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British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages

reuters.com

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Re: British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages

#21

Post by 01acheru »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #2

Ridiculous to demand a fine from him being the victim of bad surveillance. Snapchat text is often used to prosecute people, I think the message being forwarded is a likely explanation, despite chats not being thoroughly encrypted and the article saying it would be unlikely. Could have been an anonymous tip.

My exact thought. If the Spanish prosecutors want somebody to pay for those expenses it should be the British gov or whatever other agency as it is the same as if I warned the police of some fake bomb threat.

Re: British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages

#22

Post by clawoo »

One needs to ask themselves, what is more likely?

1. The /feds/ broke Snapschat's end to end encryption and they're monitoring for all traffic with designated stopwords, or...

2. One of his friends reported him, one way or another, or..

3. Snapchat's end to end encryption is... not. I can't find any definitive statement that the chat messages themselves are E2EE, only that photos and videos are encrypted and the key is exchanged between users[1]. This means that Snapchat can monitor for text messages or decrypt uploaded attachments when necessary, since they have access to the message that contains the key for the attachment.

Most likely Snapchat's E2EE is just a facade, they probably have a dictionary of "funny" words on the device (and/or the server) and automatically flags the message in the internal systems when certain stopwords are being used.

[1] https://nordvpn.com/blog/is-snapchat-safe/

Re: British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages

#23

Post by krisoft »

_chu1 wrote: post #18

This is why even if you aren't doing anything wrong, you should always use E2E encrypted communication.

> even if you aren't doing anything wrong

I mean... joking about bomb threats at an airport is not "not doing anything wrong".

Should we throw the person in prison for it? No, of course not. Is it a dumb thing to do? I think so. Very dumb.

> you should always use E2E encrypted communication

I agree with that.

Re: British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages

#24

Post by _chu1 »

krisoft wrote: post #23
_chu1 wrote: post #18

This is why even if you aren't doing anything wrong, you should always use E2E encrypted communication.

> even if you aren't doing anything wrong I mean... joking about bomb threats at an airport is not "not doing anything wrong". Should we throw the person in prison for it? No, of course not. Is it a dumb thing to do? I think so. Very dumb. > you should always use E2E encrypted communication I agree with that.

I never said they weren't doing anything wrong though. Maybe it shouldn't be as easy to wander into an airport with a bomb.

Re: British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages

#25

Post by redeeman »

krisoft wrote: post #23
_chu1 wrote: post #18

This is why even if you aren't doing anything wrong, you should always use E2E encrypted communication.

> even if you aren't doing anything wrong I mean... joking about bomb threats at an airport is not "not doing anything wrong". Should we throw the person in prison for it? No, of course not. Is it a dumb thing to do? I think so. Very dumb. > you should always use E2E encrypted communication I agree with that.

> I mean... joking about bomb threats at an airport is not "not doing anything wrong".

in a private message to friends? it most definitely is.

also what does airports have to do with anything? are you implying its okay to do if the target is a rural farmhouse, but not an airport?

Re: British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages

#26

Post by speedgoose »

lolyyy2 wrote: post #13

I don't know much about hashing but is it possible five eyes just has a zettabyte-scale rainbow table covering scary words? They could use that to score encrypted messages and act on the scary ones.

I don’t know. Without even going in normal standard crypto, if you XOR a few words with a random initialisation vector, is it possible to flag those messages?

Re: British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages

#27

Post by cypherpunks01 »

goda90 wrote: post #8

> He suggested one of the chat's other members could have warned the police, but if that were the case, that other member would have to be charged, not Verma This doesn't make sense to me. Why would that other member be charged for reporting a threat?

I thought they might have been talking about reporting a false threat, or something of that nature?

If you are a comedian working on a joke and write one about a political assassination in your private journal, certainly you can't be charged with communicating a threat, because you did not communicate it. But if a friend/enemy finds your notebook, knows you have no intent to harm, but reports the journal to authorities out of spite anyways, then the friend could be culpable for communicating a false threat, even though the joke is in your handwriting. Maybe they were getting at something like that?

In any case, it was very awkward wording at best for a report from Reuters, it should have been either explained or left out.

Re: British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages

#28

Post by cal85 »

lolyyy2 wrote: post #12
timmb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they would have obviously known it was their friend making a joke.

I don't think they could have known for sure it was a joke.

The judge’s point is that if they want to sue anyone for misleading them, it should be whoever sent them the message. He’s not saying they would necessarily win that hypothetical case.

Re: British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages

#29

Post by krisoft »

redeeman wrote: post #25
krisoft wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even if you aren't doing anything wrong I mean... joking about bomb threats at an airport is not "not doing anything wrong". Should we throw the person in prison for it? No, of course not. Is it a dumb thing to do? I think so. Very dumb. > you should always use E2E encrypted communication I agree with that.

> I mean... joking about bomb threats at an airport is not "not doing anything wrong". in a private message to friends? it most definitely is. also what does airports have to do with anything? are you implying its okay to do if the target is a rural farmhouse, but not an airport?

> what does airports have to do with anything?

Happy to explain. Due to previous attacks people and law enforcement around air travel are more on edge about such threats. This is because for inherent technical reasons during a flight a relatively small explosive can have devastating consequences. This is due to the pressure difference between the cabin and the atmosphere at cruise altitude , and the inherent energies incorporated in an airliner. (Both potential energy due to altitude, kinetic energy due to speed and chemical energy in the fuel.)

> are you implying its okay to do if the target is a rural farmhouse, but not an airport?

I'm not implying that. I simply did not claim anything about threats agains rural farmhouses.

> in a private message to friends? it most definitely is.

It seems we disagree on this point then.

Re: British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages

#30

Post by raxxorraxor »

01acheru wrote: post #21
raxxorraxor wrote: post #2

Ridiculous to demand a fine from him being the victim of bad surveillance. Snapchat text is often used to prosecute people, I think the message being forwarded is a likely explanation, despite chats not being thoroughly encrypted and the article saying it would be unlikely. Could have been an anonymous tip.

My exact thought. If the Spanish prosecutors want somebody to pay for those expenses it should be the British gov or whatever other agency as it is the same as if I warned the police of some fake bomb threat.

Certainly. Of course then governments would share less information if they are culpable for any false positives. But penalizing the wrongly accused is a special way of worsening an already significant fuckup.
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