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Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

whispersystems.org

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Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#81

Post by zeveb »

ptero wrote: post #76
zeveb wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Political solutions change as politics change: I think it's better to be mathematically secure than politically secure, since the one is forever and the other only sure until the next election.

A political decision to stop sabotaging technological solutions would be a good starting point. Even if changed later, all the technologies already developed would still be available. Being provably secure is great, but this is a tall order -- there are always conditions to satisfy (solution is secure if A, B and C and governments and other attackers might invalidate those by a tap point, decree, a court action, etc.…

> A political decision to stop sabotaging technological solutions would be a good starting point.

In America, we have had those, and it hasn't helped. We have a First Amendment and a Second Amendment, and yet we have campaign-finance restrictions and gun control.

Political decisions simply don't stand. It's terribly sad.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#82

Post by stingraycharles »

rurban wrote: post #72

Funny that Open Whisper Systems wrote in the last chapter that they essentially should come back with a court order or search warrant to get more data, but forgot to include the critical information, that even then the FBI will not get more information, because Open Whisper Systems has no technical ability to provide that data at all. It's volatile data exchanged between the clients only, but not centrally stored any…

Wouldn't OWS be able to push an update specifically targeted at retrieving the necessary information to decrypt that specific user's data?

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#83

Post by fweespeech »

marketanarchist wrote: post #65
fweespeech wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can just make it illegal to own a mathematically secure piece of software without a license.

That would backfire economically and politically I think, especially long term. Let them ban it if they are so foolish.

They license it to businesses that cooperate with the government. It wouldn't backfire, honestly.

The fact no one has done anything major about any of the other surveillance state BS is proof enough of that.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#84

Post by fweespeech »

the_watcher wrote: post #70
fweespeech wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can just make it illegal to own a mathematically secure piece of software without a license.

Ex post facto laws are unconstitutional, and something like this (where millions would instantly be in violation) would absolutely, 100% end up in front of the Supreme Court.

It isn't ex post facto if it has an effective date of 1/1/2017, regardless of what came before.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#86

Post by kyledrake »

Niten wrote: post #78
kyledrake wrote: post #75

I'm really happy they provided documentation on how to fight an unconstitutional gag order on a subpoena. They put gag orders on subpoenas they're not supposed to all the time , and it's good to show people an "easy" way to fight them.

I agree, although my takeaway was that the way to fight them is to respond on ACLU letterhead.

I'm not disagreeing with that theory.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#87

Post by zeveb »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #52
zeveb wrote: post #5

It'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…

Can someone explain how people are imagining protocols that do not to create / store metadata? This seems like something fundamentally impossible on a packet-switched network. After all, the data has a source and a destination, and goes through the infrastructure that's tappable (and in big part already tapped) by a state-level actor. About the only thing that comes to my mind would be a digital equivalent to broadca…

The Pynchon Gate solution boils down to private information retrieval: a number of distribution servers hold all blocks of information, and one then downloads from each server the XOR of certain blocks, such that XORing all blocks together yields the single block one is interested in.

And yes, mobile bandwidth is a killer.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#88

Post by icelancer »

StavrosK wrote: post #15
zeveb wrote: post #5

It'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…

Yeah, but I'm kind of tired of having to fight my own government every step of the way. I'd prefer a political solution at this point.

Such a thing isn't coming. The population at large doesn't care, so no major party candidate will ever fall on this line. We have to fight using technology until it becomes a politically relevant issue (which may never happen).

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#89

Post by cderwin »

the_watcher wrote: post #70
fweespeech wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can just make it illegal to own a mathematically secure piece of software without a license.

Ex post facto laws are unconstitutional, and something like this (where millions would instantly be in violation) would absolutely, 100% end up in front of the Supreme Court.

But they can instead make it illegal to use such software, which would not be an ex post facto law (it would only apply to uses of said software after the law was enacted).

IANAL though, so I digress.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#90

Post by mikepurvis »

zeveb wrote: post #81
ptero wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A political decision to stop sabotaging technological solutions would be a good starting point. Even if changed later, all the technologies already developed would still be available. Being provably secure is great, but this is a tall order -- there are always conditions to satisfy (solution is secure if A, B and C and governments and other attackers might invalidate those by a tap point, decree, a court action, etc.…

> A political decision to stop sabotaging technological solutions would be a good starting point. In America, we have had those, and it hasn't helped. We have a First Amendment and a Second Amendment, and yet we have campaign-finance restrictions and gun control. Political decisions simply don't stand. It's terribly sad.

Interesting perspective. I think the majority of the rest of the world is in awe that those two specific restrictions (such as they are today) are so inadequate at protecting anybody (from the rich and crazy people with guns, respectively).
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