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Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

swedenherald.com

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Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#131

Post by ben_w »

walrus01 wrote: post #62
willvarfar wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The app stores are run by companies with a presence in the EU.

What's funny is that it's other EU laws from totally different parts of government which are, at the same time, pushing to allow for side loading of apps and alternate app stores on iOS and Android. https://www.google.com/search?q=apple%20eu%20alternative%20a... The end result of which, if done at large scale, means that an EU government couldn't ban signal, short of forcing all its domestic ISPs to be downstream of…

All the alternative app stores can easily be subject to the same legal requirements as Apple.

Side-loading is harder to enforce any rules over, of course.

Blocking domains is well-established at this point, thanks to the copyright industry doing a 21.5-year whack-a-mole-waltz with The Pirate Bay. Of course, this also demonstrates the limited effectiveness of domain blocking.

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#132

Post by EGreg »

vaylian wrote: post #10

There is a reason why Free Software (as in freedom) was invented: To ensure that those who create the software do not overpower those who use the software. The idea, that companies or politicians can force the user's machine to work against it's owner, is wrong. And it is wrong, because to be a human in the 21st century means in most cases, that your digital devices and your digital interactions are a core part of wh…

I think that this highlights exactly why we need decentralized, open source software.

Back when Moxie Marlinspike made a thoughtful critique of Web3 (the most thoughtful one I had read, actually), I put together a reply. It’s worth a read for anyone on HN who cares about user freedom and how society is structured:

https://community.intercoin.app/t/web3-moxie-signal-telegram...

A note to the younger HN crowd who may have grown up with locked-down devices: the “hacker ethos” used to mean the freedom to tinker and buuld your own. It wasn’t always the case. The Personal Computer and Apple came about through the Homebrew app. And before that, Steve Jobs and Wozniak were even building blue boxes for “phreakers”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFURM8O-oYI

Before he became a corporate golden boy, Mark Zuckerberg built Synapse for regular users and open sourced it instead of selling it to Microsoft and wanted to build Wirehog, but Sean Parker proudly said he and Peter Thiel “put a bullet in that thing”

https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/26/wirehog/

I don’t want to just be the “wake up sheeple” guy or some unkempt Stallman clone. But there is a real culture clash between the hackers and the corporations, and I feel like the HN denizens who knee-jerk downvote of anything decentralized today don’t get the point of open source decentralized hacker ethos and how the people who practice it produce the next big thing. Working for FAAMGA and “the cloud” ain’t it folks. Here’s why “the cloud sucks” by Steve Wozniak: https://gizmodo.com/why-the-cloud-sucks-5932161

In short — read my rejoinder to Moxie Marlinspike, in my first link. It is ironic because all these years later, I end up being right: it is exactly his company that’s getting hit with this, exactly because it is centralized.

And if you are Moxie or Durov and think your centralized company has somewhere to run… here is the bigger picture around the world — governments are coming for you and the war on user freedom is coming through you: https://community.qbix.com/t/the-global-war-on-end-to-end-en...

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#133

Post by nonrandomstring »

kikokikokiko wrote: post #74
smokel wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the philosophy of Free Software does not account for the scale at which software is being run now. Having the source code to a printer driver available is a completely different thing than being dependent on a platform, because all your friends and relations are using it. Personally, I'd only trust a governmental agency to provide such services, which makes the article we're discussing ironic at the le…

"Personally, I'd only trust a governmental agency to provide such services" I understand where you're coming from, "the ultimate goal of a company is to profit and so we can not trust it to protect their users/consumers interests instead of their own" but... you know that it is always the government that will put you in prison, or send you to war right? That it is a blob of power, controlled by people right? This gov…

> This government = good that you see people believing these days is such > a childish view of reality.

There are plenty of immature ideas about running human affairs going around. History has shown that a social contract obtained by popular assent is the only viable choice, unless you relish war, insurrection, terrorism, and social collapse [0].

Government is good almost by definition because we grant its existence on that basis of benevolence. Indeed one should be ready to defend good government and lay down ones life to make it good, including overthrowing existing bad government.

This was well established 80 years ago and we seem to have forgotten.

I know there are some around here agitating for tyranny and dictatorship. That in my opinion is the "childish view", a result of too much screen-time and a lack of life experience.

Would you be willing to fight for good government? [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract

[1] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/soe/

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#134

Post by jeroenhd »

microtonal wrote: post #107

What is the state of peer to peer messengers with E2EE? Over ten years ago, Bittorrent Inc. (now Rainberry and Resilio) made a serverless chat client (Bleep IIRC). But I don't think there is anything new that is also user-friendly? (Drop-in replacement of WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage, etc.)

Peer to peer communications are difficult to combine with mobile phones (at least if you value battery life). There are various messengers out there, but they're incredibly niche and I doubt they'll ever get any decent user bases.

Tox is peer to peer and encrypted, but its UX will probably drive away anyone who wants the ease of use of Signal or WhatsApp.

I think Matrix experimented with the concept of running a server on-device, and that's one of the few alternative chat systems with decent UIs available, but AFAIK that never made it beyond the proof of concept stage.

Veilid Chat, developed by the Cult of the Dead Cow, promises to be an interesting option, but it's currently in beta and has been for a while.

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#135

Post by louwrentius »

throwaway28409 wrote: post #96
louwrentius wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be wrong, but it proves that technology can't beat politics and policy. The issue with Apple caving to UK demands regarding encryption, and now Signal being in a similar situation, shows that you can't just focus on technology and ignore policy and politics. And you'll find out that a ton of people here on HN will care, but most of the public won't. People should take XKCD 538 really to heart (The 5$ wrench on…

> It may be wrong, but it proves that technology can't beat politics and policy. It very much can. In a battle between human force and physics, physics win every time. If I send an encrypted email to you, you have the choice to not give up the key, even if you'll be in jail. With physical letters, you don't have this option. Technology gives you the ironclad ability to keep a secret, only limited by the fortitude of…

You clearly haven't felt a 5$ wrench on your body. Giving up your secrets under torture isn't a character flaw, it's what will happen to 99.99% of people under torture. I can't help you if you don't believe that this is true.

And I hope you understand that 5$ wrench is a euphemism for what would 'really' happen.

All this to say that no, technology does not triumph over politics and policy.

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#136

Post by Braxton1980 »

hedora wrote: post #116
marcinzm wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Invading the privacy of one's digital space is a violation that goes as deep as reading someone's diary when we look back and the time when life was more analog. Which police with a warrant can very much do.

There’s no warrant protection in this bill. They want to keep a copy of everyone’s data so they can look back at old stuff after the fact. Even if there was warrant protection, I’d still be against it. People have traditionally had the right to speak to each other without giving a transcript to the police. I think it’s unreasonable to make that illegal.

Testimony under oath can be compelled

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#137

Post by account42 »

fredsted wrote: post #21
throwaway894345 wrote: post #8

It seems like a lot of these proposals are coming out of Europe—assuming I’m not mistaken (and I may well be), why is Europe cracking down so much on privacy?

European bureaucrats generally have little understanding of the technology they get paid to regulate, as we've seen with the their previous attempts to regulate the industry. It's very much a "vibes-based" approach. They can simply keep proposing the same regulation with a new name until it's voted through.

The politicians voting on it might not fully understand but the people pushing the regulation absolutely do. They want a popultion that hears and sees only what they want to.

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#139

Post by lolinder »

lxgr wrote: post #120
throwaway28409 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea, that companies or politicians can force the user's machine to work against it's owner, is wrong. You are hinting at something important here. Let me strengthen your point: to own an object means to subject it fully to your own will. If the object can act in a way that favors someone else's interests over yours, you do not own it. This is true of pretty much any device running proprietary software. A litmu…

> to own an object means to subject it fully to your own will Not by a long shot. Just a few counterexamples from the top of my head: Destroying currency, altering passports, reproducing copyrighted images. I'm not saying I'm a fan of even more exceptions of that kind, but I don't think there are any particular inherent rights arising from property ownership beyond from what society agrees on there are (e.g. the firs…

> Just a few counterexamples from the top of my head: Destroying currency, altering passports, reproducing copyrighted images.

These aren't counterexamples, they prove the rule. A US passport literally has the text "this passport is the property of the United States" printed inside of it, and I imagine the same is true in most countries: you are the recipient of a passport, not the owner of one.

The same applies to copyrighted images— when you purchase a book you own the physical copy and can fully subject it to your own will, but you don't own the right to make additional copies of it. You own the copy, not the intellectual property.

As for currency, it may not legally be the property of the US government like a passport, but I would argue that the fact that you can't modify it does in fact mean that you don't own the bill, the bill is a representation of an abstraction of "money" that you do own.

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#140

Post by walrus01 »

ben_w wrote: post #131
walrus01 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's funny is that it's other EU laws from totally different parts of government which are, at the same time, pushing to allow for side loading of apps and alternate app stores on iOS and Android. https://www.google.com/search?q=apple%20eu%20alternative%20a... The end result of which, if done at large scale, means that an EU government couldn't ban signal, short of forcing all its domestic ISPs to be downstream of…

All the alternative app stores can easily be subject to the same legal requirements as Apple. Side-loading is harder to enforce any rules over, of course. Blocking domains is well-established at this point, thanks to the copyright industry doing a 21.5-year whack-a-mole-waltz with The Pirate Bay. Of course, this also demonstrates the limited effectiveness of domain blocking.

> Of course, this also demonstrates the limited effectiveness of domain blocking.

Extremely limited effectiveness, when VPN operators like Mullvad are corporations based in Sweden and offer 5 euro a month service to bypass whatever local "mess with internet traffic" activity, whether government-caused or not, that someone's last mile ISP is up to...

There's also the game of whack a mole with taking ownership of domains at the registrar/ICANN level through court orders, such as with the various .com or similar things that get jacked and plastered with a "DOMAIN HAS BEEN SEIZED" notice by the US feds.

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