You know what would really help fight terrorism; if people stopped whinging about maintaining their 'privacy' and just let the authorities monitor the internet, phones, fucking everything that can be monitored. As soon as some tool like this looks up 'bomb making' stick him on a list and monitor his every move. When he purchases a bag of ball bearings from his local DIY store then go and nab him.
Rant over. Thanks for listening.
Rant starting strap yourself in.
Sorry Matt but this is a load of bollocks.
We already do most of this and it's not working, unfortunately we have home secretarys and career (tosspot) politicians looking to further themselves and seek power and limelight and future contracts so we don't have evidence or expert based policies.
In case you missed it Five Eyes scans the whole internet, and 'stores it all'. Multiple overly qualified IC experts have stated that they are drowning in too much 'dross' (search William Binney for more). Whilst also internal reports have stated that ZERO positive gain has been found in relation to stopping terrorist threats (literally not a single fucking dangerous thing has been stopped, but we have hundreds of thousands of hours billed for analysts where that funding doesn't go towards actual front line work). Now of course these reports have also shown how great it is for analysts to be able to stalk their ex gfs, partners etc, share and compare risque pictures people send over the internet and how easily and frequently this mass of data is abused. Imagine what will happen when its not the highly vetted IC and a whole load of police or other random institutions like the Bangor post office and Northern Irish fish smaller than 2mm bureau who have access to 'everything' (this sarcasm is referencing the recent list of institutions that UK gov will be sharing ALL our data with and the list is fucking stupid both in the length and the scope of many of the institutions).
The sort of tool who has to type bomb making into the internet from their own registered address and computer is as you say a tool and will be easily caught. Sticking someone on a list and monitoring their every move is a completely political bollocks thing to say, for every single person you want to have on a high intensity monitoring program will take upwards of 50 front line staff (for example MI5 has 4000 staff, yet it is reported that 3000 people alone have returned from Syria to the UK). If we were to similarly 'nab' anyone buying potentially dangerous substances then every hairdresser, farmer, chemist, builder, scientist yada yada would be in trouble. This is the whole point of an IED its improvised, it's what you can make with what you can get your hands on easily and with a minimum of skill.
The idea that 'encryption' is the enemy even though nearly everything we do day to day requires it is bullshit again. It's just more lower level cretins who want their life to be easier and not to have to do their job. Why bother with good old fashioned police work and expertise when you can just complain you want to read everyones communications. If Tikay and I are communicating through wattsapp and we both have the most up to date version so we are encrypted then they can still see we are passing communications just not what they say. BUT if as is likely Tikay is on a naughty list then they have a myriad of legal ways to access this. Breaking the backbone of basic communication is not the way to do it.
When we realised that baddies were sending letters in the post, we didn't require everyone to use post cards, we provided the police and IC with the ability where they had probable cause to access this communication in transit, then continue it on to it's recipient. Similarly if they needed to access Tikays phone to see what quantity of concrete was being discussed they can use similar methods. They already have the legal protections to break into your house, to put cameras in your house, to monitor your cars movements, to listen in on you at all times. 30 seconds of watching these cameras would reveal Tikays phone pin and voila there is no encryption (if he uses fingerprint then they can force him to open it already). The whole of society hasn't lost it's ability to not be tracked, profiled and subjugated and with some proper police work they have complete access to what they need.
In the case of the high profile San Bernadino case and subsequent begging for access to encrypted devices it was proven that the government COULD break the encryption anyway they just didn't want to because that would just provide information on a terrorist not some ways to make profit and capitalise on weakened communications for all. As usual there are vast ulterior motives related to money, power and never once protecting the populace. Those are just words used by charlatans (politicians) to make the peoples think wow we need that. Straight after the Bataclan attack the same shitty papers and same shitty government officials instantly wailed on about encryption and people were scared. Subsequently after police work it was found that no encryption was used by the attackers. They just used primitive methods and open communication devices to organise themselves (
http://prntscr.com/fcoczu). So why the instant shouts against encryption? Can anyone believe I would be cynical enough to think they had ulterior motives? Really? could they?
It feels so gratifying to know that the very same turd of a home secretary that knew it was best to cut the police aggressively to save them from increasing tax on the overly wealthy or from having to stop giving politicians pay rises out of line with the rest of the public sector stood in front of us and patronised us that we needed the soldiers on our streets because we don't have enough armed police. I'm sure we could have protected a few more venues if shites like Blair didn't have large armed police presences on every single one of his fucking 'property portfolio'. What a great use of resources, go to war illegally for dire reasons, lie about it, profit from other treasury decisions you guys make whilst in power, retire whilst patronising the world that you are the guy to help bring peace deals and who should be paid exceptionally large amounts for his wisdom but because now that 'could cause some distress' he needs constant armed guards, not just where he is but all of his properties. Yeh seems a great use of resources.
What's next? we want more numbers related policing, we haven't got our 7 baddies of the month so we start going down the American route and just setup mentally disabled people, provide them the tools and fake bombs they need, put them on the bus (because they are too disabled to get there themselves and don't even have the funds for a bus ticket) then come in make the super important arrest, parrot it through some shitty state propaganda media organisation and pat everyone on the back for making us more safe, whilst saying look at these figures, so many arrests, much terrorism, we need more money and bigger budgets. Rinse repeat. (
https://theintercept.com/2015/07/13/another-terror-arrest-another-mentally-ill-man-armed-fbi/ & https://theintercept.com/2015/03/16/howthefbicreatedaterrorist/ are just a very quick start of these).
Cliffs -
general public are ignorant turds
IC are underfunded and under respected
politicians are charlatan twatbags
encryption is good, politicians lie
expertise/experts > charlatans
cliffs > walls of text
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