Opt-in encryption is no encryption.
Why? What does this mean?
If you care about privacy, you should not use Google Allo
21–30 of 153 posts
Re: If you care about privacy, you should not use Google Allo
#22I very much agree with the principle of restricting and monitoring the access law enforcement has to communications. In practice, I weep for a third party that has to read the dumb shit I chat about. If we do succeed in building a hell where a preference for Metallica in 1997 is grounds for any sort of consequences at all, I'm not going to blame my past self for foolishly broadcasting that preference, I'm going to bl…
The issue with surveillance isn't that boring stuff might be surveilled. It's that the small fraction of people with interesting things to surveil will be surveilled. I don't care if the NSA sees my communications. There's no real chance of them thinking I'm a terrorist. I emphatically do care if the NSA sees the communications of the next Malcolm X or Mohandas Gandhi or Harriet Tubman. Or worse, if that person is so…
I literally said I very much agree with the principle of restricting and monitoring the access law enforcement has to communications. in my comment.
People that are worried about the NSA (hopefully!) aren't making their choices based on this dude's article, which is actually premised on it being important to protect your boring stuff from teh Google.
Re: If you care about privacy, you should not use Google Allo
#23Turning on E2E encryption by default and using your chat data for commercial purposes doesn't have to be a zero sum game...
You can always extract important words from a "block" of chat messages, and feed that into your advertising engine, while keeping the exact sequence of your words and messages encrypted.
Now if the AI bots require the exact sequence of your words to do NLP processing, then yea, you're SOL until the mobile devices become powerful enough to do that processing locally on the device.
Re: If you care about privacy, you should not use Google Allo
#24I very much agree with the principle of restricting and monitoring the access law enforcement has to communications. In practice, I weep for a third party that has to read the dumb shit I chat about. If we do succeed in building a hell where a preference for Metallica in 1997 is grounds for any sort of consequences at all, I'm not going to blame my past self for foolishly broadcasting that preference, I'm going to bl…
[deleted]
Re: If you care about privacy, you should not use Google Allo
#25I pay cash for all my transactions. I don't own a car because I fear that the registration systems for licensing and taxes will gather information about me and we know that those government data systems are most vulnerable to attack. When I travel, it's by bus only - requiring a form of identification at the airport is a front to government spying. Unfortunately, the bus systems are starting to require too much infor…
I honestly can't tell if you're being sincere or exaggerating to make a point about how little privacy modern society allows.
But, this is somewhat worrying: "If I could crinkle into a ball and fade away, I would, but, unfortunately, I'm still breathing."
If that's not a joke, you should probably see somebody about your depression.
Re: If you care about privacy, you should not use Google Allo
#26Opt-in encryption is no encryption.
It's the end-to-end part that is opt in. Normal messages are encrypted in transit and while stored and only the machine learning system has access to them otherwise. https://vnhacker.blogspot.com/2016/05/security-and-privacy-i... Of course that means it is just Google policy protecting the messages internally and it probably isn't resistant to a warrant, but the messages are protected from other access.
> Normal messages are encrypted in transit and while stored and only the machine learning system has access to them otherwise.
This is what stood out for me when watching the Google IO talk. It's about as encrypted as sending a plaintext email from one GMail user to another. Which is to say it's not "encrypted" in any meaningful interpretation of the term: Google has the plaintext, Google can change what systems access the plaintext and how; which includes complying with warrants - but also "becoming evil", if they find they have a business need to do so in the future.
It is nice that they at least provide some e2e encryption, but it's hardly much of a selling point of the service.
Re: If you care about privacy, you should not use Google Allo
#27I pay cash for all my transactions. I don't own a car because I fear that the registration systems for licensing and taxes will gather information about me and we know that those government data systems are most vulnerable to attack. When I travel, it's by bus only - requiring a form of identification at the airport is a front to government spying. Unfortunately, the bus systems are starting to require too much infor…
I just don't use Google products.
Re: If you care about privacy, you should not use Google Allo
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue with surveillance isn't that boring stuff might be surveilled. It's that the small fraction of people with interesting things to surveil will be surveilled. I don't care if the NSA sees my communications. There's no real chance of them thinking I'm a terrorist. I emphatically do care if the NSA sees the communications of the next Malcolm X or Mohandas Gandhi or Harriet Tubman. Or worse, if that person is so…
I literally said I very much agree with the principle of restricting and monitoring the access law enforcement has to communications. in my comment. People that are worried about the NSA (hopefully!) aren't making their choices based on this dude's article, which is actually premised on it being important to protect your boring stuff from teh Google.
Yeah, I didn't say you were wrong, just expanding on the point.
Re: If you care about privacy, you should not use Google Allo
#29I pay cash for all my transactions. I don't own a car because I fear that the registration systems for licensing and taxes will gather information about me and we know that those government data systems are most vulnerable to attack. When I travel, it's by bus only - requiring a form of identification at the airport is a front to government spying. Unfortunately, the bus systems are starting to require too much infor…
> I don't talk to others and when I do, I don't tell folks anything about me, I'm concerned that they may tell others and pretty soon everyone is going to start showing up at my home and my job and frankly I don't want to answer my door buy their stuff - or worse - they could be hiding violent tendencies.
This is clearly paranoia. I'm not sure I can take anything from your comment other than you are very paranoid.
Re: If you care about privacy, you should not use Google Allo
#30Why are we worried about a chat app that hasn't been released yet?