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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

#91

Post by nunobrito »

kornhole wrote: post #67

Or Signal could be the most well orchestrated honey pot. The server code is already partially closed source. What I don't understand is how a small organization like that cannot be convinced or compelled by a very powerful government intelligence agency. I will stick with decentralized protocols I can host myself.

People here will massively downvote your comment. The truth is that you are 100% correct in suspecting about that messenger.

Since a long time that is known how Signal was initially sponsored by Radio Free Asia, which in turn is fueled by the CIA. For some reason western pages are disappearing on this topic, but after some search there are still some: https://greatgameindia.com/how-cia-created-signal-messenger-...

Then comes the development of the algorithm itself. Moxei invited more crypto experts to write the algorithm while surfing in Hawaii. Quite strange of a chouse and zero details how those trips were sponsored but would know by "coincidence" what else is headquartered in Hawaii? NSA.

Last but not least comes WhatsApp. With a billion users decides almost overnight to switch to the algorithm developed by this relatively unknown and smallish group called Signal. I'm not even observing how mainstream media is invariably supporting Signal with positive news while Telegram is negatively pictured.

All these "signals" (that is an intelligence term btw), plus the fact of closed source code should be enough to raise eyebrows. But nope, you will see a sea of pedantic answers and downvoting whenever pointing the facts. Don't worry, you are not alone.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#93

Post by upofadown »

> It also required its users to think like engineers, which included participating in exceptionally nerdy activities like attending real-life “key-signing parties” to verify your identity to other users.

In fairness to PGP, Signal uses exactly the same method as PGP does for verifying identities. You need to check a ridiculously long number which represents your correspondent's identity. It's a 40 digit hex "key fingerprint" in the case of PGP and a 60 digit decimal "safety number" in the case of Signal. The difference is that Signal will cheerfully let the user have an insecure conversation before the user has verified the safety number. PGP makes it very difficult to fail in that particular way.

Signal has a separate safety number for each of your devices. So it makes it significantly harder to keep up with the user verification than with PGP which has a single key fingerprint per user.

So you could totally have a Signal identity party for exactly the same reasons as in the PGP case...

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#94

Post by kelnos »

wolverine876 wrote: post #74
supazek wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you define hate speech? Or “politically vulnerable”? I’m not dogging you but this sounds like an argument that someone who would like to ban E2E encryption would make. No one has a right to not be offended and we have already clearly defined where words become terroristic threats. Although the law is the least of my concerns as I get downvoted for having an opinion not totally in lock step with the social-liberal…

I could take a stab at defining it but both are already defined in law (if we take 'politically vulnerable' as 'protected classes', for example) and I'd be adding to the infinite Internet crap pile if I didn't do some research first. Plenty of other dangerous speech is illegal, such as forms of incitement. It's not about feeling offended - a common way to belittle a serious, challenging issue. I'm not sure how E2EE i…

> I could take a stab at defining it but both are already defined in law

"Hate speech" is not defined in US law. Hate speech -- however one chooses to define it, outside of threats and incitements to violence -- is not illegal.

Hate crimes are a different story.

I've been applauding deplatforming and censorship of racist hate groups for years now, but more recently I've started becoming a bit worried that we're falling into a bizarro-world version of Niemoeller's "First they came for the socialists...".

On one hand I am worried that we are devolving to a state where no one is allowed to express an opinion that might just offend some hypothetical person, somewhere, even if no one can actually find that person. And on the other I worry that deplatforming shitty people doesn't actually fix all that much, and can often make matters worse.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#95

Post by stavros »

domh wrote: post #81
XorNot wrote: post #46

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 instal…

I agree with this! But they seem to have backed themselves into a corner where anything pro-business automatically has to be anti-privacy so they dont do it. I guess there must be some technical challenges to opening up Signal APIs to third parties? I was against WhatsApp for Business until I had to use it to communicate with Virgin Atlantic. It was so much better than getting on the phone to call them! It probably t…

But you can already do this? I've created various bots, eg a ChatGPT one. There's signald and pysignald and it takes five lines of code to make a bot.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#96

Post by kelnos »

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…

> ... demanding they teach the curriculum he believes is correct.

I mean, there's objective truth here; "he believes is correct" is a distortion of the facts. LGBTQ people actually do exist. Suing a school district and opposing the legislation of a state that's trying to erase classes of people from existence seems like a reasonable thing to do.

The Temecula school district in question decided they wanted to remove gay-rights activist Harvey Milk from the state-approved curriculum. Are we going to be willfully naive (or just flat-out bigoted) and suggest that they wanted to do that for any reason other than not wanting their kids to know homosexuality exists?

In the case of Florida, if teachers are allowed to discuss heterosexual relationships (even just simply talking about "mom and dad") in the classroom (which of course they are), legally requiring that they pretend homosexual relationships don't exist seems a bit absurd, no?

I'm not buying any of this as liberals trying to restrict free speech. If anything, it's the opposite: what if teachers wanted to teach the material the Temecula school board decided they wanted removed? What if teachers in Florida don't want to be afraid that they just might say something about a homosexual relationship and get fired?

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#97

Post by kelnos »

wredue wrote: post #24
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.

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?!”

Pretty sure Democratic Congresspeople have co-sponsored the EARN IT Act. Both sides are complicit in this garbage.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#98

Post by kelnos »

komali2 wrote: post #15
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.

The only time I hear this is when people refer to it. I've yet to find examples of it myself, bearing in mind that companies choosing what can and can't be said on their platforms doesn't constitute censorship (unless we're willing to admit that platforms have a monopoly on public communication).

It absolutely is censorship. Whether or not that censorship is illegal depends on who is doing the censorship. But the act of suppressing speech is censorship, no matter who does it.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#99

Post by pepa65 »

zen_1 wrote: post #56
nathanaldensr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Telegram also requires phone number signups

I think you can sign up without a phone number.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#100

Post by brnt »

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…

> personal weaponry

It's really only just the US being an outlier here. There's no other western country where people think it's normal or a fundamental right to carry automatic weaponry.

I therefore cannot see the comparison to encrypted communication. Everyone communicates, increasingly through software. To keep things that once were private private, encryption is a key ingredient.

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