Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by pangolinplayer » Fri, Oct 29, 2021, 9:29 PM UTC

arthur_sav wrote: post #133

ChuckMcM wrote: post #119

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…

Nothing any company can do about that. Spying programs and laws will only worsen unless people really voice their concerns and elect the right people.

Yes of course. Democracy will save you. Grow up.

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

#142

Post by monopoledance » Fri, Oct 29, 2021, 9:29 PM UTC

hsn915 wrote: post #104

joshuamorton wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The snark of providing the timestamps as unredacted values was fabulous.

I don't know if it's a snark. It's probably the right thing to provide legally. It's literally the records they have.

The snark is publishing it in the blog post not blacked out. As a side effect the account may or not be warned by this. Not sure, if it’s legal to do so, in the US.

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

#143

Post by aasasd » Fri, Oct 29, 2021, 9:30 PM UTC

Oh funny. Just ten days ago someone asked here in the comments about DDG:

> Why, on any planet, would law enforcement issue a warrant to get user data from a company that doesn't have any user data?

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

#144

Post by nobody9999 » Fri, Oct 29, 2021, 9:31 PM UTC

jonnybgood wrote: post #98

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a dead end with Signal. But it requires field work, as they used to do 50 years ago. Now, cops and politicians want to solve all the problems from their desk. No, sorry, my freedom is not to be sold for their convenience. You want to catch a bad guy, you get a trained investigation team that follows people, that wires their house, that interrogates neighborhood, etc. Is it more work ? Yes. Is it more dangero…

So you want cost the taxpayer significantly with potentially months of unneeded work and expose cops to potentially more danger to ultimately arrive at the same result? How exactly is this better?

>So you want cost the taxpayer significantly with potentially months of unneeded work and expose cops to potentially more danger to ultimately arrive at the same result? How exactly is this better?

Because my privacy and that of most others who are decent, law-abiding citizens is more important than not making police do their jobs.

How do you think police caught people before apps like Signal? With real police work. Perhaps if they had to spend more time doing that, they wouldn't have time to beat and kill as many unarmed civilians.

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

#145

Post by webmobdev » Fri, Oct 29, 2021, 9:31 PM UTC

upofadown wrote: post #13

>Because everything in Signal is end-to-end encrypted by default, the broad set of personal information that is typically easy to retrieve in other apps simply doesn’t exist on Signal’s servers. The E2EE in Signal only protects the actual content of messages. In the case where Signal takes an assertive action, and the users are not paying any attention to their "safety numbers" (probably the most common case) they co…

> Does American law even allow such warrants?

Even worse - American laws allow the US government agencies to actually access the servers directly (or even add other servers or routers) in the data centre of the service provider, and the service provider is legally obliged to not tell anyone about it!

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

#146

Post by BiteCode_dev » Fri, Oct 29, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #82

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a dead end with Signal. But it requires field work, as they used to do 50 years ago. Now, cops and politicians want to solve all the problems from their desk. No, sorry, my freedom is not to be sold for their convenience. You want to catch a bad guy, you get a trained investigation team that follows people, that wires their house, that interrogates neighborhood, etc. Is it more work ? Yes. Is it more dangero…

> What you can't do, is click on a button to spy on people There's a subpoena in this process that you're glossing over. You can argue that's too easy or too secretive or something, and that's more than fair, but it's not just 'clicking a button'.

I'm not arguing about the subpoena, I'm arguing against the idea that encrypted solutions are bad.

If you have a subpoena to open a safe, and you realize that you have no tools that are strong enough to open that safe, you don't suddenly blame safes. You don't tell banks they should stop using safes. You don't ask them to create weaker safes robbers can break into.

You try another route.

A subpoena is fair. Asking signal to preemptively not encrypt the data in case we need it later is not.

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

#147

Post by Thorentis » Fri, Oct 29, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #127

onetimeusename wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder how far they could go in compelling Signal to push a change that let more info leak for a specific user. I know there have been somewhat similar cases where companies were compelled to add new functionality, logs, etc, to capture info for a specific user.

I'm surprised the FBI has tried to get a custom keyboard into the Play Store yet, or asked Google to add a key logger to the stock one. Sure, the legality is blury at the moment, but it's just a matter of changing some laws and then that becomes legal.

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

#148

Post by webmobdev » Fri, Oct 29, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

Trias11 wrote: post #135

Signal, please stop asking for mandatory phone number to register and use Signal. This raises privacy concerns and negates all the end-to-end encryption goodness you're offering.

Yes, this is why I am very suspicious of Signal as a front for the CIA / NSA. A phone number can reveal so much information about a person because many online and offline services now ask for it.

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

#149

Post by nobody9999 » Fri, Oct 29, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

t-writescode wrote: post #124

jonnybgood wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you want cost the taxpayer significantly with potentially months of unneeded work and expose cops to potentially more danger to ultimately arrive at the same result? How exactly is this better?

> to ultimately arrive at the same result [citation needed] Further: Wiretapping is illegal without a warrant. I believe the spirit of the law there implied that wiretapping of [previous, historical conversations] was _always_ illegal, since a wiretap could only be tracking future conversations by its very nature. The nature of communication has changed, such that all conversations theoretically have a permanent, his…

>"Show me the man, I'll show you the crime."

That's nothing new, either.

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." -- Attributed (possibly apocryphal) to Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642).

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

#150

Post by kilna » Fri, Oct 29, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #102

elliekelly wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those who want to keep the current draconian status quo in place are incentivized to make public any wins, it would justify the existence of the extreme measures. The fact that they haven't boasted about any win is telling.