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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

#311

Post by komali2 »

catiopatio wrote: post #157
komali2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm just saying that almost no one advocates for the 2nd amendment right to a bazooka This isn't necessarily true. To believe that the 2nd amendment allows the right to carry a concealed weapon basically anywhere sort of requires one to believe every citizen has the right to carry any weapon. The amendment is meant to indicate that congress simply can't regulate whether citizens choose to own and carry around weapo…

I absolutely believe I should be able to own a bazooka, and that the second and first amendments are equally critical for a free state. People use exactly the same arguments you’re making to justify speech restrictions. It’s my belief that there’s an underlying social pathology wherein some people are happy to hand power to the state in order to feel safe, regardless of the ultimate consequences, whether we’re discus…

The alternate social pathology is maintaining some kind of illusion of ability to resist a fascist government with weapons a previous more liberal government allowed you to have.

If the government recedes to a level of totalitarianism wherein you must use your guns to protect your way of life, there's been absolute failures on uncountable levels, and guns won't fix anything. If you threaten to use your gun to destabilize the authoritarian government, they have five hundred ways to kill you easily from a distance. "But guerrilla warfare!" If you're stockpiling guns so as to be one day be a guerrilla, why not instead just take action now to prevent your government becoming that way, by voting for more progressive leaders, participating in protests, and engaging in civil disobedience and disruption?

I don't disagree with the general idea of restricting the ability of government to control personal freedoms to a certain degree, but it doesn't make any sense to me why we like to use the government to regulate what companies are allowed to put in the food they sell us, but not regulate what kind of guns our neighbors can own.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#312

Post by gcanyon »

dools wrote: post #303
gcanyon wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can choose to live outside of society. That might be very difficult Try "impossible". No person reading HN is prepared to forgo all of what civilization provides. There are probably a very few people on the planet, who are already living in an extremely isolated tribal setting, who could go it alone, but if they're reading HN I hope they'll speak up now, I'd love to hear their opinion on this.

It’s not impossible at all there are millions of people who live lives of total lawlessness.

"lawlessness" "outside of society"

The clear implication of your original statement was that it is possible to not owe society anything by not taking anything from others. To do that requires a level of self-sufficiency that only a very small fraction of people possess.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#313

Post by nunobrito »

thecrash wrote: post #232
jrockway wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

You are entitled to your opinion.

However, looking at history you find cases that went for decades to targeted individuals/govs. For example: https://web.archive.org/web/20080202225034/http://www.inteld...

With the exception of F-Droid, all options you mention cooperate closely with the US security agencies. In case you were not aware, some years ago in Germany you'd see Apple and the local government sending targeted updates for OSX laptops to be tracked.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#314

Post by nunobrito »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #150
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…

> ... 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 collectin…

My thoughts exactly. At least there is no pretending around Telegram.

The only guarantee we have is the difficulty for western authorities to intercept communications from western citizens there.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#315

Post by brnt »

catiopatio wrote: post #156
brnt wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There’s also no other western country with anything nearly as strong as the first amendment. Not sure what your point is. (Also, the production of new automatic weapons for the civilian market has been illegal since 1986, and civilian ownership of automatic weapons is heavily regulated).

The point is that it's a comparison that holds only in a tiny part of the world, which means to comparison is meaningless.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#316

Post by georgeplusplus »

TillE wrote: post #152
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #145

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"?

Reverse engineering is not onerously difficult if you have the right tools, some experience, and a decent grasp of assembly language. It's only really annoying if you can't use a debugger.

Any good resources you recommend for a noob to the art who doesn't know assembly?

I've reverse engineered file types. But not actual code.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#317

Post by dools »

gcanyon wrote: post #312
dools wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not impossible at all there are millions of people who live lives of total lawlessness.

"lawlessness" "outside of society" The clear implication of your original statement was that it is possible to not owe society anything by not taking anything from others. To do that requires a level of self-sufficiency that only a very small fraction of people possess.

No, I said:

“For many, society doesn't provide any advantages and so they choose non-compliance and all the consequences that come with it.”

So what I mean is you can choose to live outside of society, meaning not complying with laws. That is lawlessness, it’s a life of crime.

Living as a sovereign citizen outside of any legal structure in such a way that you neither depend on any legal structure nor do you infringe upon any legal structure is very difficult, and available only to a very small number of people.

But anyone can choose lawlessness at any time.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#318

Post by upofadown »

thecrash wrote: post #212
upofadown wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> 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. The difference is that if Telegram was intercepting messages, there would never be any indication to users. If Signal did it there would be evidence on the client side, in the form of tampered safety numbers. We can worry that a user is very…

>All it takes is a single public scandal where Signal provably tampered with safety numbers for the whole service to be thrown into question.

How would the user prove that a particular device never existed?

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#319

Post by mikrotikker »

unixr wrote: post #235
anonym29 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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

No. Society joining the internet has led to the downfall of society.

It should be left to the nerds.

Re: Signal walks the line between anarchism and pragmatism

#320

Post by jabradoodle »

catiopatio wrote: post #157
komali2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm just saying that almost no one advocates for the 2nd amendment right to a bazooka This isn't necessarily true. To believe that the 2nd amendment allows the right to carry a concealed weapon basically anywhere sort of requires one to believe every citizen has the right to carry any weapon. The amendment is meant to indicate that congress simply can't regulate whether citizens choose to own and carry around weapo…

I absolutely believe I should be able to own a bazooka, and that the second and first amendments are equally critical for a free state. People use exactly the same arguments you’re making to justify speech restrictions. It’s my belief that there’s an underlying social pathology wherein some people are happy to hand power to the state in order to feel safe, regardless of the ultimate consequences, whether we’re discus…

You can't blow my house up with free speech.

Also free states exist outside of the USA, so clearly those amendments are not a prerequisite of freedom.

I also wouldn't call it a pathology in the average case, not unless you believe there is no use for law, courts, police etc, and are a proponent of anarchy.

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