2015 American Politics Thread: The 114th Congress Is in the House!

@Reuters
BREAKING: San Bernardino shooters did not post support for jihad on social media: FBI

@ggreenwald
Reminder that believing whatever the government claims, laundered by the media, is bad for your intellectual health

yeah it wasn't social media it was just private messaging (why does anyone think this matters)

because if it was on public social media rather than in private messages, it would be much more likely to be discovered when processing her visa paperwork

i thought the claim was that she pledged allegiance to ISIS on social media while the attack was ongoing, which would be long after her visa paperwork was approved

handling assault weapons and your iPhone simultaneously is pretty adroit

Oh, was it? I honestly have not been closely following the details of all of this due to fatigue.

yeah I get that. I'm just generally not interested in the particulars of the backgrounds of these types of attacks, feeding into mythical "if only" scenarios. There's no real way to 100% predict and prevent these kind of attacks. There's basic things that can be done to minimize them (limiting availability of weapons, primarily) but I feel like any retroactive fingerpointing is largely pointless.

xxp

Monday's LA Times:

"San Bernardino shooter Tashfeen Malik sent at least two private messages on Facebook to a small group of Pakistani friends in 2012 and 2014, pledging her support for Islamic jihad and saying she hoped to join the fight one day, two top federal law enforcement officials said Monday.

The new details indicate U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies missed warnings on social media that Malik was a potential threat before she entered the United States on a K-1 fiancee visa in July 2014."

we should've drone bombed her for thought crime

if we are going to start targeting people based on Facebook posts a whole lot of people are going to jail

kind of amazing we have the NSA and PRISM and vast overreach of our privacy and yet Homeland Security forgot to look at Facebook, perhaps the single largest public database of information

adam i feel like these two impulses of yours: targeting ppl based on fb posts is wrong and why isn't the NSA better at targeting ppl based on fb posts, are mutually exclusive complaints.

raising taxes on the rich fucks would flush our security coffers with cash. if a ragtag chump group like ISIS is a threat then we need 90% on the top bracket at least to catch up

"San Bernardino shooter Tashfeen Malik sent at least two private messages on Facebook to a small group of Pakistani friends in 2012 and 2014, pledging her support for Islamic jihad and saying she hoped to join the fight one day, two top federal law enforcement officials said Monday.

The new details indicate U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies missed warnings on social media that Malik was a potential threat before she entered the United States on a K-1 fiancee visa in July 2014."

this isn't talking about facebook "posts", it's talking about private messages. so i don't understand...is there outrage that NSA didn't read their private messages??

just trying to reconcile an all-encompassing surveillance state targeting life threatening terrorist that forgets to check the most basic thing that gets looked at if you apply for a job.

private messages?

xxp: essentially yes, because initial reporting made it seem like these were sent as public posts rather than private messages

it's one thing to criticize them for not combing through publicly shared facebook posts, but...they were private (according to the LA times thing morbs posted. I haven't been following this closely so sorry if they were actually public facebook posts or I'm missing something blindingly obvious). and if they did read their private messages, before Malik entered on a Visa, that would also mean that they would have to read EVERYONE's private messages. so...uh, no outrage from me.

I don't think the NSA should be allowed to read everyone's private FB messages but they should be allowed to read the private FB messages of people who are going to do terrorism, sorry that's just how I feel.

sir, you have my vote

anyone can do terrorism, it's very democratic that way

the presidential huoynhms instantly converted it to "they were announcing jihad on Facebook"

(or however Swift spelled it)

xpost
but the criticism is that they didn't catch her private messages sent BEFORE they granted the visa, right? so the thought process would have to be "OK, we have a visa application...let me go ahead and read her private messages to check for terrorism" unless they had another reason to believe that she could be involved in terrorism.

Why didn't they read Malik's diary entry from 2007 before giving her a Visa? She laid out her evil intentions in there, as well as which boys are supercute

do they still ask "are u gonna do a terrorism?" on the visa form? we should double check

do you swear you're not a terrorist?
do you swear that you're not crossing your fingers behind your back as you complete this form?
AND YOUR TOES!?!??!

yeah it wasn't social media it was just private messaging (why does anyone think this matters)

― Οὖτις, Thursday, December 17, 2015 12:29 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is going to be used as an argument for government access to encrypted communication

http://i.imgur.com/03P6ZV5.jpg

i answered all their riddles

and ironically i posted a screenshot of my answers on facebook

this is going to be used as an argument for government access to encrypted communication

Obama and Clinton leading the pack

looking forward to the gov't demanding access to plans scribbled on cocktail napkins

But what about the things that people just think about scribbling on cocktail napkins? There has to be a way for them to tap into those thoughts, as well, or we'll never be safe.

do they still ask "are u gonna do a terrorism?" on the visa form? we should double check

you joke but El-Al asks questions like that all the time

that screenshot i posted is from USCIS form I-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker

doesnt el al interrogate the shit out of you at customs?

I mean not me bc my name is Mordechai and I wear a yarmulke but yes

A Brooklyn couple discussed their El Al interrogation at a Hanukkah party I went to last weekend. "Do you go to temple? Why not?" He's a secular Jew, she's Gentile; she advised him to play it cool, she wound up losing her temper at them.

an argument for government access to encrypted communication

lol like they don't already have this

oh yeah, I think even the US re-entry form has something akin to "did you talk to some terrorists?"

they don't have a "back door," is their story? xp

take it to the gay thread, champ

there aren't any backdoors to major encryption software, the main "side door" to a lot of corporate authentication tokens was discovered (the encryption was good but the key generation was bad) and no one uses RSA tokens anymore

the majority of things people think are "encrypted" really aren't, though, or you can be legally compelled to provide access. so no, the government likely has no real way to break good encryption now, but nobody who has been a threat has actually used any encryption worth mentioning

mh u are my hero

if The Fort and The Feebs had reliable ways of cracking encryption their bosses probably wouldn't spend quite so much time bitching and whining about it in public

Tomboto u are also my hero

they're gonna have to waterboard me to find out "w33ab00bs" is my password

our government probably already has a back window they can secretly crawl though. they just want to use a door because they're getting fat

Discussion re Paris terrorists and encrypted messages

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/paris-terrorists-used-whatsapp-telegram-plot-attacks-according-investigators-1533880

Officials involved in the investigation of the Paris terror attacks have revealed they believe some of the terrorists used encrypted apps WhatsApp and Telegram to plot and communicate.

.....Those close to the investigation state "the apps were used in communication among the terrorists" – however exactly what was said may never be known as the encryption is impossible to crack. The terrorists also frequently swapped out sim cards in their mobile phones to avoid surveillance.

However some unencrypted data was recovered from at least one mobile phone, where the user may have slipped up and used a different form of communication. The investigation continues as officials attempt to string together further clues.

The news the terrorists used encrypted messaging apps to operate will strengthen the case for governments who are currently fighting tech companies with court orders to allow them access to data. Apple's iMessage and WhatsApp (owned by Facebook) are just two platforms that offer encryption even they cannot decipher.

the presidential huoynhms

footnote: the huoyhnhnms were the noble ones; the yahoos were the filthy, smelly, disgusting creatures.