ISIS opsec: jihadi tech bureau recommends non-US crypto tools

The US government is attempting to force Apple to backdoor its Iphone security, congress is considering mandatory backdoors for all secure technology, and FBI director James Comey insists that this will work, because there's no way that America's enemies might just switch over to using technology produced in other countries without such mandates.

Afaaq Electronic Foundation, ISIS's leading tech-operations and advice channel, has proved him wrong. All last month, jihadi media has has been promoting crypto tools from "Finland, Romania, America, France, the Czech Republic, Canada, Panama, Germany, Switzerland, Saint Kitts and Nevis." Only one of those countries (America) is considering mandatory backdoors (though Canada's terrible Bill C-51, passed with the backing of now-PM Justin Trudeau, comes pretty damned close). The AEF's Telegram channel recommended tools from Switzerland and Germany.

In the Tuesday hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, Apple's top lawyer, Bruce Sewell, argued that free, open-source, foreign encryption solutions are popular and would benefit from any law weakening American encryption—an argument often repeated by technologists and other opponents of anti-encryption legislation.

"Couldn't foreign companies and bad actors generally do that, whatever we said?" Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) asked Comey.

Comey was skeptical that many people would ditch American devices and adopt foreign products due to encryption and privacy issues.

ISIS turns to foreign encryption products as Apple–FBI fight rages in U.S.
[Patrick Howell O'Neill/Daily Dot]

(via /.)