According to The Intercept, there are signs that point to unencrypted communications between the attackers from the Paris Attacks that happened in November 2015. Remember that on the evening of 13 November 2015, a series of coordinated terrorist attacks occurred in Paris, the capital of France, and its northern suburb, Saint-Denis. You can find here more details regarding this attack.
..news emerging from Paris — as well as evidence from a Belgian ISIS raid in January — suggests that the ISIS terror networks involved were communicating in the clear, and that the data on their smartphones was not encrypted.
European media outlets reported that the location of a raid conducted on a suspected safe house Wednesday morning was extracted from a cellphone, apparently belonging to one of the attackers, found in the trash outside the Bataclan concert hall massacre.
For example, Le Monde reported that investigators were able to access the data on the phone, including a detailed map of the concert hall and an SMS messaging saying “we’re off; we’re starting.” The phone from where the sms was sent helped the police to trace the phone’s movements.
The Telegraph reported that “eyewitness accounts and surveillance of mobile telephone traffic” suggested that Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected strategist of both the Paris attack and one that was foiled in Belgium, was staying at the safe house.
Lots of peoples indicated that Edward Snowden is indirectly responsible for the attacks because he told the world about the benefits of encryption. Nowadays almost everything is encrypted, and all because of Snowden. Snowden is known since 2013, when he revealed without prior authorization some secret informartion that belonged to the United States National Security Agency (NSA) and United Kingdom Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). The information revealed numerous global surveillance programs, many run by the NSA and Five Eyes with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments.
As the signs indicate the unencrypted communications, I’m sure that Edward Snowden is not responsible in any way for the attacks that happened in Paris. He just revealed the importance of using secure communications, the importance of encryption.
