at a police conference in New York on Wednesday morning, Comey said encryption has become what he calls the "center of terrorist trade craft." He said social media sites like Twitter are creating opportunities to spread the message of terror worldwide. "The paradigm of al Qaeda still exists in the world, but ISIL has become the leader in the global jihad through this use of the crowdsourcing of terrorism," Comey said. "This poses enormous challenges for all of us in law enforcement and counterterrorism." - - - He says this as it now turns out that the San Bernardino shooters never used social media to "proclaim their radicalization" but only communicated by direct messaging. So all that crap from both GOP and Democratic presidential contenders (including last night at the main GOP debate, where the contenders -- with the singular exceptions of Rand Paul and Jeb Bush, tried to declare that they'd each kill more innocent civilians in a "war against ISIL") about "if only the government had been reading their social media they would have been caught" is just that. Crap. And let's be clear about this. If the U.S. government insists that the big Web services, etc. put backdoors into their encryption for law enforcement, there will be a mass migration of law abiding citizens to apps and systems from other countries and third parties that will either layer uncrackable crypto onto those systems or operate completely independently of them without the added risk of new hack attacks exploiting the weakened systems. Evil orgs like ISIL/IS already have that level of communications security, and honest citizens deserve no less. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren Founder: - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently doing so. My opinions expressed here are mine alone. _______________________________________________ pfir mailing list http://lists.pfir.org/mailman/listinfo/pfir
