David Cameron is going to try and ban encryption in Britain

Amp34 · 2 Jul 2015 at 12:00

Belly said:
True but......Just imagine yourself kneeling down in your orange jump suit with a camera crew in front of you and next to you is some guy with an English accent wearing a balaclava (you recognise him because he is the same guy who thrust a litre sized coke bottle up your rectum the night before and made you eat out of a filthy West Midlands' toilet) he brandishing a large kitchen knife and you're asked to criticise your own government before you get beheaded......

Well Richdog would you criticise the government if you knew that they could have decrypted the message sent from one terrorist to another which might have averted your capture but didn't do so because it broke down civil liberties? You would have to criticise them for something, otherwise it's back to the coke bottle, cancel the film crew until another fine day. Just a thought.

If you were in Syria/Iraq/Libya in the first place, along with the people that captured you then this legislation wouldn't have affected your capture in the first place...

Perhaps instead you should be criticising the government for destabilising these counties sin the first place and allowing ISIS to fill the vacuum.

Danthus · 2 Jul 2015 at 12:02

Amp34 said:
Do you have any evidence to suggest that worldwide terrorist attacks are becoming more frequent? Or do you just believe that actions are increasing because there is more action in the Middle East.

There have been attacks in various European countries.

Amp34 · 2 Jul 2015 at 12:02

C.R.A.Z.Y said:
Wow! The fear-mongering has worked a treat on you!!
I can't believe how impressionable and irrational many people are today, I'm heading off to West Africa in a couple of weeks and nearly everyone I tell think I'm crazy and keep going on about me catching ebola or having my head chopped off by some crazed terrorist

And the reality is you're probably more likely to get run over on your way to the airport in the UK...

Amp34 · 2 Jul 2015 at 12:03

OldCoals said:
There have been attacks in various European countries.

Yes there have, and there have for decades. What's you're point?

Danthus · 2 Jul 2015 at 12:04

Amp34 said:
Yes there have, and there have for decades. What's you're point?

The risk to the west is increasing.

Amp34 · 2 Jul 2015 at 12:14

OldCoals said:
The risk to the west is increasing.

Here is some evidence to go with the UK evidence earlier...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ETA_attacks
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_France

The number of attacks has gone down in recent years with the decrease in violence of separatist movements in the UK (IRA), Spain (ETA) and various movements in France (such as the Corsican separatist movement along with North african movements).

Terrorism has been a staple issue for decades in Western Europe, France having a particularly bad time against Islamists due to their control of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia over much of the 19th and early 20th century.

Richdog · 2 Jul 2015 at 12:14

Amp34 said:
Perhaps instead you should be criticising the government for destabilising these counties sin the first place and allowing ISIS to fill the vacuum.

This is also a hilarious truth... the areas that are now terrorist hotspots are many times worse than they ever were under the stable dictatorships of old... Saddam for all his faults was 100x civilised than ISIS, and at least, however cruel he could be, he had laws. Syria is also now in a similar situation.

We have created our own mess and instead of living with a lesser of two evils, we have now created chaos.

Belly · 2 Jul 2015 at 12:15

Amp34 said:
If you were in Syria/Iraq/Libya in the first place, along with the people that captured you then this legislation wouldn't have affected your capture in the first place...

Perhaps instead you should be criticising the government for destabilising these counties sin the first place and allowing ISIS to fill the vacuum.

You might have misread my post? I wrote West Midlands NOT Middle East.

Regarding criticising the government (labour - New - Old - All the same to me) who helped get us into this mess in the first place. Yes I'll criticise them for anything and everything and believe that some of them should be "hanging on a lamp post" Mussolini style.

Unfortunately it's a bit late to do anything to Sykes and Picot or the Liberal Government of 1916.

Haggisman · 2 Jul 2015 at 12:16

Richdog said:
If it is not encryption, it would be something else. No matter what technologies exist and are then broken, new ones will emerge and spies and terrorists with the correct skills will always find a way around something, just as they have been doing for centuries in any equivalent situation.

Exactly - it wouldn't take long* for an organisation with a couple of competent programmers to create a system to encrypt/decrypt messages.

* i.e. a few days

Amp34 · 2 Jul 2015 at 12:19

Belly said:
You might have misread my post? I wrote West Midlands NOT Middle East.

Regarding criticising the government (labour - New - Old - All the same to me) who helped get us into this mess in the first place. Yes I'll criticise them for anything and everything and believe that some of them should be "hanging on a lamp post" Mussolini style.

Unfortunately it's a bit late to do anything to Sykes and Picot or the Liberal Government of 1916.

I did read that but ignored it as it's such a far off idea that there was no point in replying.

That said do you believe that the same terrorist laws should apply to normal crimes in the UK (such as premeditated murder, organised crime, organising a house burglary, buying some weed)?

It's like Scorza insistance that many cities in the UK are no go areas because of Islamists.

C.R.A.Z.Y · 2 Jul 2015 at 12:20

OldCoals said:
The risk to the west is increasing.

Only in the minds of the gullible or people with very poor critical thinking!

Von Smallhausen · 2 Jul 2015 at 12:27

LateX'Dog said:
http://www.businessinsider.com/david-cameron-encryption-back-doors-iphone-whatsapp-2015-7

"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone." - David Cameron.

Well done conservative voters. Snoopers Charter is back with vengeance and now this.

A complete lack of a credible opposition didn't help matters.

Belly · 2 Jul 2015 at 12:29

C.R.A.Z.Y said:
Wow! The fear-mongering has worked a treat on you!!

No C.R.A.Z.Y I've always thought this way.

Amp34 · 2 Jul 2015 at 12:35

Interesting article about terrorist events since 1968.

http://m.jpr.sagepub.com/content/51/2/257.full

I haven't had the chance to read it fully but a skim seems to show it may be quite relevant to the discussion. It has a couple of charts as well.

scorza · 2 Jul 2015 at 12:43

Haggisman said:
Exactly - it wouldn't take long* for an organisation with a couple of competent programmers to create a system to encrypt/decrypt messages.

* i.e. a few days

Way to miss the point. Yes there'll always be "illegal" message tools that the security services will have difficulty decrypting, but you've got a whole new layer of problems like getting everyone on your network using it, risk of someone making a mistake and using the wrong problem, key management. I've seen nothing to suggest that the terrorists who carry out these atrocities are criminal masterminds - quite the opposite, it's too easy at the moment, I say it should be made more difficult.

Amp34 · 2 Jul 2015 at 12:46

Illegal, such as Tor?

Richdog · 2 Jul 2015 at 12:48

scorza said:
I've seen nothing to suggest that the terrorists who carry out these atrocities are criminal masterminds - quite the opposite, it's too easy at the moment, I say it should be made more difficult.

Sometimes I wonder if you are having a laugh or just really are talking form such an uninformed standpoint... you've seen nothing to suggest ISIS have technologically (or even militarily) skilled people? They have a dedicated cyber division, Google it!

In fact, if you think that ISIS is not backed and organised by some very skilled people then you must be bonkers... the grunts they send to do the actual dirty work are essentially expendable fanatics, and no representation of the real power behind the group.

scorza · 2 Jul 2015 at 12:49

Amp34 said:
Illegal, such as Tor?

Illegal as in not compliant with the law of the UK.

OhEsEcks · 2 Jul 2015 at 12:51

Amp34 said:
Illegal, such as Tor?

Tor isn't illegal? It's even sponsored by US intelligence services.

Belly · 2 Jul 2015 at 12:52

Amp34 said:
I did read that but ignored it as it's such a far off idea that there was no point in replying.

But you did reply :confused:

Amp34 said:
That said do you believe that the same terrorist laws should apply to normal crimes in the UK (such as premeditated murder, organised crime, organising a house burglary, buying some weed)?

I do! And for sounding horns in built up areas, dog fouling, stubbing out cigarettes on the pavements, posting snotagramms on social media (especially against Heather Watson) the list is almost endless.

I believe that everyone should have their DNA taken and biometric information should be taken from everyone entering and leaving the country. I believe it will happen in the future, possibly NOT in my lifetime but it will happen.

I remember picking up on something years ago, purely hypothetical of course, where a person was asked if he could travel back in time, knowing what he does now, and see Adolph Hitler in a cradle could he have smothered knowing full well what the future would bring and the person said that they would have been unable to have smothered him.

I really don't mind GCHQ monitoring my Skype/Viber messages to my friends in Kenya, keeping a record of my text messages, reading my emails, listening to my phone calls as long as they can do it to everyone else and only use that information if they thought a crime had been committed or a crime might be committed. I'd trust them to do that.