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Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

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Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#121

Post by BlackLotus89 »

j-bos wrote: post #86
autoexec wrote: post #19

> "we would absolutely 100% walk rather than ever undermine the trust that people place in us to provide a truly private means of communication." This from the same signal that refuses to update its privacy policy to reflect the fact that they've started permanently storing sensitive user data in the cloud ( https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-secu... ). The same Signal that ignored the users who…

What alternatives are there to signal? Reasonable, for a lay person.

Depends on your use case. Signal has the largest user base.

* Matrix (you don't have to selfhost) is ok. Consider not using matrix.org (it's "decentralized" for a reason)

* Quicksy is nice but has no userbase at all.

* Threema, but look at https://breakingthe3ma.app/ first and https://threema.ch/en/blog/posts/news-alleged-weaknesses-sta... and https://soatok.blog/2021/11/05/threema-three-strikes-youre-o...

* Wire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_(software)

* Telegram is the worst of the bunch (imho). Just don't use it...

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#122

Post by heavenlyblue »

I like when commercial conservatives like to blame the government for always being too big, inefficient and useless, and then go around and sign off all of their rights to privacy of communication thinking that government is going to do a better job with their private messages (or otherwise using their private communications only for the specific reasons they state, such as child abuse) compared to everything else they do.

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#123

Post by Dudeman112 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #101
sbuk wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sorry, but if that’s your idea of freedom, you can fucking keep it. Our police, though not saints, don’t shoot unarmed people. At least in Britain we are free from being shot in school.

On the other hand, Britain's obsession with banning knives/sharp objects appears to be unique - many countries have no such restrictions and yet they don't seem to have a stabbing epidemic.

>many countries have no such restrictions and yet they don't seem to have a stabbing epidemic

Are you implying there's a stabbing epidemic in Britain? (apologies if I'm misunderstanding that)

Britain doesn't have a stabbing epidemic[1]. It's a meme

Media attention made the obsession, not whatever actually happens in the real world. Ah, if only people cared as much about heart and brain diseases :(

[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/stabbing-... (click on Rate per 100k on the last table)

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#124

Post by nequo »

10xDev wrote: post #120
jarym wrote: post #73

Honestly, this government has some balls. Signal won't be the only one leaving the UK - it's becoming a really poor place to live with high taxation, stalling economy, low consumer rights, environmental protections being stripped away and erosion of civil liberties and rights to privacy. Only when there's enough brain drain might they backtrack but politically we have a party in power that is susceptible to infightin…

With many reputable universities and large companies, brain drain isn't a realistic outcome.

Many of the people who make those universities reputable are foreigners. If the UK goes down an extreme path, the ones who are there will start leaving and new ones will stop coming.

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#125

Post by Dudeman112 »

amarant wrote: post #99
jojobas wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people will say the same when you lose right to encryption, and both will be wrong.

Except you can't kill someone with encryption. Your freedoms end where my freedoms begin, and guns are just a tool to change that dynamic. They serve no other purpose, unless we're talking hunting, for which you can still get guns, after some education. I don't get how Americans seem to think it makes sense to require a license to drive a car but not to own a gun? Who is more dangerous, a guy driving a sedan or one h…

To be fair with them, cars do kill a fair bit more than guns in the USA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/02/03/what-the-da...

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#126

Post by nhchris »

robertlagrant wrote: post #112
stephen_g wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s rubbish. Two people could go somewhere they wouldn’t be heard and have a private conversation. Encryption provides no more challenge to investigation than that option that has existed forever…

> Two people could go somewhere they wouldn’t be heard and have a private conversation This is still the case. That's not a good example of privacy being eroded.

It is, because this used to apply to most conversations. Even when overheard, they would likely be forgotten by who heard them, not have heard everything, not known who was talking, etc. If the conversation became interesting for an investigation, simply finding a witness would take significant time from limited police officers, the witness may not wish to cooperate, their memory would be imperfect, and perhaps most importantly, it would quickly become common knowledge, via gossip, what the police is snooping for.

Now most conversations have moved online, and a secret record can be cheaply created of exactly who is talking to who, when, how often, and in the absence of encryption, even what they are saying. Phones we all carry, even without spyware apps, can be located through signal triangulation, before we even get to facial recognition and omnipresent cameras, smartphone or otherwise.

That, theoretically, we can recover some of the privacy we used to have (so long as we don't get targeted surveillance, which has become so effective defeating it is nearly hopeless), does not mean that, in practice, privacy has been massively eroded for the average person.

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#127

Post by Nextgrid »

Dudeman112 wrote: post #123
Nextgrid wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, Britain's obsession with banning knives/sharp objects appears to be unique - many countries have no such restrictions and yet they don't seem to have a stabbing epidemic.

>many countries have no such restrictions and yet they don't seem to have a stabbing epidemic Are you implying there's a stabbing epidemic in Britain? (apologies if I'm misunderstanding that) Britain doesn't have a stabbing epidemic[1]. It's a meme Media attention made the obsession, not whatever actually happens in the real world. Ah, if only people cared as much about heart and brain diseases :( [1] https://worldpo…

> Are you implying there's a stabbing epidemic in Britain?

No, my point is that the insane knife restrictions we have aren't actually necessary since many countries lack such restrictions and still don't end up with a stabbing epidemic as a result.

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#128

Post by nhchris »

robertlagrant wrote: post #114
Nextgrid wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> rip open envelopes, and get a court order to break into your house and search it One limiting factor was that this wasn't scalable - so a lot of people would be comfortable with it because there is little potential for widespread abuse - there just aren't enough resources to search & monitor everyone's mail and houses at all times. There are no such limitations online, so better protections such as encryption are r…

I agree, but that still isn't a net loss in privacy. We can still communicate the way we could, except now we also would like an unbreakable way of communicating online. I understand of course that scale is an issue online, but that doesn't affect the idea that encryption gives us basically unbreakable communication over a distance, and removing it is not eroding our last vestiges of privacy.

It's making privacy more expensive and rare, while making surveillance cheaper and more common. Do we have to wait until it is literally impossible to share a single word in private before we start to worry?

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#129

Post by a5withtrrs »

askvictor wrote: post #67
nicce wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple users will not be able to make their own choice. Android users will be able to make their own choice thanks to side-loading Recent update on WebKit about PWA, however, makes anything possible now on iOS devices. https://webkit.org/blog/13878/web-push-for-web-apps-on-ios-a... Technically you need browser anymore to run proper messaging apps.

There are problems with using a browser for delivery of any secure elements. It's slightly better than nothing, but if the govt can coerce Apple into blocking Signal from the app store, then they can coerce Apple into compromising their browser to deliver a modified Signal web-app for certain people.

If that's the case, why can't they coerce Apple into compromising their phone entirely? Why stop at the app store? Or the browser?

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#130

Post by piaste »

amarant wrote: post #108
j-bos wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What alternatives are there to signal? Reasonable, for a lay person.

Telegram I think is considered safe? But TBF signal is end to end encrypted which means at least the content if your chats are safe. This is in my opinion safe enough, but YMMV I guess

Telegram is, I believe, generally worse than Signal for privacy.

Both have FOSS clients and offer E2E chats (good), although Telegram doesn't make them the default. Both require the use of phone numbers for identification and store some of your metadata in their central servers (bad). Both dabbled with the idea of privacy-preserving monetization via cryptocurrencies, and both failed spectacularly (funny).

Telegram is run by a swashbuckling Russian expat in Dubai; Signal is run by an American security nerd. You might prefer your metadata to be in Pavel Durov's hands than Moxie Marlinspike's, depending on your threat model, but probably not.

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