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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

#91

Post by avar »

module0000 wrote: post #77
joncp wrote: post #60

So, when is it going to be considered misconduct for Dana Boente and the (not so) honorable Theresa Buchanan to tack on gag orders for no good reason? How do we change that? Calling our representatives in Congress won't help. Signing petitions is laughable. I'm at a loss for how to change this as a regular citizen.

Political actors usually only respond when they are or their colleagues are harmed in some fashion. When people successfully affect politicians, they tend to do so from a grassy knoll. Summary: Oppressive bullies only respond to equal or greater oppressive bullying. edit:typo

I'd have a vastly different view on politics if I believed in the Kennedy assassination being an inside job, as your offhand "grassy knoll" comment suggests you do.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#92

Post by ryanlol »

nnn wrote: post #59
feklar wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paper conclusion says the cost of running Vuvuzela is pretty high per month, so you would need a benevolent millionaire to make it happen. As for signal what every prosecutor wants is metadata to show the court that user A was in communication with user B. The actual contents of the messages aren't important especially in a conspiracy case and user B is an informant, their word against yours plus metadata showing you…

The cost of running Vuvuzela is dominated by bandwidth, and the paper used AWS prices to estimate the cost; purchasing IP transit directly would lead to about an order of magnitude reduction in costs (still non-trivial, of course).

Order of magnitude? 1Gbit on amazon costs 22k/month. Even an order of magnitude cheaper sounds pretty damn expensive, two orders of magnitude still isn't "cheap".

It's really easy to underestimate how big of a ripoff EC2 bandwidth pricing is.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#93

Post by a3n »

module0000 wrote: post #77
joncp wrote: post #60

So, when is it going to be considered misconduct for Dana Boente and the (not so) honorable Theresa Buchanan to tack on gag orders for no good reason? How do we change that? Calling our representatives in Congress won't help. Signing petitions is laughable. I'm at a loss for how to change this as a regular citizen.

Political actors usually only respond when they are or their colleagues are harmed in some fashion. When people successfully affect politicians, they tend to do so from a grassy knoll. Summary: Oppressive bullies only respond to equal or greater oppressive bullying. edit:typo

"they tend to do so from a grassy knoll."

That was jarring to read. I'm not saying you shouldn't have said it, but it made me uneasy.

And it's not actually true. Money, or withholding money, is much more convenient and usually works.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#94

Post by ldehaan »

module0000 wrote: post #77
joncp wrote: post #60

So, when is it going to be considered misconduct for Dana Boente and the (not so) honorable Theresa Buchanan to tack on gag orders for no good reason? How do we change that? Calling our representatives in Congress won't help. Signing petitions is laughable. I'm at a loss for how to change this as a regular citizen.

Political actors usually only respond when they are or their colleagues are harmed in some fashion. When people successfully affect politicians, they tend to do so from a grassy knoll. Summary: Oppressive bullies only respond to equal or greater oppressive bullying. edit:typo

Killing the opposition has a chilling effect on social progress.

The best course of action is to show the people who these politicians really are.

The best way to do that is to create a citizen controlled government offices dedicated to spying on our elected officials.

Something they'll never give in to, even though they do it to us.

Once we're aware of every move those in "power" have then they will no longer be able to lie.

Oh, and we have to get rid of religion, so this whole thing is going to to take a while.

Honestly I think a super AI is going to come along and change things before we get a chance. So strap in buddy.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#95

Post by Programmatic »

stingraycharles wrote: post #82
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?

Or be forced a la Lavabit to install a pen register which would capture the metadata from that point forward.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#96

Post by skolos »

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…

They do start with "Although OWS does not have, and therefore cannot produce, other categories of information listed in subpoena ..." So they do invite search warrant, but they do warn that nothing should be expected from it.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#97

Post by joantune »

ejcx wrote: post #27

That's very neat and really glad to see privacy enhancing technologies working. I'm curious what type of metadata Facebook would have from the signal integrations with Whatsapp and Messenger. Is there more, less, or same? Has anyone looked in to this?

Quite recently Whatsapp started to share your phone name and last time you were on the service with Facebook AFAIK https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-stop-whatsapp-from-sharin...

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#98

Post by burkaman »

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.

I don't think it's sad, politics are supposed to change. Obviously you can be sad at specific changes, but the idea that political decisions in general can change is a good thing.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#99

Post by burkaman »

module0000 wrote: post #77
joncp wrote: post #60

So, when is it going to be considered misconduct for Dana Boente and the (not so) honorable Theresa Buchanan to tack on gag orders for no good reason? How do we change that? Calling our representatives in Congress won't help. Signing petitions is laughable. I'm at a loss for how to change this as a regular citizen.

Political actors usually only respond when they are or their colleagues are harmed in some fashion. When people successfully affect politicians, they tend to do so from a grassy knoll. Summary: Oppressive bullies only respond to equal or greater oppressive bullying. edit:typo

When has assassination ever accomplished what the assassin wanted? Most successful political movements, at least in recent history, do not involve killing anybody.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#100

Post by newman314 »

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…

+1

I'm still looking for an option that is basically Richochet+Signal+Burner.

That would be an ideal app IMO.

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