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

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

#211

Post by nolok »

skoskie wrote: post #193
arthur_sav wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except Apple is making a direct attempt at solving the issue as it relates to CSAM (and easily expanded to other data) and facing a huge backlash. I wonder if there’s no solution because we’re (myself included) are just stubbornly unwilling to consider any solution that isn’t absolute privacy. I’m not willing to sacrifice my privacy to a nosy government, but willing to consider solutions that might allow the governme…

Apple is not a solution, it's a stop gap. They will still want a copy of the messages after it, and all your other data.

And the reason for the huge backlack, is that this stop gap will actually make it easier for them to request more afterwards, because the infrastructure, the proof of concept, will already be there and running. And it will cross to other providers: "see Apple does it, so clearly it's Signal that's being protective of criminals, we should impose them to do the same thing Apple did with no issue".

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

#212

Post by aidenn0 »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #183
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #23

Beautiful. That's how you do it. I actually believe that law enforcement has the legal right to subpoena information, with a judge's consent, while investigating criminal activity. This is exactly the solution to that problem. These platforms should want to know as little about you as possible.

> This is exactly the solution to that problem. I could be wrong but I was under the impression that the way end-to-end encryption worked (like what Signal claims, I thought) was it was physically impossible for them to decrypt (handover decrypted data (aka your messages) to a court of law) because the public/private keys are impossible to crack and also not known by Signal. It sounds like this isn't the case whatsoe…

It takes extra effort to design a system with this little amount of data. Note that we only have Signal's word for some of this; they could in fact log every single time that you login, which would make the amount of data sent to the FBI much larger (and could be of importance to the case, for example, if the defendant had a dedicated Signal account for the crime that they only logged into at certain times).

Then there's IPs. If you log IPs along with when someone connects, then an IP can often be tracked to a WiFi router, which then pins your location.

Most E2EE communication protocols will see (and thus potentially log) the time and destination of every message you send. If two people have been accused of conspiring to commit a crime, this could be material in forming the case. They may also store your contact list, but a sufficiently long list of messages sent will practically determine your contact list anyways.

Even just the time of messages could be important; if someone interviewed claimed to be in the shower at a certain time, but there were logs of a message being sent at that time, that's probably enough for an obstruction of justice charge to stick.

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

#213

Post by tehjoker »

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.

It's pretty crazy that people still think elections do anything and aren't just a sham while the rulers plug in the choices from above.

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

#214

Post by nnutter »

mooneater wrote: post #202
Rd6n6 wrote: post #196

Anybody concerned about these issues should consider donating to their favourite non profit that can have an impact that works in the area. Most HN users can afford $20/year pretty easily (others could afford $200/month and not even notice it) As they say, “Put your money where your mouth is.”

Would you name some please? Do you mean like ACLU (BCCLA in Canada)

The ACLU is not what it once was. I will not donate to them. Even the EFF is growing questionable. I would definitely be curious what recommendations people have.

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

#215

Post by nobody9999 »

ddtaylor wrote: post #207
arminiusreturns wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal is the best we have on mobile at the moment in my estimation, but after a cursory analysis of Moxy, I totally expect one day it will be revealed he has been compromised somehow. Nation state actors already have baseband roots, so as long as those arent your threat vector, you are probably, maybe, ok on signal. I find it really interesting that Bill Binney says, despite years of me hearing the opposite, that we…

> Signal is the best we have on mobile at the moment Matrix is pretty good.

>Matrix is pretty good.

I run a Matrix instance on my own hardware for my extended family. I suppose that I could be served with a subpoena/warrant for the data, but the contents of any voice or video calls mediated through my Matrix server wouldn't be preserved.

Likewise, any private chats on the server would remain encrypted and I wouldn't be able to decrypt them even if I wanted to do so.

Since the instance isn't federated, and access is only available through invitation, only those who have access know about.

As such, I'd say that private chats and voice/video calls through my Matrix instance are pretty secure.

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

#216

Post by night862 »

mooneater wrote: post #202
Rd6n6 wrote: post #196

Anybody concerned about these issues should consider donating to their favourite non profit that can have an impact that works in the area. Most HN users can afford $20/year pretty easily (others could afford $200/month and not even notice it) As they say, “Put your money where your mouth is.”

Would you name some please? Do you mean like ACLU (BCCLA in Canada)

I would recommend Signal Foundation https://signalfoundation.org/

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

#217

Post by fragmede »

nnutter wrote: post #214
mooneater wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you name some please? Do you mean like ACLU (BCCLA in Canada)

The ACLU is not what it once was. I will not donate to them. Even the EFF is growing questionable. I would definitely be curious what recommendations people have.

Perfect is the enemy of the good, so I'd recommend the EFF but you can donate to Signal directly in this case, if it serves you.

https://signal.org/en/donate/

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

#218

Post by tptacek »

akouri wrote: post #43
NdMAND wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe they are encrypted (and decrypted on device by the Signal app). They recently had to do some rewriting of the code for iOS15 - they share some comments about that here: https://community.signalusers.org/t/beta-feedback-for-the-up... Hope it helps Edit: wow people were fast to reply…

Sweet, thanks for the link to that discussion. Looks like they're handling it :)

Handling what? They've never depended on Apple for encryption.

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

#219

Post by JTbane »

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.

Might go full idiotic like the Australian government and mandate backdoors

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

#220

Post by ospray »

tehjoker wrote: post #213
arthur_sav wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's pretty crazy that people still think elections do anything and aren't just a sham while the rulers plug in the choices from above.

Don't let people tell you not to vote, because it won't make a difference. Not voting is a sure way not to have a voice.
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