Strong Crypto Is Not The Problem: Manchester And London Attackers Were Known To The Authorities

from the adding-hay-to-the-stack-makes-it-harder-to-find-the-needles dept

Soon after the attack in Manchester, the UK government went back to its "encrypted communications are the problem" script, which it has rolled out repeatedly in the past. But it has now emerged that the suicide bomber was not only known to the authorities, but that members of the public had repeatedly warned about his terrorist sympathies, as the Telegraph reports:

Counter Terrorism agencies were facing questions after it emerged Salman Abedi told friends that "being a suicide bomber was okay", prompting them to call the Government's anti-terrorism hotline. Sources suggest that authorities were informed of the danger posed by Abedi on at least five separate occasions in the five years prior to the attack on Monday night.

Following the more recent attacks on London Bridge, the UK prime minister, Theresa May, has gone full banana republic dictator, declaring herself ready to rip up human rights "because terrorism". But once more, we learn that the attackers were well known to the authorities:

London attack ringleader Khuram Butt was identified as a major potential threat, leading to an investigation that started in 2015, UK counterterrorism sources tell CNN. … Butt was seen as a heavyweight figure in al-Muhajiroun, whose hardline views made him potentially one of the most dangerous extremists in the UK, the sources said Tuesday. The investigation into Butt involved a "full package" of investigatory measures, the sources told CNN.

Butt was filmed in a 2016 documentary with the self-explanatory title "The Jihadis Next Door", in which a black flag associated with ISIS was publicly unfurled in London's Regent’s Park. Even though police were present during the filming, they did not follow up that incident, according to the Guardian:

Police did not make a formal request for footage or information from the makers of a Channel 4 documentary that featured Khuram Butt, one of the London Bridge attackers. The broadcaster of The Jihadis Next Door said no police requests were made for film or programme maker's notes to be handed over under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act or Terrorism Act.

The UK authorities were warned last year about another of the London Bridge attackers,Youssef Zaghba, by Italian counter-terrorism officials:

An Italian prosecutor who led an investigation into the London Bridge attacker Youssef Zaghba has insisted that Italian officials did send their UK counterparts a written warning about the risk he posed last year and monitored him constantly while he was in Italy. Giuseppe Amato, the chief prosecutor in Bologna, who investigated Zaghba when he tried to travel from Italy to join Islamic State in Syria in March 2016, told the Guardian that information about the risk he posed was shared with officials in the UK. Amato added that he personally saw a report that had been sent to London by the chief counter-terrorism official in Bologna about the Moroccan-born Italian citizen.

Manchester and London are not the only cases where the authorities were informed in advance about individuals. A 2015 article in The Intercept looked at ten high-profile terrorist attacks around the world, and found that in every single case, at least some of the perpetrators were already known to the authorities. Strong encryption is not the problem: it is the inability of the authorities to act on the information they have that is the problem. That's not to suggest that the intelligence services and police were incompetent, or that there were serious lapses. It's more a reflection of the fact that far from lacking vital information because of end-to-end encryption, say, the authorities have so much information that they are forced to prioritize their scarce resources, and sometimes they pursue the wrong leads and miss threats.

We wrote about this problem back in 2014, when an FBI whistleblower confirmed what many have been trying to explain to governments keen to extend their surveillance powers: that when you are looking for a needle, adding more hay to the stack makes things worse, not better. What is needed is less mass surveillance, and a more targeted approach. Until Theresa May and leaders around the world understand and act on that, it is likely that more attacks will occur, carried out by individuals known to the authorities, and irrespective of whether they use strong crypto or not.

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Filed Under: attacks, encryption, fud, human rights, london, manchester, theresa may, uk