“Angst” Against Encryption: National Security and the Surveillance State. The Global Crackdown

Monday, December 7, 2015
By Paul Martin

By Binoy Kampmark
Global Research
December 07, 2015

State bureaucracy has a universal operating rationale: if an error occurred because of a flaw in the system, an oversight perhaps, or because of ill-planning, the solution shall relate to something else. It should be termed the iron law of non-resolution. It is one that holds resolutely in intelligence and security circles.

For the vast sums being put into defence and security, states across the globe find themselves numerous steps behind anticipating attacks. The starkest illustration of this was the November 13 attacks on Paris, a cruel unmasking of the national security state’s inability to do what it was meant to. All that surveillance, all that eye-gazing and accumulation – to what end?

A notable point in all of this is that it took human indifference, an arrogant callousness that refused to accept intelligence from another agency. The excuse: security agencies get that all the time. Shrug the shoulders and go back to bed. Not that it was the sole cause – far from it – but it was fundamental. Errors are ultimately traceable to human agency.

The one system that remains a perceived friend and foe of government and state authorities in general is the Internet and the labyrinthine channels of communication it offers. It could not be anything else, being itself a child of the military. It was initially built to facilitate survival and secrecy, rather than its anti-twin, transparency. Unsurprisingly, it has become a rather vigorous battleground over encryption technologies.

Political representatives, feeling the pinch about the need to do something – anything – after a dramatic attack, have found the subject nearest to their loathing: encryption. Ranking intelligence committee chair Senator Dianne Feinstein from California has gone so far as to call encryption the Internet’s “Achilles’ heel” when it is, in fact, its invaluable, strengthened torso.[1]

Feinstein’s Jekyll-Hyde reasoning here is that privacy will be protected by the surveillance state because the State is not particularly interested in the frivolities of the ordinary citizen. It is the greatest canard of all: data collection programs, and the means to access communications data, actual serve a broader public good. We are the eyes in the background overseeing that good is done. But repeatedly, Feinstein’s assertions that such programs target “foreign governments, terrorist groups and overseas criminal syndicates” have been shown to be a product of either a deceptive mind, or at least an overly convinced one.

What a tease and annoyance encryption has become for intelligence and security personnel who struggle to fulfil their briefs. Chatter between terrorist cells, it was said, took place discretely and secretly. Yet even French authorities admit that the November 13 attacks were not facilitated by encrypted communications.

Many such attacks tend to be preceded by boisterousness, a screech promising martyrdom plastered across social media postings. A notable feature of ISIS recruits and others who have joined the jihadi fruit salad of brutal converts is their distinct inability to shut up. Gabble before you die. If you want to find them, just scroll down the lists, scour the search engines, and sip your coffee.

The Rest…HERE

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