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Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

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Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#151

Post by wildmusings »

Floegipoky wrote: post #144
wildmusings wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want the government to give up the right to access communications that it has the ability to access? You're talking about a fundamental weakening of government greater than has ever been attempted. Governments have always had the power to access your mail and papers and such, the only changes over time is the legal hurdles they must use to exercise that power.

This may seem like a small nitpick to some, but I think it's extremely important that people remember that, at least in the US, rights are reserved for The People; the government, by definition, does not have rights, only authority (explicit and implicit).

It's not even a nitpick as much as a distraction from what's being talked about. In the sense that I used the word "right", it can be exchanged for the word "power" and have the exact same meaning. In fact, I make that exchange in my comment. What exactly is your point?

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#152

Post by Jarwain »

> All message contents are end to end encrypted, so we don't have that information either.

The way I'm reading/understanding this is that they have the encrypted messages, but don't specify whether they are stored. However, since the messages are encrypted, they don't have the message contents/that information. Concluding, they may have all the messages saved, albeit in an encrypted format and with minimal metadata.

Did I come to the right conclusion? Or does Signal not store the encrypted message data either?

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#154

Post by lerpa »

zigzigzag wrote: post #69
Bartweiss wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, the big question is what a trustworthy political solution would look like. I see this desire raised a lot, in contexts from HN to Valley-mocking pieces on how encryption is no substitute for advocacy. I completely understand the instinct, but every incarnation of it seems to struggle with the same question. Namely: how do you know when you've won? Restrictions against collecting data on US citizens didn't prod…

Genuine accountability. Rules that are enforced against the elites.

That would not happen with anything short of a revolution, and I don't mean that as a figure of speech.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#155

Post by Anasufovic »

burkaman wrote: post #99
module0000 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Political actors usually only respond when they are or their colleagues are harmed in some fashion. When people successfully affect politicians, they tend to do so from a grassy knoll. Summary: Oppressive bullies only respond to equal or greater oppressive bullying. edit:typo

When has assassination ever accomplished what the assassin wanted? Most successful political movements, at least in recent history, do not involve killing anybody.

With higher profile assassinations, the results seem to be less predictable. But I think we tend to ignore all the smaller assassinations that gave just the right edge to the opposition since those people just fade into the background noise.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#156

Post by atmosx »

StavrosK wrote: post #15
zeveb wrote: post #5

It'd be better, of course, if we didn't rely on Signal not storing all that metadata and instead used a protocol which made it impossible for anyone to be in a position to choose whether or not to store it. Unfortunately, the protocols that enable truly traffic–analysis-resistant messaging (I believe the Pynchon Gate[1] is currently the best-of-breed) tend to have increased latency and consume greatly-increased bandw…

Yeah, but I'm kind of tired of having to fight my own government every step of the way. I'd prefer a political solution at this point.

To be honest, that's the only thing that makes sense in the long run.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#159

Post by greendragon »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #52
zeveb wrote: post #5

It'd be better, of course, if we didn't rely on Signal not storing all that metadata and instead used a protocol which made it impossible for anyone to be in a position to choose whether or not to store it. Unfortunately, the protocols that enable truly traffic–analysis-resistant messaging (I believe the Pynchon Gate[1] is currently the best-of-breed) tend to have increased latency and consume greatly-increased bandw…

Can someone explain how people are imagining protocols that do not to create / store metadata? This seems like something fundamentally impossible on a packet-switched network. After all, the data has a source and a destination, and goes through the infrastructure that's tappable (and in big part already tapped) by a state-level actor. About the only thing that comes to my mind would be a digital equivalent to broadca…

This has actually been done for decades with usenet. Every encrypted message winds up on a common list, and clients occasionally scan the list and see if they have a key to decrypt any new message. The metadata is then that you put a message there or that you asked for a list of new messages, though that can be reduced to "you used tor" which until such a message server became commonplace might be better.

Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

#160

Post by fatdog »

It might be worth considering why authorities think banning or regulating encryption is tractable.

- 100+ years of business telecommunications without significant strong encryption. - Robust wiretapping and law enforcement access laws and practices that mean there is NO place or piece of information within US sovereign territory that is inaccessible to an authorized agent of the state. - they have the expectation of total control. Hell, beat cops can shoot you over minor "comply or die" orders. - Crypto isn't about your email or even evidence in a particular case, it is about the completeness and totality of their authority. - States around the world routinely decimate their populations in civil wars and massacres to ensure the same people remain in power. From the LE perspective, anyone who threatens the sovereignty of the state is a terrist they would complete for the opportunity to shoot.

Hackers don't get it. If the crypto debate ever gets real, you cannot imagine how real it will get.

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