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Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

wired.com

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Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#111

Post by zmgsabst »

nunobrito wrote: post #91
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-... Th…

NSA has an office in Hawaii, but is headquartered in Maryland.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#112

Post by bovermyer »

The way I got some of my coworkers to adopt Signal was when we went to Re:invent as a group, and texting no longer worked reliably. I suggested everyone install Signal, and we didn't have a problem communicating after that. Now everyone still uses it.

It's interesting how temporary solutions to problems can become permanent features of a (small) community.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#113

Post by stavros »

nunobrito wrote: post #91
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-... Th…

Does the actual cryptography has anything suspicious-looking? I generally share your suspicion of the origins of Signal, but wouldn't the cryptography itself also look fairly odd if it were designed to be weak?

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#114

Post by upofadown »

sneak wrote: post #103
upofadown wrote: post #93

> 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 fing…

> 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. Most people do not use "insecure" in this way. I would venture to say that your usage of "insecure" here is actually incorrect. Approximately nobody ever does this verification[1], so this distinction is critically import…

>Approximately nobody ever does this verification[1], so this distinction is critically important: Signal works out of the box, whereas PGP does not.

Then, say, Telegram in non-secret message mode, is just as secure, in the sense that you have to trust a third party. Not clearly informing the user of this trust is dishonest.

>...after studies showed non-technical users (reasonably) associate the idea of fingerprints with criminal investigations

We would be interested in a reference to one of those studies. "Fingerprint" at least implies something about identity. "Safety" is more obscure. I feel that both are less than optimal here for imparting the important concept to the user. I think that "PGP number" or "Signal number" would be better. There is already preexisting culture around "Phone numbers" and identity.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#115

Post by domh »

stavros wrote: post #95
domh wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No first class support means I've never dug into it myself. You never know if the thing you build is going to work from one day to the next - how reliable have they been? How do you do the phone number validation step? I'll look into it...

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#116

Post by stavros »

domh wrote: post #115
stavros wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No first class support means I've never dug into it myself. You never know if the thing you build is going to work from one day to the next - how reliable have they been? How do you do the phone number validation step? I'll look into it...

It's been very reliable for me. I use the method Signal Desktop uses, where you bind signald as a client to your phone, and it's worked great. It does mean you need a phone, but the method where signald is the client directly has worked well too. It needs a phone number, obviously, but you authenticate it once (with an SMS) and that's it.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#117

Post by didntcheck »

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…

Yeah. It's been sad to see how far we've fallen back, in the 10 years since Snowden. I'd argue we've gone even further than regressing, with an outspoken support for civil liberties and healthy skepticism of authorities being seen as not merely "kooky", but increasingly "harmful to society"

I was hoping to maybe be able to skirt around it, but I think it's unavoidable to discuss this without explicitly saying: the concerning part is that it's increasingly the left doing this. When I was younger I used to be able to rely on that side of the spectrum to be at the forefront of calling out creeping authority like that, which should be unsurprising, given their core philosophy. Yet in the past 5 or so years they seem determined to throw that away and declare that a healthy distrust of the government is in fact a right-wing-exclusive thing, for some reason. Strange self-sabotage, and especially strange when it manifests as people of that affiliation implicitly (or explicitly) praising alphabet agencies

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#118

Post by didntcheck »

edrxty wrote: post #80
gorgoiler wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you and the word “implicit” is crucial here. If the state is suspicious of you then they can come over, break in, tie you up, search all your stuff, and take anything they like home with them. It sounds infuriating but it’s what we need in order for the state to catch villains and the crucial part is they can only do it with a warrant . If a judge ordered you to unlock your phone and hand over all your m…

I consider technology to be an extension of mind. I'm not ok with the police literally cracking open my skull and probing my brain, not just because of the invasive torturous nature, but because it's an invasion of the very state that forms my existence. Similarly, the bits of my mind that I offload to other places.

Yeah, I think a good question to distinguish the different philosophies here is: if we had a perfect lie detector, would you support defendants being compelled to use it, with adverse assumptions for refusing?

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#119

Post by didntcheck »

Buttons840 wrote: post #33
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…

> In just the last 20-30 years we've gone from "if the government wants to know your speech, they are a warrant(-ish) away from getting it" Couldn't people just talk quietly and nobody would ever know what they said to each other? Humanity has survived how long under this condition?

To be fair, it was still hard to hide "metadata". If you met someone in person, or sent a letter, then it would be hard to conceal that from someone surveiling you

The difference was they had to be actively targeting you beforehand, and it was an ongoing high expense per target. Now we bulk collect data on the basis that someone might be guilty in the future

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#120

Post by didntcheck »

wolverine876 wrote: post #55
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.

How does that relate to the article? It seems like a completely different subject to me, but maybe I'm misunderstanding you. > 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 The shift is to protecting the rights of people oppressed by hate speech, in the balance between its speakers and vict…

Other people speaking does not censor you. Deciding not to speak because someone upset you is not an infringement of your rights

To be clear I am not talking about the heckler's veto, where someone tries to actively interfere with the reception of someone's speech

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