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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

#141

Post by account42 »

kypro wrote: post #50
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?

It's not just privacy, Europe is cracking down on freedoms generally. Free speech, the right to silence, the presumption of innocence, etc. Most of this is being done to address the increasing terrorism threat we now face on a daily basis. Freedoms really only work in societies where people broadly share the same values and cooperate, but European societies are fragmenting and increasingly becoming less safe and less…

> Most of this is being done to address the increasing terrorism threat we now face on a daily basis. Freedoms really only work in societies where people broadly share the same values and cooperate, but European societies are fragmenting and increasingly becoming less safe and less tolerant. If we want to do something about this then restricting freedoms is probably going to be required to some extent.

Or you could undo the changes that have caused that decline in social cohesion. People don't share the same values because our governments have been non-stop importing people with radically different values. Values which see it as a positive to end the lives of those who don't agree.

> Another theory I have is that this could just be a symptom of an older and more female voter base.

That voter base does vote more for the established parties and their policies that have gotten us into this compared to the population at large, yes.

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#142

Post by lupusreal »

tuukkah wrote: post #52
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…

Also only possible because we use Signal as compiled by themselves and not by trusted third parties from a source kept clean of any future client-side backdoors. The client is open source, right? https://github.com/signalapp (Reproducible builds is a cool technique.)

Yes, this is part of the problem. Application developers and the packagers should be distinct unrelated entities to reduce the chance of a malicious update being pushed to users if the developer sells out.

F-Droid and Debian/etc show how this is done.

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#143

Post by lxgr »

throwaway28409 wrote: post #126
lxgr wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Note that I said "can", not "legally can". You can destroy currency, alter passport, reproduce copyrighted images if you want to. There may be legal consequences but you can. You can also stab a person with a knife you own, even if you will be punished for it. I'm not talking about rights, but capabilities. You can't make your phone lie to an app developer about its location, rooted status, etc. You can't make your H…

I also can't make a pen and a sheet of paper contain a proof showing whether P is equal to NP. Does that mean I don't own them either?

Now you could of course say that the difference is somebody having intentionally designed an object in a way that makes it capable of withholding some functionality from me but not others, and I'd agree.

But all in all, I just don't think "property rights" is the right lens to think about computing devices.

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#144

Post by tuukkah »

genewitch wrote: post #101
ibotty wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point out where it says it won't be a reproducible output? https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/blob/main/reprod...

I skimmed and didn't see that but the "apkdiff" script extracting the apk because "diff doesn't work well on zips" made my gut twitch. Why can't I sha256sum the two apk?

It seems there are multiple reasons. For one, the apk files include a digital signature and you won't have Signal's and Google's private keys available to recreate their signatures.

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#145

Post by CHY872 »

genewitch wrote: post #101
ibotty wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point out where it says it won't be a reproducible output? https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/blob/main/reprod...

I skimmed and didn't see that but the "apkdiff" script extracting the apk because "diff doesn't work well on zips" made my gut twitch. Why can't I sha256sum the two apk?

Archive formats are hard to make reproducible because there are lots of ways of making different yet equivalent archives. So it’s not surprising to me that someone would fail at this hurdle and find it frustrating to resolve. Nix defined their own format for this to avoid this exact problem.

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#146

Post by genewitch »

arcbyte wrote: post #72
diggan wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep seeing this idea that because a company is headquartered in some place, means they don't have to follow the laws of the countries where they operate. Yes, Signal may be headquartered in the US, but that doesn't mean they can just ignore the laws of other countries, which is exactly what may happen here, depending on the outcome. Sweden may propose a backdoor (a utterly shitty idea, I agree) which Signal may de…

There are only a few instances where institutional powers pass judgements that they cannot enforce. Generally doing so makes that institution look weak because it puts them in a position to have their rulings openly flouted. That's at the core of what jurisdiction means. Sweden can fine Signal all they want but if they can't enforce the collection, they weaken their power and foster disrespect.

Singal is centralized? Can't they just block it at the border? I understand VPN or whatever, but if they're serious I hear there's a couple of countries with "pretty good" border firewalls.

Doing that would eliminate so many Swedes from Signal...

I haven't found a VPN solution for iPhone users in a couple of US states. It's like iphones are actively hostile to the very idea of a VPN. Or at least "self-hosted VPN", maybe the $20/month VPN work but that's... Sketchy.

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#147

Post by throwaway28409 »

louwrentius wrote: post #135
throwaway28409 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Technology very much does. It's the flesh that has a hard time triumphing over force. To counteract this, you can also engineer a system that can resist it through e.g. split secrets on multiple people located in different jurisdictions.

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#148

Post by ghaff »

lxgr wrote: post #113
radlad wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Apple cave to UK's demands? I thought instead they removed their product from the market, like Signal. We're talking about companies though, not technology. Something like Bitcoin or BitTorrent can be regulated, but not stopped.

Not fully, but making transacting in Bitcoin outright illegal would probably go a long way to making it completely unattractive to 99% of all potential users. And if Apple and Google were forced to remove all wallets from their app stores, it would largely be game over.

Transacting in Bitcoin is already unattractive to 99%+ of potential users.

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#149

Post by mjburgess »

genewitch wrote: post #124
mjburgess wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be waring factions within government (which is never unitary in any country) --- here these laws/proposals/etc. probably come from domestic spying agencies and police forces in most countries. I suspect that signals intelligence agencies and offensive forces have probably mostly moved to "encryption is good" stance given the number of foreign attacks upon domestic assets (gov, biz, etc.). However, we shouldn'…

> At a complete guess, I wouldnt be supried if, eg., the NSA (, CIA, et al.) were goading EUROPOL which was demanding domestic anti-encryption laws. The exact purpose of Five Eyes? I'm shocked, shocked! there's gambling going in here!

It's not the purpose of five eyes, it's a noted tactic.

But at the same time countries realise they are under attack economically and political from hostile cyber warefare... and so there's something self-defeating about this tactic now whereas perhaps 10-20 years ago there wasnt.

It's hard to imagine a US-China war (say by proxy in TW) or a EU-Russia war (eg., esp., by proxy in UA) "going well" under conditions of broken domestic encryption.

Eg., back when the UK mass surveillance law was passed in 2016, I imagine sigint agencies were more on-board... today I wonder if that law would now be "quietly opposed" on grounds of national defence

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#150

Post by detourdog »

throwaway28409 wrote: post #126
lxgr wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Note that I said "can", not "legally can". You can destroy currency, alter passport, reproduce copyrighted images if you want to. There may be legal consequences but you can. You can also stab a person with a knife you own, even if you will be punished for it. I'm not talking about rights, but capabilities. You can't make your phone lie to an app developer about its location, rooted status, etc. You can't make your H…

You can also not use a service. I think anonymity is a better measure than the ability to lie for co-operative systems.
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