Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data
whispersystems.org
Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data
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Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data
#2I'm not too surprised to see an attempted overreach by federal investigators. Too bad there's no measure of meaningful accountability here.
Outside the usual "let's ask for more than we're legally entitled" shtick, there's nothing particularly alarming about this subpoena; it was narrowly focused on two phone numbers, for which only one was a Signal user.
It's good on OWS to fight so hard for transparency.
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data
#3FYI, Signal has access to all metadata about messages and calls (but not the content of course). They claim not to store it and I believe them for now but someone else could be storing it.
They don't have access to group message membership directly. A group appears as a bunch of one to one messages between the participants, so they might still be able to infer it.
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data
#4FYI, Signal has access to all metadata about messages and calls (but not the content of course). They claim not to store it and I believe them for now but someone else could be storing it. They don't have access to group message membership directly. A group appears as a bunch of one to one messages between the participants, so they might still be able to infer it.
If they were storing that metadata, they would be lying in the response to their subpoena.
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data
#5It'd be better, of course, if we didn't rely on Signal not storing all that metadata and instead used a protocol which made it impossible for anyone to be in a position to choose whether or not to store it. Unfortunately, the protocols that enable truly traffic–analysis-resistant messaging (I believe the Pynchon Gate[1] is currently the best-of-breed) tend to have increased latency and consume greatly-increased bandwidth.
I don't really know what the solution is, but I'm very uneasy about the central point of failure Open Whisper Systems is. Moxie's previous points about the difficulty of upgrading a federated protocol[2] are correct, but I think that despite the difficulty it's important to do.
[1] http://freehaven.net/anonbib/cache/sassaman:wpes2005.pdf
[2] https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data
#6Good stuff Moxie and OWS!
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data
#7It'd be better, of course, if we didn't rely on Signal not storing all that metadata and instead used a protocol which made it impossible for anyone to be in a position to choose whether or not to store it. Unfortunately, the protocols that enable truly traffic–analysis-resistant messaging (I believe the Pynchon Gate[1] is currently the best-of-breed) tend to have increased latency and consume greatly-increased bandw…
Are you familiar with the Aqua project? I haven't seen it discussed much among privacy researchers, but it's certainly interesting.
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data
#8It'd be better, of course, if we didn't rely on Signal not storing all that metadata and instead used a protocol which made it impossible for anyone to be in a position to choose whether or not to store it. Unfortunately, the protocols that enable truly traffic–analysis-resistant messaging (I believe the Pynchon Gate[1] is currently the best-of-breed) tend to have increased latency and consume greatly-increased bandw…
What metadata? All they were able to produce was whether or not a phone number was associated with Signal at all, and the last time that phone number's account pinged the Signal service for any reason. They produced virtually no metadata to the investigation.
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data
#9It'd be better, of course, if we didn't rely on Signal not storing all that metadata and instead used a protocol which made it impossible for anyone to be in a position to choose whether or not to store it. Unfortunately, the protocols that enable truly traffic–analysis-resistant messaging (I believe the Pynchon Gate[1] is currently the best-of-breed) tend to have increased latency and consume greatly-increased bandw…
What metadata? All they were able to produce was whether or not a phone number was associated with Signal at all , and the last time that phone number's account pinged the Signal service for any reason . They produced virtually no metadata to the investigation.
They would also be able to figure out what phone numbers it was communicating with, at what times and how often - they do the routing. We're relying on them not to store that metadata, which is the problem.
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data
#10FYI, Signal has access to all metadata about messages and calls (but not the content of course). They claim not to store it and I believe them for now but someone else could be storing it. They don't have access to group message membership directly. A group appears as a bunch of one to one messages between the participants, so they might still be able to infer it.
> FYI, Signal has access to all metadata about messages and calls
source for this?