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by mattfields 1106 days ago
This headline is misleading by omission, to (nearly) the point of being false.

Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_December_2020_incident

tl;dr:

- The primary reason for their arrest wasn't the Linux/encryption tools.

- They were under investigation / suspicion after volunteering for a Kurdish militant group.

Secondarily to the above, the prosecution used their encryption/etc, (in a case of bad logic) as further post-hoc evidence or cause for suspicion.

In my opinion, omitting the primary causes here is intentionally muddying the issue, and making it sound like encryption itself was the cause.

*Caveats:*

- Yes, the prosecution clearly don't understand the technology, and obviously don't care to know.

- Yes, they are implying that use of encryption itself is due to "needing to hide something".

- Yes, they're implicating innocent (AKA "normal") use of encryption as something bad, and that's a problem.

3 comments

> This headline is misleading by omission, to (nearly) the point of being false.

Thank you for doing the research and not just upvoting due to click bait.

Probably thanks to this comment, the author of the video has changed the title, description and pinned a comment to clarify the charges. Great example of fixing your mistakes.
> after volunteering for a Kurdish militant group.

Source please.

Thanks
Doesn't watch the source nor reads the provided info in the video notes itself, wants proof for something that is derived from the original sources. Can't even fatom what you wanted to achieve with this comment.
The provided video description and pinned comment where added after my comment. Please be more careful with your sarcasm.

As for the Wikipedia source, if you read the full article (it's not too big, give it a try) it can be interpreted differently from "fighting for the same cause as the group" compared with "volunteering to join forces with the group" when put side by side with the OP's statement that I asked sources for. One thing is to do a one off action in association with a specific group, another is to fully volunteer towards the group. Hence why I wanted more sources to disambiguate the word "volunteer".