This content was created by Robert Siciliano. This content was uploaded by Robert Siciliano. This is a YouTube news segment titled "ISIS Terrorists Communicating with Encrypted Mobile Apps" (posted 2015-11-20). It features Fox 5 News reporter Arthur Cheon (reporting from the Flatiron District) and several unnamed anchors/interviewees (labeled SPEAKER A, B, D) discussing whether terrorists used video-game platforms (e.g., PlayStation) or encrypted apps (iMessage, WhatsApp, dark apps) to coordinate attacks, the challenges this poses for electronic surveillance, and a suggestion to refocus on traditional counterterrorism methods.
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Terrorists appear to be using video game technology to their advantage when it comes to actually plotting attacks.
And it's proving to be a challenge for law enforcement to track. Arthur Qian looks at how encrypted communications are changing the game.
Part of what might make this an issue is the idea that the amount of terrorism chatter subsided as the Paris attacks got close. And somebody started looking at PlayStation 4— 61 million users— and there's some questions about whether or not their communications are tracked during their games. The crucial question being asked here following the Paris attacks is how were the terrorists communicating? If it were over typical platforms, it would have been detected, but it was not. Some say a new class of dark apps may have been used. Others say platforms including PlayStation may have been it. Player-to-player communications, for instance, are not tracked by typical electronic surveillance. This is what the experts say.
We don't know what the terrorists were using. They could have been using carrier pigeons for all we know. We're just— these guys are just assuming they used encrypting apps because It's confirmation bias. They think that if you couldn't detect anything, then these guys are using undetectable communications.
While Edward Snowden taught us that emails, text messages, and our conversations are monitored, there are plenty of mainstream communication options that are encrypted. Things as common as Apple's iMessenger and WhatsApp and Google Chat, for instance, all hard to track as it is. Creating a dark app or using PlayStation to communicate wouldn't be necessary. In the end, experts say the focus needs to be on terrorists themselves first.
Just because— terrorists are using applications to encrypt communications doesn't mean that if we were to stop that type of communication that terrorism would stop either. There's always going to be terrorism regardless of whether the communications are encrypted or not.
Over the last 5, 10 years we've been talking a lot about electronic surveillance, and with all this new technology, what it might actually be doing is signifying a change that will require us to go back to the old traditional means of counterterrorism. In the Flatiron District, Arthur Cheon, Fox 5 News.
