Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We Chat, They Watch

citizenlab.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 555 posts

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#31

Post by theelous3 »

ggus wrote: post #20
gonehome wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp message content is secure, but metadata does get turned over in subpoenas.

whatsapp backups on google are not encrypted. anyone wanting to read the messages just has to ask google.

That is if you allow backups, and considering 99.9% of messages are unimportant faff, there's not much reason to.

I changed phones a while ago. Lost hundreds of thousands of messages. Didn't inconvenience me in the least. Anything important is on less ephemeral services like email or backed up manually.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#32

Post by MattGaiser »

jasdfijsflj wrote: post #22
jdm2212 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are degrees of security between "I personally built it from source using a compiler I personally built from source" and "Xi Jinping is CC'ed a plaintext copy of every message". The allegation here is that WeChat is basically the latter. No one makes any remotely similar claim about iMessage or WhatsApp.

How about "Mark Zuckerberg is CC'ed a plaintext copy of every message"

Better Zuckerberg than Xi. Zuckerberg has no power to have a bag put over anyone's head and have them carried away to the river.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#33

Post by bosswipe »

dvduval wrote: post #25

I communicate regularly with people in mainland China. For me the best policy is just don't say anything that I would be too concerned about being shared. Of course, my behavior is the same for other apps. Beyond government-level type hacking, I feel a little more safe on some of the Chinese apps, as I know they have a stronger hand in their ability to stop hackers and scammers.

Self censoring is exactly what the authoritarian regime wants you to do.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#34

Post by MattGaiser »

the_pwner224 wrote: post #19

> Facebook spies on the content that all users send each other, including Chinese (and Canadians and Europeans and Indiana and Australians and Russians...) Sure, the article discusses other sketchy stuff that wechat is doing, but FB and Twitter and Reddit et. al. are all doing similar stuff too.

Does Facebook run a team of secret police that can put a bag over your head and have you disappeared?

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#35

Post by sandworm101 »

Moodles wrote: post #5
bgorman wrote: post #3

Did anyone actually think WeChat communications are secure? Do we have reason to believe iMessage and Whatsapp are more secure?

WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted so the service providers themselves can't read the message content, yes, definitely. Although, technically the security guarantees are nil unless you verify safety numbers which I can guarantee almost nobody actually does.

>> WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted so the service providers themselves can't read the message content, yes, definitely. Although, technically the security guarantees are nil unless you verify safety numbers which I can guarantee almost nobody actually does.

Except that there is no way to prove this. There is no way to prove that it isn't also sending a copy from the client back to the server. Whatsapp could deploy individualized specific clients to target users, perhaps at the behest of governments. The only full answer is totally open-source software with users able to cryptographically verify that they are downloading and running the same software as everyone else.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#36

Post by FreakyT »

bgorman wrote: post #3

Did anyone actually think WeChat communications are secure? Do we have reason to believe iMessage and Whatsapp are more secure?

This narrative of false equivalency is dangerous, IMO.

WeChat has been proven to be a heavily monitored and censored network. Whatever security failings iMessage and WhatsApp have, they pale in comparison to what's in place for WeChat.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#38

Post by the_pwner224 »

BobbyJo wrote: post #30
the_pwner224 wrote: post #19

> Facebook spies on the content that all users send each other, including Chinese (and Canadians and Europeans and Indiana and Australians and Russians...) Sure, the article discusses other sketchy stuff that wechat is doing, but FB and Twitter and Reddit et. al. are all doing similar stuff too.

I don't trust the privacy of any of those services, but there is a huge difference between "the government can subpoena information, or do targeted sniffing if you dont encrypt anything" and "we have a cron job set up that send everything directly to a government server for the express purpose of suppressing speech" To be clear, those services are lame for being as untrustworthy as I believe they are, but let's not e…

Sniffing by the US government isn't that targeted. And the US does harass people who say stuff they don't like, and has a long history of doing this. Were just not executing/jailing that many of them right now.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#39

Post by MattGaiser »

bosswipe wrote: post #33
dvduval wrote: post #25

I communicate regularly with people in mainland China. For me the best policy is just don't say anything that I would be too concerned about being shared. Of course, my behavior is the same for other apps. Beyond government-level type hacking, I feel a little more safe on some of the Chinese apps, as I know they have a stronger hand in their ability to stop hackers and scammers.

Self censoring is exactly what the authoritarian regime wants you to do.

China is 80% of the way there with this guy already.

Re: We Chat, They Watch

#40

Post by Barrin92 »

bgorman wrote: post #3

Did anyone actually think WeChat communications are secure? Do we have reason to believe iMessage and Whatsapp are more secure?

All the technical explanations already given aside, the fact that companies in the US can and do resist attempts to undermine cryptography (see the San Bernardino case), and that there's an actual transparent public legal system where we can all follow along.

It's not perfect but compared to the pretty much unlimited control the Chinese censors have over their companies it's a hell of a lot more trustworthy.

Post reply on HN