[HN Gopher] The Met commissioner: Tech giants make it impossible...
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The Met commissioner: Tech giants make it impossible to stop
terrorists
Author : mcc1ane
Score : 33 points
Date : 2021-09-12 19:50 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| Quillbert182 wrote:
| I'm sorry, but I would rather have the privacy encryption gives
| me than safety adding a backdoor would provide. Not to mention
| that authoritarian governments would abuse such a system left and
| right.
| baal80spam wrote:
| > I'm sorry
|
| Don't be. It's the only sensible opinion on this.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I agree with this except for the part where Safety and Backdoor
| are in the same sentence.
| esalman wrote:
| Police like this person are lazy. They are interested in blanket
| wiretapping, because it is too much work to go to a judge to try
| to justify taking away someone's property (PC, phone etc.) to
| access encryption keys.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Dear LEO everywhere. Whatever safety you pretend I'd get by
| letting you break everyone's encryption, I am declining it.
| pydry wrote:
| I don't understand how this woman became police commissioner.
| She's only ever failed and somehow that only ever led to
| promotions or commendations (e.g. a CBE).
|
| Her main achievement prior to becoming commissioner was heading
| up a botched anti-terrorism operation that ended up with an
| innocent Brazilian plumber being shot in the head.
|
| Her main achievement since becoming commissioner was obstructing
| an investigation into police corruption:
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jun/15/daniel-morga...
| [deleted]
| botwriter wrote:
| Shes a lesbian with the surname Dick... Maybe the stereotypes
| about police officers being kids who were bullied at school are
| right...
| zakary wrote:
| > Her main achievement since becoming commissioner was
| obstructing an investigation into police corruption
|
| I think you have your answer. She's a "team player" as far as
| the police ans the government are concerned. As with any
| organisation, promotions are contingent not on doing a 'good'
| job, but on doing what the higher ups consider to be in their
| interests. It would seem the senior management in her
| department have made their priorities clear
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| You do what is a measured, not what is right. That's how you
| succeed in corporate America at least.
| leashless wrote:
| Skill in covering up failure is the key to success in British
| politics. Have you seen our Prime Minister?
| mnd999 wrote:
| I've noticed she always (at least publicly) backs her officers
| no matter how badly they mess up. I guess that makes her
| popular in the force.
| rvense wrote:
| Jean Charles de Menezes was 27 when he was murdered by police
| officers at Stockwell Station in London, a few weeks after the
| July 7th attacks in 2005.
|
| He was wearing a suspiciously big jacket when he left his flat.
| He lived near someone who was being surveilled in relation to
| the attacks, and word went over the radios that a guy was
| coming - the guy is coming - he's going into the tube - look at
| the jacket, he must be wearing a bomb belt... he was rushed by
| cops, pinned to the ground(!) and shot in the head. That was
| that for Jean Charles. Another innocent fallen on the home
| front of the terror wars.
|
| There was a dragged out, unsatisfactory investigation, and some
| grumbling, unconvincing placement of blame, no punishments and
| no change to procedures. All these years after it still makes
| me mad as hell.
| mjw1007 wrote:
| He was not wearing a suspiciously big jacket. That was a lie
| propagated by the police, which evidently many people still
| believe.
|
| See eg
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/tube-shooting-
| wh...
| rvense wrote:
| I see. Thank you for that. I'm not English but I was there
| at the time and I remember most of these stories - that he
| jumped the barrier and looked Asian and all that, all crap.
|
| I actually also heard that the police man shouted "yippie
| ki-yay, motherfucker" before firing, maybe I'll start
| repeating that one instead.
| stefan_ wrote:
| CSAM is terrorism now? Did the BBC mix up their notes on what
| nonsense to push as they work to end encryption?
| supernova87a wrote:
| No, let's be clear about the constraints and make an actual
| statement that would be correct:
|
| _New technology, plus our societal expectations / policies on
| privacy and anonymity, freedom of trade and commerce, and
| individual rights, make fighting terrorism difficult._
|
| There are plenty of places that show that technology alone isn't
| the single factor making things difficult. It's our desires for
| everything else at the same time that is the set of constraints
| needing balancing.
| Ms-J wrote:
| I am so tired of the lies. Encryption doesn't stop you from
| 'catching bad guys,' it only stops you from mass-spying.
|
| Furthermore, I'd argue that the real 'bad guys' in the present
| day is LE its self. The acts that are punished these days are
| things like personal drug use, protesting, unfair tax evasion,
| human rights demonstrations, and whistle-blowing. All things that
| the people would like to engage in but the government wants to
| squash at all costs.
|
| Again, who are the actual criminals??
| christkv wrote:
| Exactly how did they ever manage to catch all the bad guys
| before all this surveillance powers. I guess doing proper
| police work?
| mrlonglong wrote:
| Cressida Dick was the one who gave the order to kill Carlos
| Mendes after MI5 wrongly identified him as a known terrorist on
| their watch list. In fact Carlos was innocent. Clowns to put it
| mildly.
| mcc1ane wrote:
| Jean Charles de Menezes
| mrlonglong wrote:
| I knew I should have checked the name, it's been years. But
| thanks.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| The horsemen of the privacy Apocalypse. Its always kiddie porn,
| terrorists or drugs.
| bob229 wrote:
| The bbc is garbage. Stop sharing it. Also the Met commissioner is
| an idiot and no one should listen to her
| firebaze wrote:
| Credibility 2.0. https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/ecu/mayday-the-
| canister-on-the...
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| Dick by name... Dick by nature. It's like an actual fetish with
| these people. Securocrats.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| That explains the massive number of terror attacks we've seen in
| London then.
|
| The most effective way we reduced terror attacks in the past was
| with negotiated peace in Northern Ireland. Effectiveness of
| attacks was also reduced with physical security like cast
| iron/concrete bollards making truck bombs (or more recent
| developments like driving a van into lots of people) harder.
| Terror attacks in the U.K. today tend to come from poorly
| organised Islamists and neo-nazis who don't really do
| _significant_ amounts of harm (but maybe you would disagree with
| me on that--the IRA were mostly interested in harming property
| rather than people unlike today's attackers) and I'm not really
| suggesting negotiated peace here. I suspect that increased
| prosperity (and people being optimistic about their futures) in
| the U.K. and perhaps certain places abroad would reduce attacks
| but obviously that is hard to achieve and any effect is hard to
| measure.
|
| Perhaps technology companies and encryption would be a bigger
| deal if terrorists were more competent but at the moment their
| opsec seems poor with many foiled plots (apparently--maybe these
| plots were exaggerated or never really viable) and only minor
| successes.
| jon-wood wrote:
| > Effectiveness of attacks was also reduced with physical
| security like cast iron/concrete bollards making truck bombs.
|
| Somewhat off topic, but I do wonder if some of these have been
| a net negative in terms of people injured. Shortly after
| someone drove a van along the pavement on Westminster Bridge
| all the major bridges had concrete barriers built between the
| road and pavement, and while I see the reasoning for it, it
| does seem to me that cyclists who could previously fall
| relatively harmlessly onto the pavement if caught alongside a
| bus or other vehicle are now going to be dragged along a
| concrete blockade instead.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| There are some that think that cyclists should have their own
| separated ways the same way pedestrians do.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Yeah I dislike a lot of the barriers on the bridges. Even the
| large iron/concrete barriers on the pavement are inconvenient
| for pedestrians (they are narrow choke points if a lot of
| people are crossing and must be particularly bad for those in
| wheelchairs.) I would much rather they were bollards that
| were easier for people to pass between but perhaps they would
| be insufficient at stopping motor vehicles.
| the-dude wrote:
| Do you have examples of the neo-nazi attacks?
| OneEyedRobot wrote:
| Is that a problem there?
|
| Looking at this long list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List
| _of_terrorist_incidents_in...
|
| all I'm seeing is "a neo-Nazi with paranoid schizophrenia
| carried out nail bomb attacks over three weekends" in 1999.
| hogFeast wrote:
| Yes, there are a number of banned neo-Nazi organizations in
| the UK. Combat 18 is probably the most well-known (British
| Movement, White Wolves...there are a few).
|
| These groups are offshoots of political parties, as fascist
| parties started to splinter in the 90s as it became less
| acceptable to be overly racist/fascist. Under Tyndall the
| BNP, which was a political party, was very violent (Combat
| 18 supposedly provided "protection" for their rallies). No
| terrorism but organising attacks on minority groups
| certainly (in the early 90s before Nazi groups went
| underground, there was a strong link with football
| hooliganism as certain clubs had groups that were overtly
| racist...Birmingham's firm is the only one I am aware of
| that wasn't racist). Tbh, these groups are more like
| criminal gangs in the US than anything else (and they had
| very little electoral success until Griffin moved the party
| away from overt fascism).
|
| Also, it is worth pointing out that Copeland was a member
| of the BNP. He was obviously a nutjob but he was closely
| associated with the party, and the overt racism/violent
| rallies was still part of the BNP until the late 90s (and
| even after Griffin took over).
|
| The UK also had a brief period in the early 2000s, before
| Islamic terrorism really took off and after right-wing
| groups started to really lose steam, where environmental
| terrorism was the main source of attacks. Environmental
| groups sent anthrax to academics who experimented with
| animals, and groups (iirc, ALF) were trying to bomb animal
| testing facilities (that is why animal testing facilities
| in the UK usually have multiple rings of barbed wire 20ft
| high, guard posts, cameras everywhere...I actually live
| near one of these places, and it was built when this was
| picking up: no signposts at all, tiny one-car road down to
| the facility, forest completely surrounds it so you can't
| see it from anywhere else, not built near any main road).
|
| Btw, the whole premise of the original argument is
| ludicrous...these groups know they are being watched. I am
| sure that online communications are used after suspect has
| been identified but indoctrination is largely happening
| within in-person groups. With Islamic fundamentalism, it is
| same mosques, it is the same groups of people. I don't
| think any level of surveillance will stop lone wolf attacks
| either.
| OneEyedRobot wrote:
| That's a good answer, although the neo-Nazi groups appear
| more dangerous in terms of what they might do not what
| they do.
|
| It seems to me that the real threat here isn't so much
| terrorism (or things that rhyme) but given the amount of
| surveillance in the UK just which sorts of terrorism are
| allowed by the government.
|
| Groups that are allowed to do bad things become a sort of
| defacto government paramilitary. That's the case where
| there's a real force multiplier.
| enteeentee wrote:
| Not sure if by Neo-nazi you mean right wing terrorist
| attacks, but a growing number have been foiled.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58512901
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Right, Neo-nazi was too specific a word to use. I was
| generally referring to far-right (or often the mix of far-
| right and some psychological condition) attacks. A
| recentish example is
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Finsbury_Park_attack
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| >a growing number have been foiled
|
| The lesson here being that plots are foiled without
| breaking encryption for everyone.
|
| I'd sooner trust an honest police chief who just admitted
| "Look. What we really want is to be able to snoop thru your
| personal data anytime we like, preferably w/o any
| oversight."
| PaddleFish wrote:
| UK has a massive elephant in the room when it comes to
| terrorist attacks in the UK as the vast majority come from a
| certain minority group in the UK.
|
| The UK has to skew figures convicted people of right wing
| terrorism for literal thought crime. A guy was charged for
| his political views and for owning legal to own books the
| judge even said he didn't have any evidence the man was going
| to commit a terroist act.
|
| Unfortunately all videos on crimebodges YouTube channel have
| been hidden so I can't find the link
| eynsham wrote:
| Off the top of my head, broadly right-wing attacks include
| the murders of Jo Cox and Md Saleem. There was also this
| incident: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/man-stabbed-
| during-vio.... I may have forgotten some.
| [deleted]
| snarf21 wrote:
| The most revealing thing about all these calls for back doors
| "for the children" and "to stop terrorists is that I never
| truly realized that child exploitation and terrorism were
| invented around 1996. It is also interesting that we never
| caught any criminals involved in these things before 1996. Pay
| phones were a pretty hard thing to track and monitor back in
| the day and we never had calls to outlaw them.
|
| Solarwinds gives me no incentive to trust in the technical
| competence of any law or government group.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| This is nonsense. The word terrorism dates back to the French
| Revolution and Britain dealt with many bombings from the IRA
| before 1996 (as well as earlier Irish republicans, militant
| suffragettes, etc.)
|
| Child exploitation has been a known problem for a long time
| too. I think it is easy to brush off as a problem that
| doesn't really exist if it is very distant from your
| experience of the world (eg how many paedophiles do you
| know?) but my understanding is that tech companies with user-
| generated-content deal with an absolutely horrific amount of
| CSEM. I don't think it is reasonable to simple talk about
| liberty and brush the problem away when it comes up.
|
| Internet-based communication and encryption change the
| possibilities for communication and it seems hard for laws to
| be particularly helpful in achieving a state that is good for
| liberty and good for society.
|
| Personally, I think it is a good thing that, end-to-end
| encrypted group chats are somewhat limited in size, 256 for
| WhatsApp and 1000 for signal. I think 1000 is too many. In
| liberal democracies, I think at some group size, free speech
| ought to be semi-public speech too (though I guess it can be
| with informants within the group)
| tomp wrote:
| > Perhaps technology companies and encryption would be a bigger
| deal if terrorists were more competent but at the moment their
| opsec seems poor with many foiled plots
|
| Exactly, attackers usually have piss poor OpSec but the police
| is even more incompetent. That's why even for the few
| successful attacks it's usually later reported "the attacker
| was known to the police" or "under surveillance by security
| services ", and yet... not sure how more surveillance would
| help, it seems they already have more leads than they can act
| upon.
|
| (Disclaimer: I don't know how many unsuccessful attacks there
| are, so maybe they're not _as_ incompetent as it seems from
| outside.)
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I assume lone wolf attackers are harder to foil.
|
| Personally I don't really mind if security services are
| stretched a bit thin as it makes overreaching harder (but
| perhaps being stretched thin makes them want more mass
| surveillance)
| calpaterson wrote:
| > the IRA were mostly interested in harming property rather
| than people unlike today's attackers
|
| I think this is an exaggeration. Some IRA bombs damaged
| only/mainly property but the IRA also killed hundreds of people
| and not by accident.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Irish_Republican_A...
|
| I don't really agree that IRA attacks were ended by a
| negotiated settlement (GFA) either. That's a bit like saying
| that the the USSR dissolved because the Berlin wall came down.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Zero legs to stand on with that one. Someone whose job is to
| manage crime has no interest in stopping or preventing it, and
| their only interest is using crime as leverage for more powers
| and budget authority. This person presides over the most invasive
| domestic surveillance panopticon in the history of the world.
| There's no moral case or basis in fact for new powers, the public
| comment is just a signal or tracer flare for something else.
|
| If I had private security and my house were broken into, I'd fire
| the security people and find new ones who could do the job, not
| let them move into my living room. Given the tools and resources
| they already have, the government should reduce police budgets
| and workforce every time there is a purse snatching so that they
| have some skin in the game.
| seasily wrote:
| The UK's immigration policy wrt. certain places 10-1000x more
| prone to violent crimes make it harder to stop terrorism
| Lammy wrote:
| "A form of psychological manipulation through warfare to the
| purpose of political or religious gains, by means of deliberately
| creating a climate of fear amongst the inhabitants of a specific
| geographical region."
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| This is an excellent synopsis of what drives LEO's anti-
| encryption propaganda.
| detcader wrote:
| The public's focus on refusing to install police cameras in every
| room of their home is making it impossible to stop The Terrorists
| and costing thousands of lives. Bookstores' and libraries' focus
| on selling any book they choose without our approval makes it so
| Radicals can recruit anyone, anywhere and at any time resulting
| in countless people thinking hateful or incorrect things.
|
| Terrorism and violence has nothing to do with the police failing
| at their jobs or the upper classes gutting local communities,
| quality of life, art and spirituality or mismanaged and murderous
| foreign policy, or anything like that -- just give us more
| control and you will be happier and safer.
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