On Friday 13 November 2015 Paris was targeted by a massive terrorist attack by members of the Islamic State (ISIS). Since the incident, government officials have begun to exploit it by launching a campaign to promote mass surveillance laws.
The Belgian Interior Minister's statement that members of ISIS could use the PlayStation 4 embedded chat system to co-ordinate attacks has certainly not helped. This system has been in the eye of the authorities since it was used by a teenager from Austria to download plans for a bomb last June.
So now, while law enforcement agencies are trying to find out how attacks have taken place in Paris, government executives on the other hand use them as a pretext for promoting a propaganda that poses the need for increased monitoring of online sites.
The first is currently running in the UK media, and is called “Snooper's Chart” and supports the law to be passed. It is a flawed law full of loopholes and contradictions that has been pending for many months.
UK authorities are now trying to seize the opportunity to take advantage of the Paris disaster to pass a bill that would force all British telephone companies to store the record web browsing of all their customers for at least one year.
The same applies to the US where the dysentery began to grow and through reliable news sites, with high-ranking US officials to warn the citizens that its presence online encryption can put them all at risk.
So in the coming days we should expect attacks from government officials on what they cannot break or control, starting with dark web, every kind of trusted crypto, ending with Bitcoin.
But as thinkers, we need to know that where there is will there is the way. If ISIS wants to destroy Europe with terrorist attacks, it will do so irrespective of the means of communication it uses, encrypted online messages or pigeons.
