The Paris Attacks Are Being Used to Justify Agendas They Have Nothing to Do With
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/the_paris_attacks_are_being_used_to_justify_agendas_that_20151120/
Posted on Nov 20, 2015
Georgie Pauwels / CC BY 2.0
The aftermath of the Paris terrorist attacks has “devolved into a dark and
dishonest debate” in which governments consider banning encryption and barring
Syrian refugees from entering their countries—even though the attackers were
neither Syrian nor refugees and there’s no evidence they used encryption to
communicate, Trevor Timm writes at The Guardian.
First, there’s the loud “we need to ban encryption” push that immediately
spawned hundreds of articles and opinions strongly pushed by current and former
intelligence officials the day or two after the attacks, despite the government
quietly admitting there was no evidence that the attackers used encryption to
communicate. It was a masterful PR coup: current and former intelligence
officials got to sit through a series of fawning interviews on television where
they were allowed to pin any of their failures on Edward Snowden and encryption
– the bedrock of privacy and security for hundreds of millions of innocent
people – with virtually no pushback, or any critical questions about their own
conduct.
The entire encryption subject became a shiny scapegoat while the truth slowly
trickled in: as of Tuesday, it was clear that American and/or French
intelligence agencies had seven of the eight identified attackers on their
radar prior to the attacks. The attackers used Facebook to communicate. The one
phone found on the scene showed the terrorists had coordinated over unencrypted
SMS text messages – just about the easiest form of communication to wiretap
that exists today. (The supposed ringleader even did an interview in Isis’s
English magazine in February bragging that he was already in Europe ready to
attack.) …
As dishonest as the “debate” over encryption has been, the dark descension of
the Republican party into outright racism and cynically playing off the
irrational fears of the public over the Syrian refugee crisis has been worse.
We now know the attackers weren’t Syrian and weren’t even refugees. It was a
cruel rumor or hoax that one was thought to have come through Europe with a
Syrian passport system, but that was cleared up days ago. But in the world of
Republican primaries, who cares about facts? …
It doesn’t matter that the US has a robust screening system that has seen over
750,000 refugees come to the United States without incident – the
Republican-led House has now voted to grind the already intensive screening
process to a virtual halt (they were disgracefully joined by many Democrats).
Chris Christie said the US should refuse widows and orphans. Rand Paul
introduced a law to bar the entire Muslim world from entering the US as
refugees. Donald Trump has suggested he would digitally track every Muslim in
the county.
Continue reading here.
—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.
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Used to Justify Agendas They Have Nothing to Do With</H1><H6><A
href="http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/the_paris_attacks_are_being_used_to_justify_agendas_that_20151120/";>http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/the_paris_attacks_are_being_used_to_justify_agendas_that_20151120/</A></H6><p
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Paris Attacks Are Being Used to Justify Agendas They Have Nothing to Do With
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data-url="http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/print/the_paris_attacks_are_being_used_to_justify_agendas_that_20151120";><p
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2015</H4><p class="printlinks"><FONT face="georgia, times new roman, times,
serif"><p class="article_main_image"><P><IMG width="590" height="377" alt=""
src="http://www.truthdig.com/images/eartothegrounduploads/14918770014_ddec741c6a_z.jpg";
border="0"> </P><P align="right"
class="article_main_imagecaptionsimple"><SMALL><A title="Georgie Pauwels"
href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/frosch50/";>Georgie Pauwels</A> / <A
title="CC BY 2.0" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/";>CC BY
2.0</A></SMALL></P></DIV><P>The aftermath of the Paris terrorist attacks has
“devolved into a dark and dishonest debate†in which governments consider
banning encryption and barring Syrian refugees from entering their
countries—even though the attackers were neither Syrian nor refugees and
there’s no evidence they used encryption to communicate, Trevor Timm writes
at <B>The Guardian</B>.</P><BLOCKQUOTE><P>First, there’s the loud “we need
to ban encryption†push that immediately spawned hundreds of articles and
opinions strongly pushed by current and former intelligence officials the day
or two after the attacks, despite the government quietly admitting there was no
evidence that the attackers used encryption to communicate. It was a masterful
PR coup: current and former intelligence officials got to sit through a series
of fawning interviews on television where they were allowed to pin any of their
failures on Edward Snowden and encryption – the bedrock of privacy and
security for hundreds of millions of innocent people – with virtually no
pushback, or any critical questions about their own conduct.</P><P>The entire
encryption subject became a shiny scapegoat while the truth slowly trickled in:
as of Tuesday, it was clear that American and/or French intelligence agencies
had seven of the eight identified attackers on their radar prior to the
attacks. The attackers used Facebook to communicate. The one phone found on the
scene showed the terrorists had coordinated over unencrypted SMS text messages
– just about the easiest form of communication to wiretap that exists today.
(The supposed ringleader even did an interview in Isis’s English magazine in
February bragging that he was already in Europe ready to attack.) …</P><P>As
dishonest as the “debate†over encryption has been, the dark descension of
the Republican party into outright racism and cynically playing off the
irrational fears of the public over the Syrian refugee crisis has been worse.
We now know the attackers weren’t Syrian and weren’t even refugees. It was
a cruel rumor or hoax that one was thought to have come through Europe with a
Syrian passport system, but that was cleared up days ago. But in the world of
Republican primaries, who cares about facts? …</P><P>It doesn’t matter that
the US has a robust screening system that has seen over 750,000 refugees come
to the United States without incident – the Republican-led House has now
voted to grind the already intensive screening process to a virtual halt (they
were disgracefully joined by many Democrats). Chris Christie said the US should
refuse widows and orphans. Rand Paul introduced a law to bar the entire Muslim
world from entering the US as refugees. Donald Trump has suggested he would
digitally track every Muslim in the county.</P></BLOCKQUOTE><P>Continue reading
<A title="here"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/20/paris-attacks-political-agenda-immigration-encryption-surveillence?CMP=share_btn_tw";>here</A>.</P><P><I>—Posted
by <A title="Alexander Reed Kelly"
href="http://www.truthdig.com/alexander_kelly";>Alexander Reed Kelly</A>.</I>
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