Earlier quoted context omitted.
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"?
>if the source were available with reproducible builds Does Signal itself even have reproducible builds?
Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism
231–240 of 342 posts
Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Is your claim that this is currently happening? If so, why has nobody detected it? Since such code would have to be distributed to user devices, it would be detectable.
Also, did you know that Signal is distributed through multiple channels? The iOS App Store, Google Play, F-Droid, as well as directly through Signal's website. Given this, how could they target an individual with tampered binaries in a way that they couldn't notice? Seems pretty hard to me.
Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Because rich conservatives don't want the poor class to have a decent education… too dangerous. Sex education is just part of the trend.
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Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism
#234Or 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.
If the client code is available and sound it shouldn’t matter what the server does, they still can’t read your messages
Metadata is always created. This is often more valuable to the monitors than actual content in messages.
Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it’s pretty important to point out that Signal allows you to import this number with a QR code, so it’s not very arduous to do to verification.
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This is a terrible and very un-empathetic take. The internet would be a much more enjoyable place if we strive to make it as secure, useful, and accessible as possible to as many people as possible instead of gatekeeping it to a certain group we decide are worthy because they are capable of browsing HN with curl instead of Chrome or something like that
Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 falli…
> """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."""
Remember that any party that would want to stifle speech could easily pay a third party to claim to be offended by speech.
Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
Signal is very much a first generation private messaging application (in the sense that it was the first generation actually adopted). I think we're starting to see true gen 2 protocols rise to fix some of the issues it has like matrix, berty, briar, etc.
Signal - Initial release - 29 July 2014 Matrix - Introduction: September 2014 I know a lot happened in August of 2014, but I doubt it qualifies as a generation.
(Signal is a rebranding of TextSecure, which launched May 2010 fwiw)
Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism
#238> The company’s aggressive pursuit of growth, coupled with lack of moderation in the app, has already led Signal employees themselves to publicly question whether growth might come from abusive users, such as far-right groups using Signal to organize. Lol what? What exactly does far-right mean in this case? Why intersperse irrelevant political digs at another ill-defined faction? Does far-right just mean non-progress…
> Does far-right just mean non-progressive and conservative? Don't know what they mean, but to me, "far right" doesn't mean that. It means the most radical extreme of the right. Just like "far left" means the most radical extreme of the left. I'd even argue that the far right is not actually conservative, and the far left is not actually liberal.
That's not how the media and most people see it, unfortunately. Anything remotely mean or intolerant that happens to not be left leaning is auto-labelled far right. It's what I would argue is the silent and unlabeled bias of the media against conservatism.
Heck I'm labeled far-right just for suggesting that affirmative action is racist.
Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism
#239> 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…
Encryption isn't weaponry, and the fact that the government continues to try to behave like it is (ITAR, et al) is heinous, stupid, and oppressive.
Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
The paradox of tolerance gets you a long way to understanding it, but you will also have to be far more specific if you want answers because practically everyone has limits to what they consider acceptable speech, even if they don't call it that. Beyond that, there is a pretty concerted effort to elevate minor grievances into the national spotlight to portray the left a certain way, e.g. the Oberlin Cafeteria scandal…
People are constantly misapplying The Paradox of Tolerance - which is an argument for protecting free speech in all cases other than one: opposition of free speech. Somehow that got contorted by modern-day activists into "I can shout down or physically attack people I don't agree with" -- which is exactly opposite of what was being argued by Popper. It's an argument for more permissive expression, not less. He notes…
Even as you describe it (I think you've described Poppler's argument well), it's still bogus. We don't need laws forbidding speech against free speech to protect free speech; the solution to the "paradox" is that there is no paradox. Our system of checks and balances to undo unconstitutional laws works well enough that we don't need to curtail political speech to protect political speech. The system is resilient to speech which criticizes it.
Poppler seems to think that fire must be fought with fire, that's his 'paradox'. He forgets or deliberately discounts the existence of fire extinguishers, e.g. checks and balances.