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Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

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Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#41

Post by jvanderbot »

XorNot wrote: post #35
gcanyon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm real uncomfortable with comparing kinetic weaponry to communications encryption. These aren't even remotely similar things in damage scope. The argument in favor of private communications is in fact predicated on this: no one can actually cause damage just by communicating. Damage might happen as a result of it, but there is no information so dangerous that the transmission of it must be known up front, and shoul…

Not only only that, there is something so intrinsically human about communication, and something so vulnerable about having every word archived. How does it go? "Give me a sentence from and honest man and I'll find a way to hang him?" or something.

To be clear, I 100% believe that self defense is also intrinsic to being a mobile animal, and everyone has the right to be their own first line of self defense. But most people go their entire lives without needing to defend their self, but nobody goes more than a few days without needing to communicate with someone, often somewhat intimately. The amount of words someone generates is staggering, and if archived arbitrarily, can almost certainly be used against them.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#42

Post by cevn »

asynchronous wrote: post #29
nathanaldensr wrote: post #23

I did get a good chuckle at Wired's implication that only right-wing fringe groups use or need E2EE.

Apparently that is now a right wing fascist idea. Call me names all you want, I’m not changing my ideals.

Yeah I am not clicking on wired posts again. What garbage.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#43

Post by monocasa »

barbazoo wrote: post #30
tetrep wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

https://apnews.com/article/sarah-huckabee-sanders-politics-u...

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#44

Post by sudosysgen »

mc32 wrote: post #16
barbazoo wrote: post #11

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…

I've gone through sex ed in third grade. All I learnt was what the name of the body parts are, that I shouldn't let other people touch them in inappropriate ways, and that boys and girls have different things going on there. I don't see why it isn't appropriate and why a 9 year old shouldn't know this.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#45

Post by 4bpp »

flangola7 wrote: post #20
mc32 wrote: 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 not so much a shift as the US coming into alignment with the rest of the world. Harmful expressions like hate speech and inciting violence have more or less always been recognized as things you don't put up with in a civilized democratic society, just as you don't put up with physical violence to resolve disputes or allowing vehicles to drive any which way on motorway. The essence of freedom of speech has always…

> The essence of freedom of speech has always been the ability of the common or marginalized folk to discuss and criticize those with power and privilege - the state, the landed, the majority. Attacking marginalized minorities is not the purpose of it and is a categorically different type of action - the marginalized don't have power over others to begin with.

If you make this the principle according to which you allow or censor speech, the predictable outcome is that would-be speakers will seek to establish that they are common and marginalized (or speaking for those who are) and their opponents have power and privilege (or work on behalf of those who are), as in a classical bravery debate (https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/18/against-bravery-debate...). In general, the powerful and privileged tend to be the ones who win these contests.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#46

Post by XorNot »

Signal would be a lot more pragmatic if they would develop a funding model based on selling something for actual money, rather then subsisting off donations.

Sell "Signal for Business" accounts or something so I can stop having my bank or local government depend on SMS to communicate with me. I know a number of doctors who'd really love to be able to use Signal to talk to their patients (and would tell them to install it) if it was possible to sanely integrate with it from their practice management software.

As it is, Signal lives in the same space that every other "free" internet service does - if you're not the customer, you're the product. And we get to just wait till that bill comes due.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#48

Post by XorNot »

jvanderbot wrote: post #41
XorNot wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm real uncomfortable with comparing kinetic weaponry to communications encryption. These aren't even remotely similar things in damage scope. The argument in favor of private communications is in fact predicated on this: no one can actually cause damage just by communicating. Damage might happen as a result of it, but there is no information so dangerous that the transmission of it must be known up front, and shoul…

Not only only that, there is something so intrinsically human about communication, and something so vulnerable about having every word archived. How does it go? "Give me a sentence from and honest man and I'll find a way to hang him?" or something. To be clear, I 100% believe that self defense is also intrinsic to being a mobile animal, and everyone has the right to be their own first line of self defense. But most p…

Eh, I've never much cared for that quote or the common interpretation of it. People take it as though the problem is the surveillance. But it's the last part which tells you what's up: "I'll find a way to hang him".

The speaker is telling you what they're going to do - everything else is a formality. Your problem began well before they had a sentence, and wouldn't end if they didn't have one.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#49

Post by ctoth »

gcanyon wrote: post #8
wolverine876 wrote: post #2

> 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…

Actually, I believe you have this backwards. In the time when the Constitution was written, conversations were private (concealed) by default. In order to listen to a conversation, you had to physically listen to the conversation. It is only in the last couple decades that mass access to this sort of conversation is even possible, so encryption seems to be restoring the same implicit right which always existed.

Said another way, if you want to analogize e2e encryption to a bazooka, then the government being able to read all of your private communications seems to be the equivalent of having someone constantly violating the fourth (remember that one?) amendment in your house, 24/7.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#50

Post by autoexec »

greyface- wrote: post #4

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

Worse, they store your phone number (along with your name, your photo, and most damning of all, a list of all of your signal contacts) permanently in the cloud. This is exactly the information they used to brag about not being able to turn over to the authorities because they didn't collect it in the first place. Their website still has pages that brag about that with no indication that it's no longer the truth.

I've seen way too many signal users who had no idea this data collection was even happening which is a good sign that Signal isn't very trustworthy. If you're going to promote yourself to whistleblowers and activists, they need to know what data you're collecting and what their risks are, but ever since Signal started collecting all this data they've refused to update their privacy policy which even now starts with "Signal is designed to never collect or store any sensitive information." which is an outright lie. I'm pretty sure at this point it's a dead canary warning people not to trust the service. They've been very unclear in their communications about the data collection too.

They've removed features people loved (the ability to get secure communications and unsecured SMS/MMS in a single app) and they've pushed weird crypto features nobody asked for, which might be another sign they're trying to encourage users to leave the platform, but I sure see them come up a lot in the news. Signal seems to get a lot of promotion. At this point though, people looking for secure communication might want to look for something else.

For more info see:

https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-secu...

https://community.signalusers.org/t/dont-want-pin-dont-want-...

https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disablin...

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