The perfect time to pass an over-reaching surveillance law

Nov 16, 2015 11:06 GMT  ·  By

Last Friday, on November 13, 2015, Paris was the target of a massive terrorist attack carried out by members of the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL). As soon as the incident passed, government officials started campaigning for broader laws meant to boost up online surveillance operations.

It certainly didn't help when Belgium's Internal Affairs Minister revealed that ISIS members might have used the built-in PlayStation 4 chat system to coordinate attacks, which had previously been employed by an Austrian teenager to download the plans for a bomb back in June.

If you're asking why the Belgian Minister of Internal Affairs is commentating on this topic, then the answer is that some of the terrorists from the Paris attacks seemed to have lived in Brussels' infamous Molenbeek neighborhood, a borough known for its young, aggressive, and radicalized African and Middle Eastern Muslims.

The perfect moment for laws that we'll all regret in a couple of years

Now, as law enforcement agencies are uncovering more details about how the attacks were carried out, government officials are using them as a pretext for pushing their previous propaganda, and more specifically, the one that targets an increased monitoring of online spaces.

The first to take to the media were UK officials, who asked for the "Snooper's Chart" (or the Investigatory Powers Bill) to be approved, a law so flawed and full of loopholes and contradictions that it had been kept on hold for many months.

UK officials are now trying to capitalize on the Paris disaster to promote a very broad surveillance law that will force all British telcos to keep everyone's online browsing history for at least a year.

The same goes for the US, where fearmongering started to flood credible news sites, with high-ranking officials warning US citizens that the presence of online encryption may put them in danger.

Expect in the following days for government officials to go after everything they can't crack or control, starting with the Dark Web, encryption, and ending with Bitcoin.

All these governments seem to be missing the point. Where there's a will, there's a way. If ISIS wants to bomb their citizens, they'll do it regardless, no matter if using encryption or carrier pigeons.