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FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

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Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#211

Post by subscribed »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #180
hedayet wrote: post #111

With all the predatory tech Palantir has produced, it won't take more than a few minutes for FBI to start taking actions, IF they had anything tangible. This is just an intimidation tactic to stop people talking (chatting)

Meh. Palintir is optimized to sell data to the government. Said governments usually don't care about the quality of data about any one individual. Wear sunglasses when you go out and stay off facebook and it's amazing how little palintir signal you send up. Bonus points if you created an LLC to pay your utility bills. But... Palintir is not as good as you seem to be implying.

Oh, you don't need to have Facebook account to have a very comprehensive and accurate profile: https://www.howtogeek.com/768652/what-are-facebook-shadow-pr...

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#213

Post by mrguyorama »

ActorNightly wrote: post #124
craftkiller wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> willingly unlock their phones Or they are running any mainstream iPhone or Android phone, they've unlocked the phone at least once since their last reboot, and the police have access to graykey. Not sure what the current state of things is, since we rely on leaked documents, but my take-away from the 2024 leaks was GrapheneOS Before First Unlock (BFU) is the only defense.

>is the only defense. Or you know, the 2nd amendment. Id be willing to bet that ICE would have a much smaller impact if they would be met with bullets instead of cameras. In the end, what ICE is doing doesn't really matter to Trump, as long as MAGA believes that things are being done, even if nothing is being done, he doesn't care.

Nothing about the 2nd amendment legalizes shooting law enforcement officers.

This has always been the absurdity of the moronic claims of the 2nd amendment being to overthrow government tyranny: You may own the gun legally, but at no point will your actions be legal. If you've decided the government needs to be overthrown, you are already throwing "law" out the window, even if you have a valid argument that the government you are overthrowing has abandoned the constitution.

Why the fuck do you need legal guns to commit treason? Last I checked, most government overthrows don't even involve people armed with private rifles!

If you are overthrowing the government, you will need to take over local police stations. At the moment, you no longer need private arms, and what you are doing isn't legal anyway.

Meanwhile, every single fucking time it has come up, the gun nuts go radio silent when the government kills the right person who happens to own a gun. Every. Single. Time.

It took minutes for the "SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED" people who raised a million dollars for Kyle Rittenhouse to defend himself for driving to a protest in a different state while armed to the teeth to of course get to shoot someone to turn around and say "Actually bringing a gun to a protest makes you a terrorist and you need to be shot". Minutes. They have also put up GoFundMes for the guy who executed that man.

If you are too scared to stand up to your government without a fucking rifle, you have never been an actual threat to your government, and they know that.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#214

Post by jakelazaroff »

tptacek wrote: post #118
janalsncm wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah whenever people say “the first amendment is not a freedom from consequences” it is only a freedom from certain consequences (and that freedom only goes as far as the government is willing to protect it). It is a freedom from being convicted. They can still arrest you, you can still spend time in jail, prosecutors can even file charges. A court is supposed to throw those charges out. And in extreme cases you can…

Nobody has been charged.

I think GP is speaking generally, not with regard to this situation specifically; obviously people have been charged for constitutionally-protected speech before.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#215

Post by OneDeuxTriSeiGo »

SR2Z wrote: post #100
charliebwrites wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The steps to trouble: - identify who owns the number - compel that person to give unlocked phone - government can read messages of _all_ people in group chat not just that person Corollary: Disappearing messages severely limits what can be read

Unless they compel people at gunpoint (which prevents the government from bringing a case), they will probably not have much luck with this. As soon as a user sets up a passcode or other lock on their phone, it is beyond the ability of even most parts of the US government to look inside. It's much more likely that the government convinces one member of the group chat to turn on the other members and give up their pho…

If you aren't saving people's phone numbers in your own contacts, signal isn't storing them in group chats (and even if you are, it doesn't say which number, just that you have a contact with them).

Signal doesn't share numbers by default and hasn't for a few years now. And you can toggle a setting to remove your number from contact discovery/lookup entirely if you are so inclined.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#216

Post by OhMeadhbh »

charliebwrites wrote: post #85
ddtaylor wrote: post #6

I don't know signal very well but when I have spoken to others about it they mention that the phone number is the only metadata they will have access to. This seems like a good example of that being enough metadata to be a big problem.

The steps to trouble: - identify who owns the number - compel that person to give unlocked phone - government can read messages of _all_ people in group chat not just that person Corollary: Disappearing messages severely limits what can be read

I think disappearing messages only works if you activate it on your local device. And if the man compromises someone without everyone else knowing, they get all messages after that.

But yes... it does limit what can be read. My point is it's not perfect.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#217

Post by causalscience »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #200
causalscience wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been hearing for years people say "Signal requires phone number therefore I don't use it", and I've been hearing them mocked for years. Turns out they were right.

Signal's use of phone numbers is the least of your issues if you've reached this level of inspection. Signal could be the most pristine perfect thing in the world, and the traffic from the rest of your phone is exactly as exposing as your phone number is when your enemy is the US government who can force cooperation from the infrastructure providers.

Your point is correct but irrelevant to this conversation.

The question here is NOT "if Signal didn't leak your phone number could you still get screwed?" Of course you could, no one is disputing that.

The question is "if you did everything else perfect, but use Signal could the phone number be used to screw you?" The answer is ALSO of course, but the reason why we're talking about it is that this point was made to the creator of Signal many many times over the years, and he dismissed it and his fanboys ridiculed it.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#218

Post by mrandish »

I suspect they're going to find it challenging to turn protected speech into something prosecutable like obstruction - assuming activists exercise even a modicum of care in their wording. Seems like just another intimidation tactic but in doing that, they've also given a heads-up to their targets.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#219

Post by OhMeadhbh »

mrWiz wrote: post #156
SR2Z wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless they compel people at gunpoint (which prevents the government from bringing a case), they will probably not have much luck with this. As soon as a user sets up a passcode or other lock on their phone, it is beyond the ability of even most parts of the US government to look inside. It's much more likely that the government convinces one member of the group chat to turn on the other members and give up their pho…

All they have to do is pretend to be a concerned neighbor who wants to help give mutual aid and hope that someone in the group chat takes the bait and adds them in. No further convincing is needed.

social engineering for the win.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#220

Post by nielsbot »

jatora wrote: post #150
hedayet wrote: post #111

With all the predatory tech Palantir has produced, it won't take more than a few minutes for FBI to start taking actions, IF they had anything tangible. This is just an intimidation tactic to stop people talking (chatting)

[flagged]

If ICE agents were actually in danger or subject to "vigilante justice", the administration would be CROWING about it SO LOUDLY we'd never hear the end of it. They're spending their entire working days searching for evidence of it. They can't hardly wait!

That's not what is happening here.

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