Advocating for privacy in Australia • Hacker News Board

Re: Advocating for privacy in Australia

#101

Post by emptybits » Fri, Dec 21, 2018, 7:08 PM UTC

jacques_chester wrote: post #65

emptybits wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't place ourselves above law enforcement. Of course this is reasonable, but I'm curious what you think of companies who do put themselves above law enforcement when it's the right thing to do. i.e. lawmakers do not always make laws that are right and law enforcement does not always do the right thing when interpreting and enforcing laws. A case to cite might be Apple vs. FBI in 2016. The company placed itself…

> I'm curious what you think of companies who do put themselves above law enforcement when it's the right thing to do ... A case to cite might be Apple vs. FBI in 2016. The company placed itself above law enforcement. Apple did no such thing. They asserted their legal rights. They used the exact mechanism -- the law -- that you are saying they ignored or held themselves above.

I did not say they held themselves above the law. Law enforcement is what OP commented on and that's what I responded to. I think it's an important distinction.

When law enforcement takes a wrong turn (as the FBI did) it is, I believe, reasonable for a citizen to consider themselves above (read: "better than") law enforcement. Mechanisms to deal with this include constitutional principles (which may also be considered above the law) and, generally, the courts.

Re: Advocating for privacy in Australia

#102

Post by emptybits » Fri, Dec 21, 2018, 7:10 PM UTC

rswail wrote: post #81

emptybits wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't place ourselves above law enforcement. Of course this is reasonable, but I'm curious what you think of companies who do put themselves above law enforcement when it's the right thing to do. i.e. lawmakers do not always make laws that are right and law enforcement does not always do the right thing when interpreting and enforcing laws. A case to cite might be Apple vs. FBI in 2016. The company placed itself…

Apple did not place themselves about the law, they went to a properly constituted court and asked the judge to rule on whether what the FBI was asking was lawful. During those proceedings, they also explained how complying with the FBI's request would lead to a highly damaging corruption of the privacy of their users data. They asked the judge to make a judgement which was that Apple were right in saying that the FBI…

> Apple did not place themselves about the law

Exactly. I didn't say they did. The comment was about being above law enforcement. See my other peer response here.

Re: Advocating for privacy in Australia

#103

Post by quickthrower2 » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 1:29 AM UTC

chrismorgan wrote: post #66

quickthrower2 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what you are getting at exactly, but you can provide browser based email where the browser using J.S. decrypts the email. Obviously need to figure a way to make that AA proof.

You now trust the provider’s JS not to be hijacked. I know of no good infrastructure at present for managing this risk; at the very least, you’ll need an independent browser extension for auditing all the code and ensuring that no unaudited code is permitted, and you’ll need the provider to support it in some measure as well, so that the service doesn’t break when new, not-yet-audited versions of the code are rolled…

Yep it’s a tricky one. It has to be hosted on a domain you trust. Maybe if it’s on IPFS that’s kind of better but any registered domain name is at risk of being hacked or even DNS itself.

Re: Advocating for privacy in Australia

#104

Post by systoll » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 3:15 AM UTC

Jerry2 wrote: post #15

Their "Actions we are taking" section is almost entirely composed of a political lobbying strategy. Given the outcome of the vote, 44 votes for and only 12 against, their plan doesn't exude much confidence. I would have expected plans to move data and key technologists out of Australia at the very least. The company I work for uses Fastmail but our CEO has already decided to switch mail providers sometime in 2019. I…

44-12 doesn’t really tell you much about the solidity of this position in the Australian parliament.

The Liberal & Labor parties both decided among themselves to support it, and have policies that lead to 100% of MPs following the party line.

(Don’t know if it’s a good idea for Australia, but it’s the game-theoretically correct thing for the parties to do under the rules we have, so...)

No-one ‘crossed the floor’, voting against their party, because it gets you kicked out of your party. [Automatically, if you’re a Labor MP]

They knew they wouldn’t change the outcome here, and they’d be out of the conversation going forward.

In particular, Labor gave the measure 100% of its votes, but it seems like the only way the party got majority support for it is by agreeing to vote to repeal and amend it next session. It was not a solid agreement.

Re: Advocating for privacy in Australia

#105

Post by quickthrower2 » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 4:46 AM UTC

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #71

quickthrower2 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what you are getting at exactly, but you can provide browser based email where the browser using J.S. decrypts the email. Obviously need to figure a way to make that AA proof.

Yes, you can provide such a service. With such a service, you have the power to access the emails. Telling people that you can not access the emails would be marketing bullshit.

Nope because the user encrypts them using their own secret. No access to historical emails but possible to backdoor the JS later on.

Re: Advocating for privacy in Australia

#106

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 5:09 AM UTC

quickthrower2 wrote: post #105

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you can provide such a service. With such a service, you have the power to access the emails. Telling people that you can not access the emails would be marketing bullshit.

Nope because the user encrypts them using their own secret. No access to historical emails but possible to backdoor the JS later on.

So, it is possible to backdoor the JS lateron, but it is impossible to use that for accessing the emails? Could you explain how that works?

Re: Advocating for privacy in Australia

#107

Post by bscphil » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 5:22 AM UTC

brongondwana wrote: post #11

Jedi72 wrote: post #7

Good writeup. Since I can already see not everyone here actually read the article, here are some highlights. > Law enforcement has always been able to request information from us through the Telecommunications Act with a lawful warrant. Because we have the ability to decrypt all data, there is no need to make changes that circumvent encryption. ... While FastMail is not directly affected, we don’t support this legisl…

Thanks - that's pretty much exactly it. If someone needs end-to-end encryption, it's only safe from intermediate third parties if they aren't trusting software which is updated by those third parties. So we use effective methods to protect the privacy of our users while performing our civic duty of assisting law enforcement when bad actors use or abuse our platform, and we never pretend to use the bulk of our custome…

Would Fastmail ever consider verifying signed messages? Authenticity is one of many things gained through using PGP, and implementing it in the Fastmail interface wouldn't lead to the false sense of security that "encrypted" email in the browser supposedly gives.

Re: Advocating for privacy in Australia

#108

Post by chrismorgan » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 7:14 AM UTC

quickthrower2 wrote: post #103

chrismorgan wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You now trust the provider’s JS not to be hijacked. I know of no good infrastructure at present for managing this risk; at the very least, you’ll need an independent browser extension for auditing all the code and ensuring that no unaudited code is permitted, and you’ll need the provider to support it in some measure as well, so that the service doesn’t break when new, not-yet-audited versions of the code are rolled…

Yep it’s a tricky one. It has to be hosted on a domain you trust. Maybe if it’s on IPFS that’s kind of better but any registered domain name is at risk of being hacked or even DNS itself.

If the web app is served by your email service provider, your end-to-end encryption scheme is broken and you’ve lost, unless you have the facility to verify exactly what code it is that they’re serving up. The simplest attack model is that your email service provider is compelled to serve different code that exfiltrates the secret from your browser and sends it somewhere else, for your user account only (which would, I imagine, get around things like the AABill’s idea of not introducing systemic weaknesses). Next time you access the web app, you have unwittingly granted unfettered access to all your email.

It’s a similar deal on mobile apps; the situation is probably a little better if it’s truly a native app (by which I mean: all executable code comes from the app store, rather than executing arbitrary code fetched at runtime, as with websites) in that they probably can’t serve you specifically a different version to everyone else (I expect that’d need cooperation from the app store provider—not implausible, I caution) and so any vulnerabilities are more likely to be noticed in any auditing that others may do; but it’s also much worse because there you can’t lock it down with a browser extension that intercepts and verifies all the code.

Re: Advocating for privacy in Australia

#109

Post by chrismorgan » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 7:17 AM UTC

quickthrower2 wrote: post #105

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you can provide such a service. With such a service, you have the power to access the emails. Telling people that you can not access the emails would be marketing bullshit.

Nope because the user encrypts them using their own secret. No access to historical emails but possible to backdoor the JS later on.

If your code running on the user’s computer can use the secret provided by the user to access email, your code can steal the secret.

Running the encryption no the user’s computer instead of your own servers is not a panacea, because you still control the code.

Re: Advocating for privacy in Australia

#110

Post by brongondwana » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 8:56 PM UTC

bscphil wrote: post #107

brongondwana wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks - that's pretty much exactly it. If someone needs end-to-end encryption, it's only safe from intermediate third parties if they aren't trusting software which is updated by those third parties. So we use effective methods to protect the privacy of our users while performing our civic duty of assisting law enforcement when bad actors use or abuse our platform, and we never pretend to use the bulk of our custome…

Would Fastmail ever consider verifying signed messages? Authenticity is one of many things gained through using PGP, and implementing it in the Fastmail interface wouldn't lead to the false sense of security that "encrypted" email in the browser supposedly gives.

Perhaps - though it leads to either offering a way for users to manage their keychain, or managing those trust relationships ourselves - and of course adds a channel where we could be compelled to lie to users about authentication on the message.

Right now the only authentication signal we display on the website is a green tick if the message came from one of our staff or one of our trusted systems.