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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

#141

Post by jrockway »

stavros wrote: post #113
nunobrito wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They don't have to weaken the crypto. If you go "on the list", they just send you new code that starts using weak/no encryption. If you aren't on the list, then you'll never see this.

The problem with Signal (and anything like Signal) is not the server code, but the client code distributed through app stores. We have had email encryption for decades without ever having to trust any email servers.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#142

Post by pard68 »

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…

I wouldn't mind a bazooka.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#144

Post by ccity88 »

Signal is great, easily one of the best apps I've ever used. As someone who's privacy conscious, I've been trying forever to get my network of friends, family and colleagues to use signal with literally no success. Here in the UK, WhatsApp is ubiquitous, and to even _think_ of using a different app is, by most laypeople's standards, absolutely weird. Most people I've convinced have downloaded Signal, gave it a go with a few messages, and them promptly went back to WhatsApp because that's where the majority of their communication happens.

I'm convinced that it doesn't matter how good the product is, what matters is the network effect. Nobody cares about privacy, what they care about is whether everyone else is using the same app. Until there's some doomsday scenario of everyones messages getting leaked or something (the closest was the WhatsApp privacy policy changes that triggered worldwide scrutiny and was a general PR nightmare), nobody will be moving en masse to a plucky small app that their network isn't on.

Also doesn't help that Signal are implementing features like crypto transactions that most people don't care about.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#145

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

jimllo wrote: post #140
bombolo wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have no idea if whatsapp really implements it, and if it does but also adds a bunch of side channels for the NSA.

You can check it yourself with reverse engineering tools, e.g. on Android you could look at the APK with jadx and see the decompiled Signal implantation, and how it compares to the open source Java library from Signal that it is derived from.

Would it be unfair of me to rephrase as, "It is possible to do this ridiculous, difficult thing that doesn't even always work in order to get some insight into a situation which would be trivial if the source were available with reproducible builds"?

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#146

Post by TacticalCoder »

ccity88 wrote: post #144

Signal is great, easily one of the best apps I've ever used. As someone who's privacy conscious, I've been trying forever to get my network of friends, family and colleagues to use signal with literally no success. Here in the UK, WhatsApp is ubiquitous, and to even _think_ of using a different app is, by most laypeople's standards, absolutely weird. Most people I've convinced have downloaded Signal, gave it a go wit…

> Here in the UK, WhatsApp is ubiquitous, and to even _think_ of using a different app is, by most laypeople's standards, absolutely weird.

Several countries in Europe have already 1/10th of their population using Telegram. Telegram sees more than one million download per quarter in the UK alone.

Telegram is simply a much better app (better UI/UX) and nobody around me finds it weird. As soon as friends and family tries Telegram, they're hooked.

The network effect is already there and I guarantee you that if there still people finding it "weird", it won't last long.

There's also zero problem using both WhatsApp and Telegram (which many people do: I don't but many do).

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#147

Post by pcl »

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…

For most of my conversations, authentication really isn’t an important consideration. If someone snoops the random pics and texts I send back and forth with my friends, so be it.

But it’s awfully nice to use the same app for different communications too, where authentication is important.

Signal has done a fantastic job of nailing that balance, and I appreciate that.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#149

Post by foo-bar-bat »

wolverine876 wrote: post #59
gorgoiler wrote: post #47

”Signal [pioneered] end-to-end encryption, a feature that WhatsApp turned around and copied from Signal.” It wasn’t copied from Signal — at the protocol level, it is Signal: https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp/

It's part of Signal.

No, WhatsApp is not part of Signal. That's false. The opposite is true: Signal is part of Whats App. The problem is we have no idea what else is.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#150

Post by TacticalCoder »

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…

> ... how mainstream media is invariably supporting Signal with positive news while Telegram is negatively pictured.

But people are voting... Telegram had 700 million users at the beginning of 2023. I think the reason Telegram is constantly negatively pictured has nothing to do with Signal: it is because it is an actual threat to WhatsApp's dominance.

Regarding the supposed benefits of Signal: this thing is collecting metadata left and right. And metadata are much more important than the content of the messages themselves.

I simply don't trust Signal.

I don't trust Telegram either but at least Telegram doesn't pretend and, well, Telegram is actually used by my family and friends.

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