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Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

wired.com

21–30 of 342 posts

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#21

No mention of criticism for requiring use of phone numbers as identifiers. Falsely claims phone numbers are not linked to usernames.

That has always bugged me about Signal. It seems like such an obvious hole--one that other services like Telegram and Wickr don't suffer from.

I think Signal implies that you always know and are comfortable with the person on the other side of the message, but that is not always the case.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#22
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be Debbie downer but there’s been a cultural shift in the liberal establishment over the years away from protecting speech, even hateful speech to actively espousing and advocating for censorship. It’s clear that principles can shift over time and Wired is toeing the line.

It's a problem across the spectrum. "Don't say gay" and the whole book banning business across the US come to mind. Is there legislation anywhere implementing "left wing censorship"?

I’ll just say I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I have heard about misinformation. That term is suddenly pretty much ubiquitous.

Mitigations are now everywhere. I can’t watch a video of Elon Musk explaining how new Tesla cars will start up by recognizing specific patterns in the driver’s testicles without a big warning telling me that the video is AI-generated.

Funnily enough, the absolute best content tends to be the stuff with fact checker warnings.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#24
post #6

> The motivations that led to end-to-end encryption going mainstream lie far out on the political fringe. The original impetus for Marlinspike’s entry into cryptography, around 2007, was to challenge existing power structures, particularly the injustice of how (as he put it) “Internet insecurity is used by people I don’t like against people I do: the government against the people.” But sticking to anarchism would imp…

Not to be Debbie downer but there’s been a cultural shift in the liberal establishment over the years away from protecting speech, even hateful speech to actively espousing and advocating for censorship. It’s clear that principles can shift over time and Wired is toeing the line.

There has not been a liberal push away from encryption.

In fact, it is the fascist right that want to remove privacy, has passed laws (like PATRIOT) to do so, and the supporters simply say “if you don’t want to be spied on, then what are you hiding”

The right wing are the ones actively pushing this along with “if you think privacy is a right, then you are a predator. Won’t someone think of the children?!”

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#25
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a problem across the spectrum. "Don't say gay" and the whole book banning business across the US come to mind. Is there legislation anywhere implementing "left wing censorship"?

That was about introducing sex ed to third graders. Have third graders put down their toy cars, dolls and blocks yet? And then you have a Cal governor suinf a school dist demanding they teach the curriculum he believes is correct. So you have an example of two governors, one on each side, tellig districts what to teach But, the thing is, liberals _used_ _to_ espouse free speech as long as it was legal and defended it…

That may have been the intent (which I seriously doubt) but in practice it means teachers cannot even mention their same sex partners or even that gay/trans people exist because that could be considered “sex ex” by a parent who doesn’t want their children to know gay people exist (and for the record it is not sex ed)

Hence the use of the phrase “don’t say gay”

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#26
post #8

> The motivations that led to end-to-end encryption going mainstream lie far out on the political fringe. The original impetus for Marlinspike’s entry into cryptography, around 2007, was to challenge existing power structures, particularly the injustice of how (as he put it) “Internet insecurity is used by people I don’t like against people I do: the government against the people.” But sticking to anarchism would imp…

There's a case to be made that encryption/private communication has gone through the same sort of progress as personal weaponry has, only on a much shorter time frame and to a much greater extent. In weaponry, it's taken ~200 years to go from bespoke muskets with a firing rate of a couple rounds per minute to semi-automatic and automatic weapons capable of firing multiple rounds per second. In just the last 20-30 yea…

I’d disagree with you on that last point. Some of us think the 2A is about private ownership of tanks.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#27
post #8

> The motivations that led to end-to-end encryption going mainstream lie far out on the political fringe. The original impetus for Marlinspike’s entry into cryptography, around 2007, was to challenge existing power structures, particularly the injustice of how (as he put it) “Internet insecurity is used by people I don’t like against people I do: the government against the people.” But sticking to anarchism would imp…

There's a case to be made that encryption/private communication has gone through the same sort of progress as personal weaponry has, only on a much shorter time frame and to a much greater extent. In weaponry, it's taken ~200 years to go from bespoke muskets with a firing rate of a couple rounds per minute to semi-automatic and automatic weapons capable of firing multiple rounds per second. In just the last 20-30 yea…

No one, not my mother, not my government, not my dog, has the implicit right to monitor a conversation between myself and another party

No one has the right to dictate the manner in which I communicate with another individual, contending that it doesn't cause network problems (such as the FCC and radio band restrictions. And to the point, I believe the ban of cryptographic communication on public radio channels to be unlawful and unethical)

I knew absolutely no privacy during most of my childhood. Many times I did not even have a door to my room. Every single bit of privacy I did attain was an act of defiance. Even owning an email address was against the rules of my household, but if I hadn't protected my right to do so and to conceal the act of doing so, I wouldn't be here today as an engineer discussing the merits of privacy on the internet with you.

God forbid what an entire organization of narcissists and control freaks can accomplish when given legal blessing.

As an aside, you might find it interesting that cryptography was actually classified as munitions in the United States at one point, so the analogy does have merit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#28
post #19

No mention of criticism for requiring use of phone numbers as identifiers. Falsely claims phone numbers are not linked to usernames.

Yeah, any discussion of anonymity and Signal can start and end with phone numbers. They could maybe offer an option to use just a username and some kind of authentication? But somehow they don’t :(

So many are missing the point here- Signal is *private*, not anonymous. They are two different things.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#30
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a problem across the spectrum. "Don't say gay" and the whole book banning business across the US come to mind. Is there legislation anywhere implementing "left wing censorship"?

I wouldn't be surprised if there was some sort of legislated PC terminology for government workers somewhere (but, ironically, what first comes to mind is the banning of "Latinx" by Sanders). What about NYC protecting fat workers from being fired? Body-positivity and similar things tend to be "left" in the US.

> banning of "Latinx" by Sanders

Was there legislation? If not, how was it "banned"?

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