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Matrix and Riot Confirmed as the Basis for France’s Secure Instant Messenger App

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Re: Matrix and Riot Confirmed as the Basis for France’s Secure Instant Messenger App

#111

Post by prophesi »

lucb1e wrote: post #28
hoschicz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you feel like WhatsApp is not polished?

If polish is broadly defined as "something that was hitherto still missing in (claimed-to-be) end to end encrypted chat applications", then open source and a decent profit model are definitely features lacking from WhatsApp. Telegram is open source, but one has to consciously turn on encryption and it doesn't work on the web or desktop clients (and the profit model is non-existent). Signal doesn't work without Google…

Very surprised to never see Keybase mentioned in these discussions. Everything, even the team chats, are end-to-end encrypted with a pretty slick interface.

You can even send E2E-encrypted messages/files to people who haven't even joined yet!

https://keybase.io/blog/keybase-chat

Re: Matrix and Riot Confirmed as the Basis for France’s Secure Instant Messenger App

#112

Post by lucb1e »

zeratax wrote: post #71
lucb1e wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If polish is broadly defined as "something that was hitherto still missing in (claimed-to-be) end to end encrypted chat applications", then open source and a decent profit model are definitely features lacking from WhatsApp. Telegram is open source, but one has to consciously turn on encryption and it doesn't work on the web or desktop clients (and the profit model is non-existent). Signal doesn't work without Google…

you can use signal without any google services though, for more than a year now even. related commit: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/commit/166973132... pretty difficult to find the raw apk though: https://signal.org/android/apk/ about matrix: you will probably end up having to use the electron riot app for a while, but the community is working hard on native clients, but afaik no client has e2ee in any…

> you can use signal without any google services though, for more than a year now even.

I tried it less than a year ago, because I had heard that too, but it still didn't work. I should try again on my new phone I guess.

Re: Matrix and Riot Confirmed as the Basis for France’s Secure Instant Messenger App

#114

Post by ckocagil »

jkarneges wrote: post #66
j4pe wrote: post #57

I had to roll my own chat system recently because the open source solutions out there were surprisingly insufficient - nothing seems to support websockets. Looking forward to the French contributions to the ecosystem! For instance: at the moment Matrix server implementations expect clients like Riot to long-poll for JSON about each room/chat they're connected to. Alternatives like Prosody's XMPP server implementation…

Network overhead aside, long polling can be a pretty wonderful interface. “Give me what I don’t have yet, else let me know when there is something” makes for reliable transmission that is hard to screw up. Long polling requests can work idempotently and recover from network failures automatically. I think it’s an especially wise starting point.

There shouldn't be any overhead to long polling in comparison to websockets.

Re: Matrix and Riot Confirmed as the Basis for France’s Secure Instant Messenger App

#116

Post by Uberphallus »

Jaepa wrote: post #84
kuwze wrote: post #70

It's sort of ironic considering France's history with Minitel[0] and encryption[1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel [1]: https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1997/1201/6012058a.html#75b6a6... Specifically from [1] is the line: "Its illegal in France to encrypt any communication in any way unless you have permission from the government. How is electronic commerce going to get off the ground in such a society? Good…

The US used to regulate "exports" of cryptography under the U.S. Munitions List. Some of the restrictions still remain, but most of them were gradually relaxed in until 2000.

I can't even download FPGA toolchains like a regular person without an account saying I live in the US and a US VPN to support my claim. FPGAs still accounted as ammo, even if you get the dev boards from China.

I'm looking at you, Xilinx.

Re: Matrix and Riot Confirmed as the Basis for France’s Secure Instant Messenger App

#117

Post by HIPisTheAnswer »

snthd wrote: post #90
lucb1e wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If polish is broadly defined as "something that was hitherto still missing in (claimed-to-be) end to end encrypted chat applications", then open source and a decent profit model are definitely features lacking from WhatsApp. Telegram is open source, but one has to consciously turn on encryption and it doesn't work on the web or desktop clients (and the profit model is non-existent). Signal doesn't work without Google…

>Signal doesn't work without Google services Not true, it has a websockets alternative to gcm. >and requires a phone number The phone number can be anything you control. >and turned-on phone iirc Yes >(and their profit model seems to be extorting companies like Wire and helping closed source software like Whatsapp advertise with Signal-level encryption). It (now) has its own nonprofit backing it (and a generous benef…

You do not control a phone number. You can control an SSL cert using DNSSEC. So you cannot control your signal end-point. Besides, the signal server is in total control of your identity. Plus anyone might still use the phone number to send plain-text SMS'.

TLDR: If you don't control the server, there is no security guarantee. So signal, whatsapp and telegram are out.

Re: Matrix and Riot Confirmed as the Basis for France’s Secure Instant Messenger App

#119

Post by HIPisTheAnswer »

renaudg wrote: post #93
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right!? Anyone who believes Facebook's WhatsApp is actually end to end encrypted and gives no access to the message data is laughably naive.

I don't usual respond to conspiracist posts, but maybe you're going to take Moxie Marlinspike's word for it ? https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/

Conspiracy theories aside, why would anyone's word be sufficient? How about the code? Give us the code, then we don't need anyone's promises. Enough with promises!
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