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Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California

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Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California

#111

Post by azinman2 »

somebodythere wrote: post #97
azinman2 wrote: post #49

It’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 US government is too caught up in prosecuting victimless crimes, bullying defendants into taking plea deals (and forfeiting their right to a fair trial), handing out cruel sentences, and using evidence borne from illegal searches (while lying about it). Until all of that changes I am not interested in giving them more ammo.

Right because until some bar that can never be met is satisfied, let's let anything go? Sorry, that's not the society I want to live in.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California

#112

Post by throwoutway »

post_below wrote: post #90
ARandomerDude wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With very limited use, even secret subpoenas can be a good thing, for example in a counterintelligence situation where you don't want to tip your hand to a foreign intelligence service. The problem is abuse of that system.

Abuse of that system being a when, not if, scenario.

More like “how often”, or have we forgotten how much Obama tried to bury Snowden’s leaks?

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California

#113

Post by JustSomeNobody »

akouri wrote: post #22

What I don't understand about the whole Signal E2EE model is that while your messages themselves may be encrypted, they are still sending push notifications over Apple's servers, which have to go through APNS. Often the entire message contents can be contained in the push notification. Does anybody know if Apple's notifications are E2EE? I doubt that gov't doesn't have access to the push notifications...

> Often the entire message contents can be contained in the push notification.

Good grief, why would you do that? Just send a notification that data is ready and the when the app wakes, go get the remainder of the data from signal servers.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California

#114

Post by akiselev »

post_below wrote: post #90
ARandomerDude wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With very limited use, even secret subpoenas can be a good thing, for example in a counterintelligence situation where you don't want to tip your hand to a foreign intelligence service. The problem is abuse of that system.

Abuse of that system being a when, not if, scenario.

I'd postulate that given the scale of a nation state, abuse of any system becomes a when, not if, scenario.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California

#115

Post by onetimeusename »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #23

Beautiful. That's how you do it. 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. These platforms should want to know as little about you as possible.

Yes, although the way around this for law enforcement is to pressure Apple and Google to remove Signal from the App Store/Play respectively (to protect children!) and work on operating system level bypasses of Signal. I am fearing this scenario.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California

#116

Post by Klonoar »

NdMAND wrote: post #35
akouri wrote: post #22

What I don't understand about the whole Signal E2EE model is that while your messages themselves may be encrypted, they are still sending push notifications over Apple's servers, which have to go through APNS. Often the entire message contents can be contained in the push notification. Does anybody know if Apple's notifications are E2EE? I doubt that gov't doesn't have access to the push notifications...

I believe they are encrypted (and decrypted on device by the Signal app). They recently had to do some rewriting of the code for iOS15 - they share some comments about that here: https://community.signalusers.org/t/beta-feedback-for-the-up... Hope it helps Edit: wow people were fast to reply…

I'm actually surprised they didn't use a notification extension before. They're surprisingly great as an API - I used it to dynamically render preview line chart images for a finance app I worked on a few years ago. Just send over the limited line data, render the image, and you're good to go.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California

#117

Post by AlbertCory »

jonas21 wrote: post #99
AlbertCory wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're exactly right, you don't pay capital gains tax, and DAFs really are the poor man's "tax-exempt foundation." Billionaires have access to much fancier schemes than this, and I won't even attempt to describe all those. But yeah, I imagine "donating their shares without capital gains taxes" figures into them. I just noticed you said "trusts for their kids" -- that's something different. If the children can access…

Yeah, I didn't realize what an enormous difference this made until I ran the numbers. In your example above, let's say the person purchased those 10 Meta shares for $38 each at the IPO and they're worth $322 each now. That's $3220 in proceeds and a $2840 capital gain. The taxes on this depend on income level and state of residence, but let's say they're in CA making $300K/year. They'll pay 20% federal capital gains t…

Right. If you just sell, you can spend some of the money (that you don't donate).

If you donate to a DAF, it's 100% gone to charity, *someday."

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California

#119

Post by ChuckMcM »

While I applaud Signal's response I expect this entire event (subpoena and response) will be provided as one of the exhibits to congress by the Department of Justice to justify their request that it be unlawful to provide such services. The DoJ will say, "See, here is this horrible crime we are investigating and because this company chose to make it impossible for law enforcement, with a warrant and a subpoena to get it, the criminal is going to go unpunished and that will be on you because you refused to mandate lawful access to communications."

The Congressional response should be, "Do you have no other way of investigating these criminals?" "Could you not put an officer out to surveille them?", "Have you not seen the misuse that law enforcement has engaged in, with such capabilities? From petty revenge to stalking lovers who rejected them. Will you consent to mandatory surveillance of all law enforcement officers that is recorded and stored in a civil controlled repository so that officer conduct may be reviewed at any time?"

They won't say that of course. But they should.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California

#120

Post by AlbertCory »

bo1024 wrote: post #62
ndesaulniers wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another benefit, it sounds like, is that you don't have to pay capital gains on selling those shares. Like, let's say your intent is to donate $10k to some charity, out of the goodness of your heart and/or as a tax write off. You don't have that in cash, but do in stock. You could liquidate $10k of stock, pay capital gains on it (if it appreciated since acquisition), then donate it. So you're out the capital gains ta…

I think this is what the rich do with art, yes.

I don't have this problem, but getting a "fair" appraisal of your art can be tough. Maybe they auction it off, and the proceeds go to their foundations?
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