Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data • Hacker News Board

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#191

Post by nickpsecurity » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 1:13 AM UTC

ryanlol wrote: post #92

nnn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

1Gbit in Chattanooga, TN cost $350 a month. You gotta buy some servers and maybe a colocation fee. Way less than $22,000 a month. Actually, while I was looking that up, a recent press release says they're deploying 10Gbit to homes for $299 a month. Things may have improved on business side, too. :)

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#192

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 1:15 AM UTC

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.

I'm also kind of tired of having to fight my own government every step of the way. My conclusion is different though: I'm no longer interested in fighting for political solution that will be overturned the next time we turn our backs, meaning constant fighting and more time where shitty laws apply than not. Hence, I prefer a technical solution.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#193

Post by mastazi » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 1:16 AM UTC

Same story as covered by the ACLU website: https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/new-documents-reveal-g...

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#194

Post by nickodell » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 1:25 AM UTC

Programmatic wrote: post #95

stingraycharles wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not without causing the device that receives the updated key prompting about the change.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#195

Post by nickpsecurity » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 1:33 AM UTC

CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #17

zeveb wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only because they don't store it. They are able to choose to store it at any point; we can only rely on their honesty (and lack of compulsion). It's better to have a protocol in which there isn't any significant metadata to choose to store. I don't distrust them today, but I have no way of knowing what their future behaviour will be. I'd prefer not to have to trust.

Is this something OWS could be subpoena'd for? Or something that the government would just subpoena Google for? (I mean, given a phone number, can't you identify someone's Google Play account anyway? That sounds more useful.)

I'm more concerned about this NSA/FBI partnership that secretly forces cooperation somehow. It might apply up to and including forcing a backdoor into the binary. Here's the program for US cooperation:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/leaked-documents-expose-secret-...

The interesting part is in this table from the TS/ECI leaks from Core Secrets:

https://theintercept.com/document/2014/10/10/eci-whipgenie-c...

Notice how the lower levels of secrecy talk about how the companies cooperate or are partners. Then, you hit TS/COMINT and TS/ECI to find additional detail:

"the fact that FBI provides assistance with compelled and cooperative partnerships associated with WHIPGENIE"

"details of FBI assistance with compelled and cooperative partnerships with WHIPGENIE"

So, it's a backdooring program with major U.S. companies that the FBI "compels" assistance with for those that don't willingly cooperate. I have no idea what that entails but it works. It might work better on smaller firm with less resources but also maybe less as I think damaging income stream matters to greedy CEO's at public firms more. So, who knows.

Personally, I think they're pulling a variation of Escobars silver or lead policy. You take generous bribes to do what they want or you take generous donations of lead. In this case, legal fines or imprisonment rather than actual lead.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#196

Post by rtpg » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 1:33 AM UTC

Bartweiss wrote: post #105

ryandrake wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You never win. To use a controversial example: Who thinks abortion rights people "won" with Roe v Wade? Their opponents have been relentlessly chipping away at that "victory" ever since. When you make something a political issue, you are guaranteeing that it cannot be won with any kind of finality.

I agree, but I'm talking about a scale even shorter than that. Roe v Wade was a clear and unambiguous advance for abortion rights, and the battle lines are now arrayed somewhere different than they were before Roe. The fight isn't over, but it's fairly clear who holds what. I'm talking about even knowing when you've made progress. If a federal directive came through tomorrow expansively forbidding the NSA from collec…

There have been countless times where courts have told three-letter agencies to stop doing things and they have stoppped. The judiciary has the power to protect us, much more than we give credit for.

There's still rule of law, and the executive mostly listens to what the judiciary tells it to do. For all its flaws, some of our institutions work pretty well compared to most places. I cannot think of another country where judges are able to overtake heads of states in substantial policy outcomes.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#197

Post by nickpsecurity » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 1:38 AM UTC

burkaman wrote: post #99

module0000 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The assassination of JFK & RFK put Johnson into power. Power mongers pulled all kinds of schemes from there. The assassination of MLK per testimony in court case was intended to stop overthrow of U.S. government by masses tired of their shit. That didn't happen. Numerous witnesses to various things in intelligence misconduct never lived to say it in court. Those things are still debatable due to missing information. And so on.

Assassinations that have worked so far were done by the power establishment to expand or protect its power. They tend to work. They're rarely needed, though, as they can do things like media spins, disenfranchising voters, regular arrests, and so on.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#198

Post by ajdlinux » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 2:19 AM UTC

"In the "first half of 2016" (the most specific we're permitted to be)"

I note that the documents use a proportional width font, and there's been previous research into using the width of blacked-out sections of redacted documents along with information about the font to work out possible character combinations that fit appropriately...

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#199

Post by h4nkoslo » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 2:27 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #183

h4nkoslo wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that they, and other administrative organs, often change their interpretation of what the law "has always meant". Particularly irksome when they issue private letters with differing interpretations and then override all of them with subsequent administrative rulings. The ATF is particularly notorious for this.

> The issue is that they, and other administrative organs, often change their interpretation of what the law "has always meant". Yes, and if that conflicts with what the courts believe the law has always meant, those decisions won't survive contact with the legal system. An ex post facto law is a law creating (or enhancing) criminal penalties for acts that exist before the law is passed. Changing administration inter…

The courts will accept a hell of a lot, due to Chevron deference. Statutes will use a term (eg, "readily convertible" or "replica"), and the administrative agency will decide this term means different things depending on the day of the week and which party is in power. All it has to be is "plausible", not consistent, and the courts will defer to their interpretation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natura....

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#200

Post by nickff » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 2:36 AM UTC

mikepurvis wrote: post #90

zeveb wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

The Bill of Rights was never intended to protect citizens from each other, the intent was very clearly to protect citizens and states against the federal government. Even with this limited scope, political pressures have overcome those two amendments (and most of the others). The parent is very right to point out that it is hard to restrain the majority, even with the constitution (and/or law) on your side.