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Mike Waltz Accidentally Reveals App Govt Uses to Archive Signal Messages

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Re: Mike Waltz Accidentally Reveals App Govt Uses to Archive Signal Messages

#23

Post by giancarlostoro »

cge wrote: post #14

As some details: TeleMessage is/was an Israeli company [1], but was acquired last year by Smarsh [2], itself a subsidiary of K1 Investment Management, both US companies. It me whether the company moved. While not necessarily related at all, their terms of service also seem to explain specific arrangements for messaging in China that appear to involve disclosures to the Chinese government. It's unclear to me how the a…

> Or are they an illegal proprietary fork?

As long as their clients can redistribute it, its not illegal, especially if their clients have 0 interest in leaking the source code, the real trick is, has anyone who is NOT using that client hit any of the AGPL relay servers?

For context, I worked for an employer that sold a custom software solution, which used GPL'd software, client was in the military space, so I guess DOD, anyway, for over a decade nobody asked for any of the code, till some years back. I am guessing they just wanted to have it evaluated, but it was a workhorse of many many things, good luck trying to fork it, LOTS of moving pieces involved.

Nothing illegal unless someone who touches a TM SGNL server (somehow) requests the source and they reject you from having it.

Re: Mike Waltz Accidentally Reveals App Govt Uses to Archive Signal Messages

#25

Post by giancarlostoro »

fluidcruft wrote: post #19
cge wrote: post #14

As some details: TeleMessage is/was an Israeli company [1], but was acquired last year by Smarsh [2], itself a subsidiary of K1 Investment Management, both US companies. It me whether the company moved. While not necessarily related at all, their terms of service also seem to explain specific arrangements for messaging in China that appear to involve disclosures to the Chinese government. It's unclear to me how the a…

Just wondering... if you work for a company and your employer provides you with modified GPL software, it's not considered distributed to you in ways that GPL would apply (so you are not free to further distribute it). At least that's how GPLv2 used to be explained as as business friendly--"private" modifications remain private and employees are not considered exterbal distribution. I'm not familiar with AGPL though.

AGPL is essentially GPL but over the network, if you can reach the service (be it website, or any other protocol) you should be able to receive a copy of the source code. TruthSocial was based on AGPL'd code, they had to comply.

Re: Mike Waltz Accidentally Reveals App Govt Uses to Archive Signal Messages

#27

Post by ezst »

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #20
esafak wrote: post #13

What is the point of using Signal if you are going to let a (foreign) company intercept your communications? I guess they wanted the UX of a commercial product instead of whatever clunky app that's approved for government. Does anyone know what the alternative was?

It makes a lot more sense if you don't assume from the start these people have one iota of intellectual horsepower. Signal is approved for government uses, just not non-public DOD information. They're supposed to use Signal for something like "hey, get to a SCIF so we can discuss details," then they discuss the details in a secure environment.

> Signal is approved for government use

[Ref. needed]

Re: Mike Waltz Accidentally Reveals App Govt Uses to Archive Signal Messages

#28

Post by _heimdall »

sumeno wrote: post #10
_heimdall wrote: post #3

It seems reasonable enough that the government may have built a forked version of signal with message archiving that meets documentation requirements. If its an app they wanted kept under wraps, it will make the while Hegseth situation seem a lot more benign. I use Molly Messenger on a secondary phone that doesn't have a SIM, its a fork of Signal with a few differences related to encryption at rest. It still works wi…

It was not built by the government and it's not some secret software, it's off the shelf software by an Israeli company.

I didn't catch this in the article here. Is that well known elsewhere?
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