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Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California

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Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California

#71

Post by uuidgen »

hans1729 wrote: post #30
swiley wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it's decentralized there's only one client and they can always push updates to male it send keys/messages back for targeted users. Smartphones in their current form cannot have secure messaging.

>Smartphones in their current form cannot have secure messaging. What about self-hosted matrix/element, used from the browser?

Anything that is in web browser (like e.g most uses of protonmail) offloads all security to the security of the TLS connection.

Unless you also ensure proper certificate pining, if someone can get a court order for any accepted CA to give them a valid certificate for your domain you won't notice a thing while that someone gets your browser to run any code and e.g. dump keys, certificates or messages.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California

#72

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

Dah00n wrote: post #63
raverbashing wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But trial by jury continues to be used in several countries (maybe in more restricted ways but it still a thing) or is there something special about a "Grand Jury"?

To add to the other comment a Grand Jury is also often made up of jurors called in using the prosecutor's private phone contacts. A few ex-cops and former work buddies. People also go to jail because of misuse of power by grand juries. There's a great documentary on Netflix but I can't remember its name right now. Suffice to say there aren't grand juries in any well working and fair justice system. It's abuse and/or…

Are you thinking of strong island?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_Island_(film)

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California

#73

Post by colejohnson66 »

mikro2nd wrote: post #68
tallanvor wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal can stop you from using the service until you update, but they can't force you to update their app.

They could, but they evidently don't (stop you from using the service). I have a phone with a very old version of Android such that newer versions of Signal can't be installed. So it carries this really antiquated version of Signal, and, sure! some of the newer features (groups, some of the image handling) don't work. Still works just fine for the core purpose (voice, texts) though. As far as I'm concerned, kudos to…

Tangent: I’m not versed in Android (iPhone for me), but what’s stopping you from installing a newer version of Android (like LineageOS) yourself through rooting?

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California

#74

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

homero wrote: post #52
raverbashing wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But trial by jury continues to be used in several countries (maybe in more restricted ways but it still a thing) or is there something special about a "Grand Jury"?

Yes a grand jury is just the prosecutor and jury. It's secret and the defendant doesn't even know. It's a way to start a case, not sure when a prosecutor needs or doesn't need a grand jury.

It's usually the misdemeanor / felony boundary.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California

#75

Post by sicco »

airhead969 wrote: post #57
andix wrote: post #3

Let's see if they try to search the Signal servers for any evidence. And if there is really no information stored. Or if that will disrupt Signal services. The central, non-distributed architecture is always a big concern against Signal.

Yep. Lavabit. Centralized is never raid/DDoS-proof. Okay boys, take all these servers because evidence is hiding on them and these lefty pinkos aren't helping us find it. Let's get them back to the lab to find out what that evidence is.

Afaik, Signal uses AWS. Is a raid/confiscation of AWS servers even possible?

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California

#76

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

sicco wrote: post #75
airhead969 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Lavabit. Centralized is never raid/DDoS-proof. Okay boys, take all these servers because evidence is hiding on them and these lefty pinkos aren't helping us find it. Let's get them back to the lab to find out what that evidence is.

Afaik, Signal uses AWS. Is a raid/confiscation of AWS servers even possible?

Why raid when they can just ssh in?

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California

#77

Post by goodpoint »

andix wrote: post #3

Let's see if they try to search the Signal servers for any evidence. And if there is really no information stored. Or if that will disrupt Signal services. The central, non-distributed architecture is always a big concern against Signal.

Reminder: 1) Signal, Matrix, XMPP and so on do not protect you from timing correlation especially between users connecting to the same server.

2) The social connection graph is easy to extract when people communicate often

3) The more data is captured, the more likely it is to find suspicious coincidences that are actually false positives

4) Not everybody lives in a healthy and safe society

Please consider recommending Briar or similar onion-routed messengers instead of Signal, Matrix, XMPP

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California

#78

Post by mdeck_ »

djoldman wrote: post #11

I am not a lawyer. The lawyers at DOJ know what they are doing (notwithstanding the history or fact that signal will respond with little information): The subpoena has a request for interstate wire to help them quash future motions to dismiss on jurisdictional grounds. Whatever statute they're looking to charge will have an element of federal jurisdiction attached and interstate wire works great even if there are oth…

I am a lawyer, and you’re correct. It’s typically called a “jurisdictional hook.” In certain regards the US Constitution limits the U.S. Congress’s ability to legislate to issues that touch on “interstate commerce.” If it all happens within Montana’s borders, that’s typically for Montana to handle in its own state legislature. So, for the DOJ to investigate something, they have to then satisfy whatever jurisdictional hook that the Congress put in the law, which in turn makes the law constitutional (in the sense of: within the Congress’s jurisdiction to legislate about). Here, the Congress will have required a proof of “use of interstate wires” (or something to that effect).

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California

#79

Post by Y_Y »

alias_neo wrote: post #32
laurencei wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the phrase "you are asked" have a legal bearing though? is it something they can just choose to not follow, since they were not "told" or "instructed"?

Given that the following sentence says "If you nonetheless plan to disclose the existence or nature of the subpoena, please contact the Special Agent identified above first". I suspect it might not. I don't know why this additional information wasn't quoted by the parent comment.

And so, are you obligated to contact the "Special Agent" in the case the you do disclose the subpoena?

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California

#80

Post by Y_Y »

Cullinet wrote: post #64
kenniskrag wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the parent poster wanted to highlight the auto update feature of phones.

it may be worth mentioning that every Sony phone still supported except for this year's models are officially supported by Sony for AOSP. https://developer.sony.com/develop/open-devices/ furthermore Sony provides blobs to enable full feature sets of the cameras and even the 120Hz refresh options that Sony doesn't enable with stock firmware / Android. This gets you notch free real UHD (but not DCI) 4K 120HZ HDR screen…

This is very interesting, enough to have its own thread even.

Now I'm wondering what it takes to get a phone contract in Andorra.

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