Here’s one that made me go “Hmmm”:
Cocaine trafficker, 28, was caught by police after moaning on encrypted phone network Encrochat about how Covid lockdown was affecting his international drug dealing business.
Now I don’t care about this asshole — he got 16 years, and that’s good — but I can’t help wondering…
No, I’m not wondering. It’s clear that all this encryption protection that the public imagines they’re getting is no more than a figleaf.
And yes I know, EncroChat was nothing more than a criminal enterprise facilitator — but remember that it’s the Fuzz who decides what exactly constitutes a “criminal enterprise”, and if they could penetrate EncroChat, they could have — and may already have — penetrated any encryption system or software.
Caveat emptor.
The guv-mint is listening and reading and spying on everyone. That’s why they want advanced electronics in everything. Your phones, computers, cars, refrigerators, lights, thermostats, you name it.
1984 wasn’t this scary… speaking of penetration, when the govt spies and someone gets arrested – I bet they go to a jail where there is no lack of further penetration – and not the electronic kind.
Anyone who thinks the interwebs are secure or anonymous is a fool.
https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/234191/what-encryption-did-encrochat-use-and-how-was-it-broken
Secrecy is *hard work* on the part of everyone in the system.
You can have security and anonymity on the internet, but you can’t *ever* screw it up, not even once.
Was it Henry Stimson who said “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail”?
Are there any “gentlemen” in government, or even Big Tech, today?
If you don’t want something printed on the front page of the NYT, don’t put it in an email or DM, or even a letter (quaint thought – writing letters).
That was a quote from some British Gentleman in charge of counterintelligence in WW2. I forget which book on spies and secret agents it was that had that quote in it.
It was Stimson. I had a mentor back in my younger days who told me if you can’t stand to see it on the this front page, don’t write it down. This was a guy whose father was a dam builder for Stalin, figured out he was going to be purged, and took his family out by walking across Siberia. My mentor was 6. He came by his paranoia honestly.
As a matter of fact, several of the well known encrypted communication programs were actually intentionally started by governments to lure in criminal elements to read their messages. And have been for years, covertly.
Wasn’t Encrochat a sting operation?
Trust nothing, especially if it has a battery in it. Yes your desktop computer has a battery.