29 March 2015

Europol Chief Warns Of Terrorist Threat From Encrypted Communications

     Sunday, 29 March 2015, LONDON - Europol Chief Rob Wainwright told BBC Radio Live 5 that encrypted communications and those on the "dark net" made anonymously have become the biggest problem for law enforcement seeking to monitor terrorist communications. Mr. Wainwright who is the chief of Europe's police acknowledged that Edward Snowden's revelations about the enormous scope of unconstitutional NSA and criminal GCHQ spying on ordinary citizens' communications was the basis for the universal distrust by technology companies and ordinary citizens of the US and UK agencies and their governments for repugnant enormous continuing violations of individuals' fundamental privacy rights.
     Incidentally in "Citizen Four" the film about Mr. Snowden's path through making his astounding revelations of secret government abuses of enormous global proportions against citizens' fundamental liberties which earlier this year as covered in the Ninth Amendment won the Academy Award for best documentary film Mr. Snowden in one aside when the GCHQ comes up in conversation states to two select reporters present with him in his Hong Kong hotel room that the abuses of the British GCHQ were even significantly wider-ranging than the NSA's  (which it seems hard to believe is even possible although in any case the NSA and GCHQ are partners in crime and share their illegally gained citizen surveillance information).
     Mr. Wainwright said that law enforcement was trying hard to regain the trust of technology companies who increasingly are working to make encryption of communications available to individuals. The Ninth Amendment editorial board suggests that this seems a tall order and questions exactly how law enforcement is "trying" as neither U.S. officials including President Obama, the head of the NSA, the FBI chief, CIA chief murderer John Brennan, nor their British government counterparts are known to the Ninth Amendment to have given any indication that they intend to cease their repugnant and blatantly unconstitutional and illegal universal spying practices against ordinary citizens. In fact quite the opposite from all news accounts.
     One issue looming in the U.S. is that certain sections of the so-called "Patriot Act" the misuse of which blatantly unconstitutional legislation has appalled even its original congressional sponsor face sunset provisions in coming months which will kill significant provisions of the cynically misnamed Patriot Act failing congressional intervention (the Obama administration favors the continuation of these provisions in force but so far has claimed it will not intervene if Congress fails to act to preserve these provisions).
     Europol Chief Wainwright in warning of encrypted communications as the biggest problem facing law enforcement which presumably would include those available on certain email accounts most notably the allegedly most NSA-proof encrypted free ProtonMail also covered here in an earlier Ninth Amendment post as well as in many new apps including for cellphones being made widely available specifically referenced his concerns about Apple's new cellphones with encryption that is apparently uncrackable by law enforcement who have been provided no "backdoor" key with which to capture cellphone users every word.  
     Another area of significant concern to law enforcement is the so-called "dark net" which can be accessed easily with the U.S. government created publicly available for free immediate download "Tor" browser which although the FBI claims at least once to have cracked apparently only has endpoint vulnerability which if not exploited makes internet communications impossible to trace. Finally Europol Chief Wainwright also specifically warned of threats posed by availability of social media to terrorists. Mr. Wainwright claimed that IS (aka ISIS aka ISIL) has at least 50,000 Twitter accounts tweeting upwards of 100,000 messages a day.      In response to such challenges facing totally discredited law enforcement which has disgusted entire nations Mr. Wainwright claims that Europol is now setting up a European Internet Referral Unit to identify and remove internet sites used by terrorist organisations. The Ninth Amendment would like to point out that it most likely would be difficult to remove Twitter from online existence. In any case Mr. Wainwright unbelievably went on to apparently even better his American counterparts in criminal surveillance ambitions to state that existing laws are "deficient" and law enforcement should be able to monitor all areas of the online world. Europol Chief Wainwright's reported remarks concluded with him saying "[w]e have to make sure we reach the right balance by ensuring that the fundamental principles of privacy are upheld so there's a lot of work for legislators and tech firms to do".
     The Ninth Amendment will not be holding its breath. Interested readers will find more information on the above at the link below to the BBC News Tech article reporting on the BBC Live 5 interview with Europol Chief Wainwright also providing further links.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32087919

Copyright 2015 Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved

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