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On Privacy versus Freedom

matrix.org

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Re: On Privacy versus Freedom

#81

Post by ddevault »

dang wrote: post #78
ddevault wrote: post #77

Moxie has always gaslit users with legitimate concerns because addressing them would mean giving up power. Signal is a self serving design and driven by self serving decisions. I've written about this in depth before: https://drewdevault.com/2018/08/08/Signal.html I still stand by everything I said here, and lots more that goes unsaid in this article. Every single weird decision Signal makes is not because they've re…

No personal attacks on HN, please, regardless of how right you are or feel, or how wrong someone is or you feel they are. Maybe you don't owe that person better, but you owe this community better if you're posting here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sorry, you're right. I've edited it to be about the behavior instead of the person.

Re: On Privacy versus Freedom

#82

Post by tptacek »

novok wrote: post #22

Moxie / signal chooses pragmatism over purity, and is striving towards improve the status quo bit by bit vs a pure perfect solution that never ships, even though that improvement has it's own vital problems. You can see it in his choices, and you can see how they want to eventually deliver improvements like no phone numbers, with them working on things like secure value recovery. I kind of wish he spelled it out full…

I would make the opposite argument: that at pretty much every point along the way, Signal has chosen purity over pragmatism. Which is why they didn't even have user profiles until recently, why they're just now getting group access control for a Slack-y experience, and why it's taking a fairly spectacular amount of engineering to get them off of phone numbers. Signal has a track record of delaying features common to messenger applications in order to get them cryptographically right. No other mainstream messenger tool has a comparable track record.

Re: On Privacy versus Freedom

#83

Post by tptacek »

StudentStuff wrote: post #4
tialaramex wrote: post #2

I think the timing makes Moxie's point very well without him saying a thing. All these years later Matrix only has... The ambition to some day try to offer the core privacy features Signal already delivered back then. Some of the most basic stuff is, you believe, almost kinda sorta done. This is, to be clear, much better than just sitting back insisting you were right but not lifting a finger. But for an actual user…

>All these years later Matrix only has... The ambition to some day try to offer the core privacy features Signal already delivered back then. E2E on Matrix works, plus key verification is easier than on Signal. Managing metadata is hard, but my Matrix homeserver doesn't have my phone number (unlike Signal) and does not require Google Cloud Messaging. I can even run it on a PinePhone or Pocket CHIP! >But for an actual…

E2E in Matrix "works" with which Matrix clients? The whole point of a decentralized federated messaging protocol is to allow people to build their own clients. Do Matrix clients uniformly and interoperably support E2E today?

Re: On Privacy versus Freedom

#84

Post by tptacek »

xorcist wrote: post #73
tialaramex wrote: post #2

I think the timing makes Moxie's point very well without him saying a thing. All these years later Matrix only has... The ambition to some day try to offer the core privacy features Signal already delivered back then. Some of the most basic stuff is, you believe, almost kinda sorta done. This is, to be clear, much better than just sitting back insisting you were right but not lifting a finger. But for an actual user…

Well, XMPP had working e2e encryption a decade before Signal. That's not really a reason to consider something done. Axolotl and OMEMO improved on OTR, and it seems OTRv4 will improve on it further.

Wait a minute. When you say "Axolotl improved OTR", what you're really saying is that Signal improved on OTR, because that's where Axolotl comes from. The same is true of OMEMO.

Re: On Privacy versus Freedom

#85

Post by tptacek »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #71
tptacek wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fine, but you should know that pretty much everything Moxie and Signal talk about contrast sharply with Wire. For instance: last I checked, Wire stores your entire social graph on their servers in a database --- effectively forever, Wire stores a plaintext log of everyone you've communicated with.

On the other hand, Wire lets you look at their server code, I assume there's nothing stopping you from hosting your own server.

What source code does Wire let you see that Signal doesn't?

Re: On Privacy versus Freedom

#86

Post by 3xblah »

samth wrote: post #31

One frustrating thing about Moxie's original post is that Signal derives huge amounts of value by piggybacking on an existing distributed federated network: the phone system. If phone numbers weren't an existing working identifiers that people had regardless of what OS, carrier, or messaging app, Signal as designed wouldn't work. People should think harder about how to replicate that experience, instead of how to app…

In his "The Ecosystem is Moving" talk at CCC, he had many presumptuous and dubious "arguments" but one regarding privacy of phone numbers was that a user's APN would be used to determine their phone number, so there was no point in trying to keep phone numbers private.

This fails to account for the possibility of not using the cellular network. With unlocked smartphones, it is possible to remove the SIM card, clear any APN settings and access WiFi. That can be enough for a messaging app to work.

The only identifier needed for iMessage and FaceTime is a working e-mail address (and only for sign up). No cellular account is required.

Re: On Privacy versus Freedom

#87

Post by tptacek »

ddevault wrote: post #81
dang wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No personal attacks on HN, please, regardless of how right you are or feel, or how wrong someone is or you feel they are. Maybe you don't owe that person better, but you owe this community better if you're posting here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sorry, you're right. I've edited it to be about the behavior instead of the person.

From the comment I see right now and the logic you're using here, "have you stopped beating your wife" wouldn't qualify as a personal attack.

Re: On Privacy versus Freedom

#88

Post by jlund »

dublinben wrote: post #42
ksbakan wrote: post #8

I won't touch signal because I care about user freedom more than privacy. (Both are important) No 3rd party clients, mandatory updates, mandatory google play services, and mobile only are all deal breakers.

Google Play Services obviously aren't required to run Signal on iOS.

Google Play Services aren't required to run Signal on Android either.

Re: On Privacy versus Freedom

#89

Post by ddevault »

tptacek wrote: post #87
ddevault wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, you're right. I've edited it to be about the behavior instead of the person.

From the comment I see right now and the logic you're using here, "have you stopped beating your wife" wouldn't qualify as a personal attack.

And if we extrapolate your logic, we can never comment on anyone's bad behavior at all. My complaints are on topic for the article in question, I'm not just swinging at Moxie at random here.

Re: On Privacy versus Freedom

#90

Post by tptacek »

ddevault wrote: post #89
tptacek wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the comment I see right now and the logic you're using here, "have you stopped beating your wife" wouldn't qualify as a personal attack.

And if we extrapolate your logic, we can never comment on anyone's bad behavior at all. My complaints are on topic for the article in question, I'm not just swinging at Moxie at random here.

The "beating your wife" bit comes with words like "gaslight", "self-serving", and "moxie's wants above all else". I'm trying to imagine what the comment originally said, because the one you've edited is obviously a personal attack.

Not to mention the fact that you appear to have just conceded my point. "But we were talking about Bob!" doesn't make it OK to ask Bob whether he's stopped beating his wife.

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