What worries me is that even though they don't own the data, they could be forced to push an update that will upload decrypted messages from people's phones. Not owning the client would be better
Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
101–110 of 618 posts
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#102It’s easy so say net win for society is privacy. But it’s important to also acknowledge it does come at a cost — there exists criminal behavior that most reasonable people would agree is bad and should be stopped that may reach a dead end with services like Signal. In formulating your statement that examining criminal behavior is a problem, you are suggesting there shouldn’t be ways to uncover crimes.
How many crimes have been prevented in the last 20 years thanks to the surveillance powers of the USA PATRIOT Act? Last I’d heard the answer was zero. The privacy/security trade-off is vastly overstated.
Be curious where you've heard that from, because the results will largely be kept secret.
Regardless, there are far more ordinary crimes being committed than terrorism.
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#103surely signal has at least the IP address used to connect to their service? aren't they by law required to log that?
Which law requires you to log the IP address used to connect to your service?
Switzerland required ProtonMail to log ip addresses.
https://threatpost.com/protonmail-log-ip-address-french-acti...
From that article: “The internet is generally not anonymous, and if you are breaking Swiss law, a law-abiding company such as ProtonMail can be legally compelled to log your IP address.”
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#104Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#105It’s easy so say net win for society is privacy. But it’s important to also acknowledge it does come at a cost — there exists criminal behavior that most reasonable people would agree is bad and should be stopped that may reach a dead end with services like Signal. In formulating your statement that examining criminal behavior is a problem, you are suggesting there shouldn’t be ways to uncover crimes.
So there was no crime before Signal? The "I have nothing to hide so I don't care" argument is so shortsighted. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Remember this from the Nazi resistance? First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did n…
Think about it this way; if the government wants to know something about you, they'll be able to find out. Switching browsers, or search engines, or email providers, or chat apps will not stop them from their goals.
But it can make your life a lot more inconvenient.
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#106It’s easy so say net win for society is privacy. But it’s important to also acknowledge it does come at a cost — there exists criminal behavior that most reasonable people would agree is bad and should be stopped that may reach a dead end with services like Signal. In formulating your statement that examining criminal behavior is a problem, you are suggesting there shouldn’t be ways to uncover crimes.
The end doesn't justify the means. Police in democratic societies have less power on what they are allowed to do in order to stop crimes, uncover crimes or prosecute criminals. Like requiring a search warrant or how long the police can hold you, interrogate you and so forth. But speech in general has always been a private matter, encryption only reinforces the status quo of society. What argument do you have that les…
I have family members that have gone through violent crime that now have PTSD, and due to lack of evidence because of the inability to read chat logs, the perpetrator is free and the case never brought against him.
Meanwhile Encrochat's non-encryption ended up allowing a multinational set of drug cartels to be taken down.
It's not difficult to come up with such examples.
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#107It’s easy so say net win for society is privacy. But it’s important to also acknowledge it does come at a cost — there exists criminal behavior that most reasonable people would agree is bad and should be stopped that may reach a dead end with services like Signal. In formulating your statement that examining criminal behavior is a problem, you are suggesting there shouldn’t be ways to uncover crimes.
> In formulating your statement that examining criminal behavior is a problem [...] Who exactly said this? It's rather the other way around: flagrantly examining and being able to examine non-criminal behaviour at a whim is a problem. The excuse of potentially being able to spot criminal behaviour is not enough.
The GP did: "I actually believe that law enforcement has the legal right to subpoena information, with a judge's consent, while investigating criminal activity. This is exactly the solution to that _problem_." Nothing was said about spotting at large, but the context was subpoenaing information with a judge's consent while investigating criminal activity.
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#108Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#109It’s easy so say net win for society is privacy. But it’s important to also acknowledge it does come at a cost — there exists criminal behavior that most reasonable people would agree is bad and should be stopped that may reach a dead end with services like Signal. In formulating your statement that examining criminal behavior is a problem, you are suggesting there shouldn’t be ways to uncover crimes.
They can pull this information from either the sender or any of the recipients phones. If the government knows the sender, they can arrest them and confiscate the phone. That's reasonable.
If you use a passcode, they police cannot force you to unlock your phone:
https://www.lawtechnologytoday.org/2019/08/can-police-force-...
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#110Shouldn't Signal be required to produce all the encrypted data stored for this user, in case law enforcement are able to get the associated private keys off the suspect's phone?
Signal stores messages on their servers until they're delivered at which point they're purged.
Additionally, Signal's encryption scheme gives their messages the "forward secrecy" property which means that acquiring key material at some point in the future does not allow you to decrypt any previous messages. Any encrypted messages that they could provide would be useless.
For more, check out their really interesting doc on the double ratchet algorithm that they use!: