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Looking Back at the Snowden Revelations

blog.cryptographyengineering.com

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Re: Looking Back at the Snowden Revelations

#171

Post by whateversclever »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #163
cameronbrown wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Freedom of the press is a subset of freedom of speech. 2) Verbal 'violence' is a fallacy. It doesn't exist.

Your legal name is: $name Your Address is: $address Your phone is: #ph You work at: $employer You did X abhorrent thing (fakes picture or video with deepfakes). It would be a shame if something happened to you. ------------------------------- That right there is indeed verbal violence, AND a call to arms to enact violence against you.

That right there is not an example of violence, despite any assertions to the contrary. There is a clear distinction between statements and actions.

Re: Looking Back at the Snowden Revelations

#172

Post by ptero »

bloak wrote: post #144
cameronbrown wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Libel laws aren't anti free speech at all. Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences* *Unless it's from the government in which case it's absolute.

"Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences." It sounds like a quote from "Animal Farm", doesn't it? I am free to say anything I like, but if I say the wrong thing, I get punished for it. Also, "some are more equal than others".

> "Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences." > I am free to say anything I like, but if I say the wrong thing, I get punished for it

Not quite. You did not quote a critical part -- being free from consequences from the government. And as governments, almost everywhere, give themselves a monopoly on the use of force "if I say the wrong thing I get punished for it" does not apply.

Thus whoever wants to punish you needs to petition the government for help and prove their case -- if I make false claims that you consider damaging you can ask the government to help and prove your case in a civil court (instead of, say, punching me in the snout to punish me directly). Just my 2c.

Re: Looking Back at the Snowden Revelations

#173

Post by concordDance »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #163
cameronbrown wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Freedom of the press is a subset of freedom of speech. 2) Verbal 'violence' is a fallacy. It doesn't exist.

Your legal name is: $name Your Address is: $address Your phone is: #ph You work at: $employer You did X abhorrent thing (fakes picture or video with deepfakes). It would be a shame if something happened to you. ------------------------------- That right there is indeed verbal violence, AND a call to arms to enact violence against you.

That's just libel and an incitement to violence (though you could have rephrased the same information so it wouldn't be).

Only the incitement to violence could possibly be considered violence, though I personally would say it is NOT violence, but a separate offence.

Re: Looking Back at the Snowden Revelations

#174

Post by BlueTemplar »

throwaway_law wrote: post #108
Hendrikto wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before Snowden, if you spoke about these issues, you were dismissed as paranoid. I’ve been telling people for years, but nobody listened. Now everyone knows it’s true, but still nobody seems to care…

>Now everyone knows it’s true, but still nobody seems to care… That just about sums up every bad act. Lots of people were aware of all the bank fraud and toxic loans leading to the 2008 real estate bubble, no one cared leading up to it, and no one cares now. The Googles/Facebooks/amazons are collecting and doing unsavory things with your data, whether you ever used their services or not (shadow accounts), no one seem…

Well, it's pretty much a situation of war. And an unconventional war against terrorists.

(Also, not unprecedented - the Russians have been doing something very similar in a few high-profile UK cases...)

Of course, the main issue is that those "surgical" drone strikes still seem to have backfired strategically -

I wonder what is the state of these "who are we going to kill today" reunions under Trump ?

And of course in the background there's the whole Middle Eastern situation where the USA (and previously the British Empire) have only been making things worse for a century or so... but the control over those oil fields is just too important for them to let go !

Re: Looking Back at the Snowden Revelations

#175

Post by jknoepfler »

whateversclever wrote: post #169
jknoepfler wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is absolutely no divide. The concept of a right to (almost) unrestricted freedom to criticize the government comes straight out of Western European legal norms that were in fashion around the founding of the United States, and have continued to remain in fashion since. No Western-style democracy observes a right to absolutely unrestricted freedom of speech, because it conflicts in obvious ways with other rights…

Anyone absolutely can "Yell fire in a theater" in the US, this canard has an interesting history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the... You can also go on the radio and accuse your boss of whatever you like in the US as well. You might get sued by your boss in civil court, but the police will not come after you. You can also deny the Holocaust, that the earth is round, that people have lande…

The distinction between civil and criminal law isn't terribly relevant here. You can be found liable in civil court for all of the things listed in the first two paragraphs.

Re: Looking Back at the Snowden Revelations

#176

Post by ncmncm »

inanutshellus wrote: post #109
ncmncm wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently anilgulecha is, like many, unaware that WhatsApp is no longer end-to-end encrypted. It technically trivial to tap the traffic between decrypting and re-encrypting stages, and the only plausible reason for the very expensive change was to enable such access.

Looking at WhatsApp's website [1], instead of saying "your messages are definitely end-to-end encrypted at all times" they say it's "available", as in this sentence: > WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption is available when you and the people you message use our app. Is that what you're referring to? [1] https://www.whatsapp.com/security/

I just remember a report that the end-to-end quality inherited from its Signal origins had been removed. At the time, the innocent-ish explanation suggested was for access to keywords for ad targeting.

Re: Looking Back at the Snowden Revelations

#177

Post by BlueTemplar »

pingyong wrote: post #70
BlueTemplar wrote: post #41

Oh yeah : - Before Snowden, if you spoke about these issues, you were dismissed as paranoid. - After Snowden, if you dismiss these issues, you are dismissed as hopelessly naive... Oh, also - considering all this - you can bet that Intel's Management Engine has likely been backdoored by the NSA, so using Intel's processors is not recommended, especially if you're a non-US company... (industrial espionage !) https://bl…

> https://blog.invisiblethings.org/papers/2015/x86_harmful.pdf The author dismisses CPU-level backdoors in favor of Intel ME backdoors mainly on the basis that, since CPUs can't save state, they can't protect themselves against replay-"attacks", and hence Intel would lose any sort of plausible deniability once an "activation sequence" was ever found in the wild. But I don't really see how ME is protected against repl…

Right, this is from 2015, I'm aware that "transistor-hidden" backdoors have been created since then... at least as proofs of concept ? But while these are a future possibility, I doubt that any of those are already in place already now, much less were in 2008, when Intel introduced IME...

Re: Looking Back at the Snowden Revelations

#178

Post by BlueTemplar »

goto_self wrote: post #78
pingyong wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The protocol they use is open and very reliable, and it can be verified relatively easily from the outside that this is the protocol they're using. If you enable backups in WhatsApp those backups aren't stored on Facebook's servers, but they are probably not encrypted very well, since you don't enter your own encryption key, and WhatsApp has to be able to decrypt those backups if you lose your device. So those probab…

Or in other words, quoting James Mickens: > My point is that security people need to get their priorities straight. The "threat model" section of a security paper resembles the script for a telenovela that was written by a paranoid schizophrenic: there are elaborate narratives and grand conspiracy theories, and there are heroes and villains with fantastic (yet oddly constrained) powers that necessitate a grinding bat…

Except my "threat model" also includes trying to minimize the data I send to the GAFAM (and others unscrupulous private companies that could potentially profit from my personal data...)

Re: Looking Back at the Snowden Revelations

#179

Post by BlueTemplar »

lucozade wrote: post #128
693471 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can read your WhatsApp messages on your phone and you don't control the WhatsApp binary... then Facebook can backdoor WhatsApp to read the decrypted message.

Again, that would mean that he deliberately, explicitly and unnecessarily lied to Congress. That would pretty much require him to be an idiot. He is many things but that's not one of them. I'm not suggesting that no-one can read them. I have no idea. I am saying that his testimony makes me very comfortable that Facebook is not because he has way more to lose from lying than from not in those circumstances.

Well, maybe that works for you, but I'm more comfortable not trusting anything coming from Facebook...

Re: Looking Back at the Snowden Revelations

#180

Post by BlueTemplar »

693471 wrote: post #97
geggam wrote: post #63

I have often wondered why everyone simply doesnt use Pidgin OTR ... or OTR for every communication

Because the UI/UX is terrible, and XMPP is not mobile friendly at all

Hmm, what is not mobile-friendly with, say, Conversations ?
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