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U.S. government seeks Facebook help to wiretap Messenger

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. government seeks Facebook help to wiretap Messenger

#2

Post by _bxg1 »

"it could make similar arguments to force companies to rewrite other popular encrypted services such as Signal and Facebook’s billion-user WhatsApp"

Umm... Signal is open-source, so unless they outlaw encryption across the board, the worst-case scenario is someone just has to fork it.

Re: U.S. government seeks Facebook help to wiretap Messenger

#4

Post by mjevans »

I think it has become abundantly clear that a fully peer to peer, encryption required (non-optional), no single central server infrastructure solution is the answer.

No points to tap.

No point in tapping the data.

If they want to capture conversations it's time to go back to the proper old ways of actually spying on high-value targets.

Re: U.S. government seeks Facebook help to wiretap Messenger

#5

Post by mjevans »

eatbitseveryday wrote: post #3

Would [perfect] forward secrecy prevent a government from asking an entity from decrypting intercepted and recorded transmissions?

Forward Security is about creating a single session key and then ensuring that it isn't trusted after the session.

This is a good best practice and SHOULD be used everywhere.

It does not prevent any attacker, government or otherwise, from making client implementations do things like:

    * add in third party key distribution (backdoor the conversation)
    * send a 'backup' of keys or other details to a central server
    * directly man in the middle by only establishing a "secure" connection to a middle server
    * compromise the situation in other ways; E.G. using a flawed "random" source
BTW, if you can't build the client your self from source, how do you KNOW the above isn't being done?

Re: U.S. government seeks Facebook help to wiretap Messenger

#6

Post by craftyguy »

_bxg1 wrote: post #2

"it could make similar arguments to force companies to rewrite other popular encrypted services such as Signal and Facebook’s billion-user WhatsApp" Umm... Signal is open-source, so unless they outlaw encryption across the board, the worst-case scenario is someone just has to fork it.

There's no guarantee that the client you install on your device is built from the same source code that is publicly available, unless you build the client yourself from that source code. I suspect no one is doing that at this point (since Noise died with CopperheadOS).

Re: U.S. government seeks Facebook help to wiretap Messenger

#8

Post by craftyguy »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #7

At what point does the technical community stop trying to technically interfere with the efforts of law enforcement, and start trying to change the laws that make law enforcement behave this way?

Probably at the point where elected officials start to care. They won't care until their voters care, and most voters don't seem to care about or understand the issue here since it does not affect most of them in any meaningful/measurable way.

Re: U.S. government seeks Facebook help to wiretap Messenger

#9

Post by ribosometronome »

mjevans wrote: post #4

I think it has become abundantly clear that a fully peer to peer, encryption required (non-optional), no single central server infrastructure solution is the answer. No points to tap. No point in tapping the data. If they want to capture conversations it's time to go back to the proper old ways of actually spying on high-value targets.

Moving away from a centralized infrastructure and having fully P2P doesn't necessarily mean there's no points to tap, does it?

It's just mildly more difficult than a subpoena to Facebook asking for all messages.

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