The government initially claimed that using Clipper would be
voluntary, that no one would be forced to use it instead of
other types of cryptography. But the public reaction against
the Clipper chip was strong, stronger than the government
anticipated. The computer industry monolithically proclaimed
its opposition to using Clipper. FBI director Louis Freeh
responded to a question in a press conference in 1994 by saying
that if Clipper failed to gain public support, and FBI wiretaps
were shut out by non-government-controlled cryptography, his
office would have no choice but to seek legislative
relief. Later, in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City tragedy,
Mr. Freeh testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that
public availability of strong cryptography must be curtailed by
the government (although no one had suggested that cryptography
was used by the bombers).
Sounds a bit like some of the conversations going on again, today. The last sentence in particular.
I'm trying to find a source. But when I was first introduced (well, investigated and made brief use of) PGP years ago I read an article on the history of it and Zimmerman. Terrorists were found to be using PGP in the 1990s. That they're using encryption is not new, the same discussion was around back then as we're having today, with many of the same features.
I posted that link on another comment. But it addresses this one to some extent, he also mentions that the terrorist use of encryption was a significant issue in the 1990s. Still can't find the source for my original comment.
French intelligence has heavily infiltrated the regional extremist Muslim community and they had no idea about these attacks in advance. Ergo, the terrorists were using encryption.
That was the speculation I heard the other evening on NPR, by someone lobbying to put limits on private citizens' use of strong crypto.
Yes, french HUMINT has heavily infiltrated extremist organizations, and failed to prevent this attack. It does not mean that it was the use of encryption that allowed ISIS/extremist organizations to execute this attack on french soil.
The french secret service approach is fundamentally different from the US, as they historically rely less on SIGINT.
I am not sure where I read it, but in presume the number of prevented attack is in the thousands.
Does this claim really need to be verified? I mean, pretty much everybody who has Internet access uses crypto these days, whether they're aware of it or not. Even some phones come with full-disk encryption by default now.
I don't know. My impression (from the few articles I saw mentioning crypto / video games) was that it was total speculation (probably before most facts were known) from some "official" source.
