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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

#251

Post by ddtaylor »

gosub100 wrote: post #137
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.

Suppose they didn't require that. Wouldn't that open themselves up to DDoS? An angry nation or ransom-seeker could direct bots to create accounts and stuff them with noise.

There are a lot of solutions to denial of service attacks than to collect personal information. Plus, you know, you can always delete an account later? If what Signal says is true, then this amounts to a few records in their database which isn't cause for concern IMO

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#252

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #178
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)

I'm never sure why people assume that Palantir is magically unlike the overwhelming majority of tech startups/companies I've worked at: vastly over promising what is possible to create hype and value while offering things engineering knows will never really quite work like they're advertised. To your point, but on a larger scale, over hyping Palantir has the added benefit of providing a chilling effect on public resi…

doing Bad Things poorly is still doing Bad Things.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#253

Post by ddtaylor »

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…

I'm confident the people executing non-complaint people in the street would be capable of compelling a citizen.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#254

Post by newsclues »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #178
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)

I'm never sure why people assume that Palantir is magically unlike the overwhelming majority of tech startups/companies I've worked at: vastly over promising what is possible to create hype and value while offering things engineering knows will never really quite work like they're advertised. To your point, but on a larger scale, over hyping Palantir has the added benefit of providing a chilling effect on public resi…

Because palantirs selling proposition is: you can’t find the answers in your own data, but we can.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#255

Post by jjk166 »

scoofy wrote: post #91
fusslo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would never agree with you. protestors behaving legally or practicing civil disobedience can still have their lives ruined by people in power. https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/arizona-supreme-court-s...

The literal point of civil disobedience is accepting that you may end up in jail: "Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for the law." -- Letter from the Birmingham Jail , MLK Jr: https://people.uncw.edu/schmidt/201Stuff…

That's not the point of civil disobedience, it's an unfortunate side effect. You praise a martyr for their sacrifice, you deplore that the sacrifice was necessary.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#257

Post by epistasis »

chinathrow wrote: post #212

The FBI should investigate the murders done by ICE and until done with that, remain silent.

And importantly the DoJ attorneys who would be responsible for investigating g the murders resigned because they were prevented from performing the standard procedure investigation that happens after every single shooting. They were instead directed to investigate the family of the person who was shot:

https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/nyt-6-federal-prosecutor...

We are through the looking glass, folks. This will be dropped and ignored like so many other outrages unless we demand answers from Congress, and hold SCOTUS responsible for partisan abdication of their constitutional duties.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#258

Post by OneDeuxTriSeiGo »

ddtaylor wrote: post #231
OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They weren't though? Signal requires a phone number to sign up and it is linked to your account but your phone number is not used in the under the hood account or device identification, it is not shared by default, your number can be entirely removed from contact disovery if you wish, and even if they got a warrant or were tapping signal infra directly, it'd be extremely non trivial to extract user phone numbers. htt…

In past instances where Signal has complied with warrants, such as the 2021 and 2024 Santa Clara County cases, the records they provided included phone numbers to identify the specific accounts for which data was available. This was necessary to specify which requested accounts (identified by phone numbers in the warrants) had associated metadata, such as account creation timestamps and last connection dates.

Yep however that only exposes a value of "last time the user registered/verified their account via phone number activation" and "last day the app connected to the signal servers".

There isn't really anything you can do with that information. The first value is already accessible via other methods (since the phone companies carry those records and will comply with warrants). And for pretty much anyone with signal installed that second value is going to essentially always be the day the search occurred.

And like another user mentioned, the most recent of those warrants is from the day before they moved to username based identification so it is unclear whether the same amount of data is still extractable.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#259

Post by [deleted] »

spiderice wrote: post #160
janalsncm wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Free speech” is a concept not a law. The first amendment protects certain types of speech. Whether something is free speech or not does not depend on the US government’s opinion or the Chinese government or your mother in law. Publishing locations alone is not conspiracy to commit a crime. If ICE is impeded as a result of this information, that’s not enough. Conspiracy requires the government to prove that multiple…

Which is probably the easiest thing ever to prove, since people are openly trying to impede them

[deleted]

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#260

Post by adolph »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #117
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.

Was starting to think about setting up a neighborhood Signal group, but now thinking that maybe something like Briar might be safer... only problem is that Briar only works on Android which is going to exclude a lot of iPhone users.

Why wouldn't you just use random abandoned forums or web article message threads? Iirc this is what teenagers used to do when schools banned various social media but not devices. Just put the URL in a discrete qr code that only a person in the neighborhood could see.
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