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Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

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Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#151

Post by PeterStuer »

brenden2 wrote: post #104
deogeo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the source code isn't available for audit by 3rd parties (or yourself), and you can't build it from source, then it was never really "secure" anyway. What lawmakers do or don't say is just noise. Careful - you're right that WhatsApp is untrustworthy, but laws that force them to add backdoors could well be applied to open-source code as well. Or make possession of non-backdoored software, open or not, illegal. Or…

If I can compile audited code from source myself, without any backdoors, then I can be reasonably assured there aren't any backdoors (excluding perhaps hardware level backdoors--but that's why we do the encryption in software). Implementing hardware backdoors that are opaque to end users is theoretically possible, but more difficult in practice. You could, for example, build a screen/monitor that just captures everyt…

Would you trust you can find any innocent 'bug' that could lead to a privilege escalation? Decades of vulnerabilities in software, open source or closed, would contradict that believe?

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#152

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

burtonator wrote: post #131

Here is what is most frightening. 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 platf…

> You alpha geeks can but the other consumers can't.

Isn't it literally enabled by 1 simple setting in developer options on an Android device?

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#154

Post by cakemuncher »

brenden2 wrote: post #93
pmlnr wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't pay rent with good feelings. So just keep making the world shittier. Gotta love individualist capitalism.

I quit my (good paying) job to burn through my savings and start my own company because I want to fix this, so it's not everyone who behaves that way :)

Look into B Corporations and read the last third of the book Lab Rats. You can make your company serve society and it's employees right without adopting shitty cultures that breeds suicides, pissing in bottles and burn outs and still make huge profits.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#155

Post by twoelfer »

brenden2 wrote: post #121
pjkundert wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reflections On Trusting Trust: https://www.archive.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p7...

Yep, it's a super difficult problem. Having the source code available, and being able to validate the builds yourself makes everything a lot easier. It's one of the reasons the Debian project has worked so hard at reproducible builds: https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds/About Bugs can certainly occur (like Heartbleed etc) but the alternative (closed source opaque binary blobs) is much worse.

No ordinary person is capable of building anything from source.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#156

Post by psv1 »

brenden2 wrote: post #127
dessant wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I can compile the code from source myself, without any backdoors, then I can be reasonably assured there aren't any backdoors Where does that leave the rest of society? Having open source software and hardware is not enough, we also need laws that prohibit mass surveillance and support our efforts to uphold human rights.

Relying on laws leaves a lot of wiggle room for bad actors, slippery slopes, and political opinions changing over time. Laws are based on trust in institutions (do you _really_ trust large governments?). Laws are probabilistic, whereas math & source code is deterministic. You can verify that computer code does what it says it does. Laws depend on enforcement and complicated judicial systems (based on humans) to inter…

It isn't either-or. You can have reasonable laws that protect people's rights and privacy, and compile and check the source if you wish to do so.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#157

Post by mLuby »

brenden2 wrote: post #127
dessant wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I can compile the code from source myself, without any backdoors, then I can be reasonably assured there aren't any backdoors Where does that leave the rest of society? Having open source software and hardware is not enough, we also need laws that prohibit mass surveillance and support our efforts to uphold human rights.

Relying on laws leaves a lot of wiggle room for bad actors, slippery slopes, and political opinions changing over time. Laws are based on trust in institutions (do you _really_ trust large governments?). Laws are probabilistic, whereas math & source code is deterministic. You can verify that computer code does what it says it does. Laws depend on enforcement and complicated judicial systems (based on humans) to inter…

Yes, and we should strive to use all tools for a defense in depth of our rights. Laws are the first line of defense, then politics/media, then technology from software to hardware, and finally trust in our fellow humans and ourselves. That way if one (temporarily) fails, we can fall back to the others while repairing the breach.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#158

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

theobeers wrote: post #37

Another reminder that there are no secure platforms; there are protocols with (one hopes) the potential to be secure. The difference becomes more important by the day.

There are more-or-less secure platforms (which are secure up until the point where you literally try to blow up a whole country up or something). It's just that (oh shocker!) a closed-source platform held by a US corporate entity, with a privacy history of Facebook no less - no that's not a good platform to assume it will be secure. There is plenty of other much more secure options.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#160

Post by cakemuncher »

antpls wrote: post #65
brenden2 wrote: post #43

If the source code isn't available for audit by 3rd parties (or yourself), and you can't build it from source, then it was never really "secure" anyway. What lawmakers do or don't say is just noise. Platforms that rely on trust (in this case, trusting that FB isn't doing bad things) provide very weak guarantees about privacy/security. They could easily include a keylogger in WhatsApp and bypass the e2e encryption, fo…

Wouldn't someone from inside the Facebook/Whatsapp team denounce it if that was the case? Like a whistle blower

Facebook has a culture of snitching. It's advocated by the company to snitch on your teammates to higher-ups if you suspect something.
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