131–140 of 591 posts
So let's say this law passes BUT someone builds a really good open-source messenger.
You can't install it now because you can't side-load apps on devices.
You alpha geeks can but the other consumers can't.
What we need is a law requiring some type of side loading.
It needs to be possible to go to a website, and install an app there directly and have it support all of the native platform features.
> Social media platforms based in the U.S. including Facebook and WhatsApp will be forced to share users’ encrypted messages with British police under a new treaty between the two countries, according to a person familiar with the matter. This sounds as if the platforms are already sharing with the US authorities. So this being about them sharing it now with UK authorities.
It's laundering. The idea is presumably to circumvent US rules on domestic spying by having GCGQ do it and transfer it to US agencies. Similarly the UK has had its spying ruled unlawful under ECHR: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/13/gchq-data-co... (perhaps this is why Richard Dearlove, "C" of MI6, is so Brexity)
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I wonder what happens with Signal as it's US-based.
Signal may or may not be ok at the moment, but not in a couple of years (it has all the power to silently push an update with a backdoor). Among all the popular messaging apps only Telegram is in a position to not cooperate with five eyes.
I agree with that analysis, but it's not clear to me why we don't have similar levels of skepticism about auto-updating desktop apps. Signal in particular uses a third-party software repository, so if it wanted to push a malicious update, it wouldn't even need to sneak it past package maintainers.
Package signing protects you against developers with bad personal security practices, because it makes it harder for a third-party to MITM their apps. But it doesn't do anything I can see to protect you from a developer that turns malicious in the future.
US an UK governments can't just force FB to add backdoor. It would require new legislation. FB must play ball for that to happen.
Since WhatsApp has forward secrecy and end-to-end encryption, giving access to encrypted data is not easy to use. There might be some useful metadata that helps though.
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Nothing funny about the Daily Mail, it's the mouth piece of the reactionary idiots on the right (there are just as many on the left before I get tagged as a liberal) and has been for a century give or take. This is the newspaper that had an editorial starting with "Hurrah the Blackshirts". https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/blog/2017/oct/31/horrible-h... Other than using it as a way of keeping an eye on what some peopl…
The rest aren't much better. The Express and Telegraph were right facing, honest but partisan newspapers forty or fifty years ago. Now the Express is a racist comic, and since the famously and comically reclusive Barclay brothers bought it, the Telegraph is working on getting down to the Mail's level. The Mail are currently working on buying the i. There really isn't much left on the right that you can rely on. Which…
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I wonder what happens with Signal as it's US-based.
Signal may or may not be ok at the moment, but not in a couple of years (it has all the power to silently push an update with a backdoor). Among all the popular messaging apps only Telegram is in a position to not cooperate with five eyes.
Is Signal still safe?
Signal was never safe: https://web.archive.org/web/20180914145702/https://sanderven... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12880520 The safe variant LibreSignal was killed by Signal. https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/wiki/What-to-do-a...
> To be clear: the reason for this is not security. To the best of my knowledge, the Signal protocol is cryptographically sound, and your communications should still be secure. The reason has much more to do with the way the project is run, the focus and certain dependencies of the official (Android) Signal app, as well as the future of the Internet, and what future we would like to build and live in.
Beyond the author flat out saying that it’s secure- the title of the article is why they will not recommend it. It has nothing to do with it being compromised.
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Yep, the chat log backup basically renders WhatsApp completely insecure. They also constantly nag you inside the app to enable it. This is how they caught Michael Cohen (and presumably others). Unfortunately Signal does it, too.
Signals backups are encrypted.