Terrorists used encrypted apps to plan, coordinate Paris attacks
Even if a court were to issue a warrant allowing the FBI to break into the messages, the device maker and service provider would not be able to comply: With end-to-end encryption devices, the manufacturer and service provider do not have the key to decrypt the messages – there is no back door.
Leaders of law enforcement and intelligence service argue that without such a back door, terrorists – and criminals – have achieved immunity from tracking and monitoring. The Internet has become a “haven for terrorists,” the director of Britain’s MI5 bitterly complained.
Officials familiar with the investigation into the 13 November Paris attacks have told CNN that the Islamist militants who perpetrated the attacks used encrypted apps to hide details of their plan. CNN noted that this is the first time investigators have confirmed encrypted messaging apps were used to plot the attacks.
Stars and Stripes reports that officials said that WhatsApp and Telegram were amongst the apps the terrorists used before and during the attacks.
Both apps use end-to-end encryption to keep users’ conversations, images, video, and audio messages private. There have been numerous reports that ISIS terrorists are using Telegram encrypted messaging.
Pavel Durov, the creator of Telegram, has said that following the Paris terrorist attacks, his company has blocked dozens of accounts associated with the jihadist Islamic State group (see “Telegram IM app recalibrates policies after Paris attacks,” HSNW, 20 November 2015).
In the immediate after math of the attacks, officials had confirmed they had found encrypted apps installed on the mobile phones recovered from the attack scenes, but would not confirm whether the apps had been used to plan the attacks.
Sources close to the investigation have now confirmed the terrorists used the encrypted messengers to communicate for a period before the attacks. What was said in those encrypted messages, and who sent and received these messages, may never be known, sources told CNN.
Earlier this year Prime Minister David Cameron spoke out about the danger inherent in allowing the use of end-to-end encryption.
“In our country, do we want to allow a means of communication between people which we cannot read?” he asked.
“My answer to that question is: ‘No, we must not’.
“We have always been able, on the authority of the Home Secretary, to sign a warrant and intercept a phone call, a mobile phone call or other media communications.
“But the question we must ask ourselves is whether, as technology develops, we are content to leave a safe space — a new means of communication — for terrorists to communicate with each other.”
The sources close to the Paris investigation say that the attackers also used a number of devices with unencrypted communication software. These attackers, however, were conscious of police surveillance and regularly changed the SIM cards in their phones to evade detection.
In his comments last week to a terrorism conference at New York Police Department headquarters, Comey said that “the use of encryption is at the center of terrorist trade craft.”
The number of technology companies offering end-to-end encryption has risen following the revelations of Edward Snowden about the NSA’s phone metadata collection program. These companies have so far resisted calls to create back doors in their software which would allow law enforcement agencies to read encrypted communication after receiving a warrant from a court.
