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

FBI Has Gained Access to Sci-Hub Founder's Apple Account, Email Claims

torrentfreak.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 322 posts

Re: FBI Has Gained Access to Sci-Hub Founder's Apple Account, Email Claims

#101

Post by kodah »

__s wrote: post #47
gok wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is technically impossible to end-to-end encrypt email.

Not technically. You'd just have to apply encryption at a higher level Send email bodies encrypted to base64 along with a public key fingerprint, then receiver's client would decrypt if it had the private key for that fingerprint But this isn't compelling enough to get a network effect to topple in-browser gmail

Common misconception. The three letter agencies do not really need to know the contents of your email body. They're much more interested in to/from, timestamps, and subject. Establishing that you communicate with a person and then getting their emails is much easier than playing with your encrypted email body.

Re: FBI Has Gained Access to Sci-Hub Founder's Apple Account, Email Claims

#102

Post by freshair »

kodah wrote: post #101
__s wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not technically. You'd just have to apply encryption at a higher level Send email bodies encrypted to base64 along with a public key fingerprint, then receiver's client would decrypt if it had the private key for that fingerprint But this isn't compelling enough to get a network effect to topple in-browser gmail

Common misconception. The three letter agencies do not really need to know the contents of your email body. They're much more interested in to/from, timestamps, and subject. Establishing that you communicate with a person and then getting their emails is much easier than playing with your encrypted email body.

Exactly right. The American government considers associations inferred from this "metadata" to be sufficient evidence to execute people via drone.

Re: FBI Has Gained Access to Sci-Hub Founder's Apple Account, Email Claims

#103

Post by mrzool »

judge2020 wrote: post #2

> The email’s authenticity (or otherwise) has indeed been considered by Elbakyan who says that after examining the metadata, has concluded that “it is too complicated and useless to be a spoof.” Indeed, the Sci-Hub founder also posted the email’s headers which at first blush do suggest that the email is genuine. Has the founder confirmed whether or not Gmail reports DKIM and SPF passed?

Seems like both DKIM and SPF checks have passed:

https://twitter.com/ringo_ring/status/1391415257881530376/ph...

Re: FBI Has Gained Access to Sci-Hub Founder's Apple Account, Email Claims

#104

Post by gebruikersnaam »

mc32 wrote: post #86
gebruikersnaam wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if he pretended to represent the US administration. Did he do that? Otherwise it's just a private citizen meeting with foreign diplomats, which happens all the time and there's nothing nefarious about that.

Things like these: https://nypost.com/2021/04/26/iran-foreign-minister-says-joh... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-iran-pompeo/pompeo-sl... Maybe it's all politicking, but then if it's good for the goose it's good for the gander.

The NY Post isn't a credible source, sorry.

If Pompeo had evidence of Kerry having illegal talks, he had the opportunity to provide this evidence to the FBI, seeing as he was part of the administration at the time. Instead he chose to 'slam' Kerry during a news conference.

But still no answer to the question if Kerry pretended to represent the US government, which would have been illegal.

Re: FBI Has Gained Access to Sci-Hub Founder's Apple Account, Email Claims

#105

Post by [deleted] »

dredmorbius wrote: post #96
hluska wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things: 1.) The US Constitution only applies to American citizens. 2.) It’s hilarious when someone starts a reply with egotistical language (like “you assume a lot”) and then miss the most important fact in a scenario.

Regarding: The US Constitution only applies to American citizens. False. In U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, an 1898 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the term “person” under the Fifth Amendment applied to aliens living in the U.S. In Fong Yue Ting v. U.S.,the court held that Chinese laborers, “like all other aliens residing in the United States,” are entitled to protection of the laws. "There's no dispute at the absolute…

[deleted]

Re: FBI Has Gained Access to Sci-Hub Founder's Apple Account, Email Claims

#106

Post by layoutIfNeeded »

dredmorbius wrote: post #96
hluska wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things: 1.) The US Constitution only applies to American citizens. 2.) It’s hilarious when someone starts a reply with egotistical language (like “you assume a lot”) and then miss the most important fact in a scenario.

Regarding: The US Constitution only applies to American citizens. False. In U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, an 1898 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the term “person” under the Fifth Amendment applied to aliens living in the U.S. In Fong Yue Ting v. U.S.,the court held that Chinese laborers, “like all other aliens residing in the United States,” are entitled to protection of the laws. "There's no dispute at the absolute…

Ok, then: the US constitution only applies on US soil.

Re: FBI Has Gained Access to Sci-Hub Founder's Apple Account, Email Claims

#107

Post by tored »

merpnderp wrote: post #94
tored wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, remember that presidential candidate Bernie Sanders also got smeared with Russian interference, so it is not something only used on Trump or Trump supporters. In my country, Sweden, alleging connections to Russia or Putin is often used in the political discourse to silence individuals or groups, without any sort of proof. It has happened both on the right and the left. We have to remember that many journalists i…

That smear against Bernie was pretty easy when there are like a dozen videos of Bernie praising communism, being sad that Reagan was so popular in Russia in the 80's, thinking Castro was a really great guy, or generally publicly sucking up to the USSR or USSR clients.

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is not the same entity as the Russian Federation, two totally different political entities with not that much in common (except maybe KGB/FSB).

Usually socialist in the west, that supported the USSR, are anti-Russia today because the perceive Russia as nationalistic and conservative. It is okay to criticize Sanders past political praise of USSR, but mixing that up with Russia today is just nonsense.

Re: FBI Has Gained Access to Sci-Hub Founder's Apple Account, Email Claims

#108

Post by daperor630 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #96
hluska wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things: 1.) The US Constitution only applies to American citizens. 2.) It’s hilarious when someone starts a reply with egotistical language (like “you assume a lot”) and then miss the most important fact in a scenario.

Regarding: The US Constitution only applies to American citizens. False. In U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, an 1898 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the term “person” under the Fifth Amendment applied to aliens living in the U.S. In Fong Yue Ting v. U.S.,the court held that Chinese laborers, “like all other aliens residing in the United States,” are entitled to protection of the laws. "There's no dispute at the absolute…

Does this case establish precedent that the fifth amendment applies to people in Kazakhstan?

Re: FBI Has Gained Access to Sci-Hub Founder's Apple Account, Email Claims

#109

Post by upofadown »

gok wrote: post #29
shockeychap wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has always bragged about iMessage content being end-to-end encrypted, and thus inaccessible even to Apple. Why aren't they doing the same with email and other files, like other providers? (ProtonMail, to name one example)

It is technically impossible to end-to-end encrypt email.

People routinely do end to end encryption with email every day using either OpenPGP or S/MIME. Heck, email encryption is where the term "end to end encryption" came from. When someone claims E2EE for some other sort of messaging system they have to at least be as good at it as the email case to be taken seriously.

Re: FBI Has Gained Access to Sci-Hub Founder's Apple Account, Email Claims

#110

Post by foobiekr »

hassancf wrote: post #55
rrdharan wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I assume that when the FBI sends a request to a tech company about a user, they probably also contact lots of other tech companies too about the same user... You assume a lot. I know it’s fun to pontificate about dragnet surveillance, but in general when issuing / granting a warrant there has to be some kind of specific target and scope. In this case it’s likely the FBI knew the Sci-Hub founder was using iCloud ema…

Would they take a chance and miss a juicy account at Google/Facebook etc? I don’t think so. Therefore it’s likely they issued requests but Google/Facebook etc were less “inclined” to talk about these things.

This is the correct take. When have they ever?
Post reply on HN