Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law • Hacker News Board

Re: Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law

#231

Post by int_19h » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 9:04 PM UTC

AmericanChopper wrote: post #191

kelnos wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's demonstrably false. I don't have much experience or knowledge of politics outside the US, so I can only speak to US politics. The American right and left are very different when it comes to policy platform, and electing one or the other actually does have a measurable difference on what ends up happening to people in the country. This is especially true when we consider minority groups. I agree that bo…

> But even if I use your terminology, the "left wing tyrants" and "right wing tyrants", if one or the other were given complete control of the country... well, the country would look very different after some time, depending on which side were given control. Well this is actually demonstrably false. Biden currently has the house and the senate, Trump has the house, the senate and the Supreme Court, Obama had the hous…

In US, "having" the Senate has been mostly meaningless since filibuster became a standard feature of every vote. And without a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate you really can't do all that much regardless of the platform. Not only that, but the issues that are most prominent in the rhetoric tend to be the more polarizing ones (which should come as no surprise, since that's exactly the kind of stuff that rallies "your" voters to the polls), and thus are the least probable to actually push through by getting votes from a few defectors on the other side.

Re: Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law

#232

Post by int_19h » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 9:06 PM UTC

immibis wrote: post #8

motohagiography wrote: post #7

Her television interview with the former(?) minister responsible for this abomination of a law was urgent and necessary. These legislators know what they are doing, and that it is unethical. Let Signal leave the UK market. If the people want freedom, let them take it themselves. Perhaps before this generation of young men are rounded up for another one of history's meat grinders in Ukraine, as a means to further redu…

I wasn't aware the Russian army was recruiting from the UK?

Wagner does.

Re: Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law

#233

Post by int_19h » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 9:09 PM UTC

motohagiography wrote: post #183

chmod600 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would we have done differently? All this stuff is really convenient. Would we have really said “no” to turn-by-turn navigation? Avoided online purchases? Used cash for most of our transactions? Printed things out so we don’t use the internet while outside?

You could have recognized that if you even think you need Tor and Signal to protect yourself from your own government, you need to organize politically to install representatives who ensure you don't think you need those things. We overlook that young people with tech jobs in the 90's humiliated a lot of their peers, ones who went on to pursue messy politcal careers instead of business ones. Those peers learned to ha…

To be blunt, I don't think the majority of the populace actually want those things, or at least don't mind the current state of affairs. And then it doesn't matter how much you politically organize - a superminority in a democracy doesn't get much say either way. OTOH if you evolve the tools, they keep working regardless of what the law says (even if the law specifically prohibits such tools).

Re: Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law

#234

Post by int_19h » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 9:12 PM UTC

leesalminen wrote: post #147

Teckentrup wrote: post #130

What does exit the UK market mean here though? Presumably that it won't appear in the Apple App Store or Google Play? Presumably that's more of an issue for the iOS ecosystem... But for android you just switch from using play to FDroid or an APK, right? I presume a sufficiently irked UK wouldn't be able to do anything more, as Signal already as ways of circumventing traffic blocking within specific states? Doesn't th…

Signal could block all UK IP addresses from accessing its messaging server. UK could require ISPs to block access to Signal messaging servers. Both of these are fairly trivial (my understanding is that UK already forces filtering on ISPs for e.g. pornography). Of course you are correct that anyone motivated and/or technical enough could still access Signal. However, their less motivated/less technical contacts won't…

Why should Signal block UK IPs anymore so than China IPs, though? If anything, I hope that they have a page on the website specifically for UK users explaining the law and how to break it by installing the .apk directly.

Re: Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law

#235

Post by int_19h » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 9:16 PM UTC

_8j50 wrote: post #224

Hizonner wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't need to backdoor the protocol, just the specific targeted client. Distinction without a difference. Either way, the total system is delivering the same plaintext to the same third parties. On edit: and, just to be clear, they want the apps to scan for specific hashes from a master list, and/or apply ML to find "suspicious" material that's NOT in any lists, on EVERY client, not just "targeted" ones. That's…

Ok, so what's your point? Mine was to alleviate the burden on Signal. Fact is, this can be done and done well. Real harm is happening and this popular bandwagon is part of the problem, not solution. Find a better way for govs to have an advantage against CSAM and other boogeymen. Technical people are supposed to find optimal technical solutions, not pretend to be technocrats or underdogs fighting against governments…

So, technical people are supposed to "just follow orders"?

Nope. If what the government is trying to do is unjust in my own ethical judgment, then I have no obligation to help them find an "optimal technical solution" to do it - on the contrary, I have a moral duty to make it as hard as possible for them to do that.

The usual argument is that if we don't "help" them, the regime that's actually enacted will be much worse all around. Which is likely true, but also exactly the point - let them be heavy-handed and incite more popular resistance that way. We'll see how much of the public still supports all this stuff when the "for CSAM only, pinky promise" tech will start being routinely used to bust them for stuff like drug use.

Re: Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law

#236

Post by rfrey » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 9:21 PM UTC

pierat wrote: post #177

23B1 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why the Federalist Papers are some of the most important documents when understanding the intent of the Constitution and Bill of Rights – and simultaneously the least read! I'm not saying that case law isn't also an important aspect of the 'law' and that the constitution shouldn't be amended – I'm not really a hardcore 'originalist' – I just mean that any time a SCOTUS ruling comes out, it's clear that in the…

The Federalist papers are the equivalent of a Medium blog post. And I will treat them as such. Edit: Evidently I've pissed off enough people who drink the red-white-blue kool-aid. -3 at the moment. These newspaper publishings were expressly for the solidification of power at the federal level, and the weakening of the states. And only look closer at what the "federal" powers were about, and it was all about "secur(in…

> Evidently I've pissed off enough people who drink the red-white-blue kool-aid.

You haven't pissed off anyone. People are downvoting because your comments sounds like they're coming from an edgy 14 year old who wants to shock his parents. You've clearly never given any thought to political philosophy, and your comment gets pushed to the bottom so it won't waste other's time.

I'm not American, I do not admire American nationalism or jingoism. Nor do I admire people who spew nonsense in order to look like rebels against the man.

Re: Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law

#237

Post by logicchains » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 9:22 PM UTC

norir wrote: post #86

derefr wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be a function missing from government. All governments, AFAICT. Legislators change the law (including, rarely, the constitution) — effectively by applying a hierarchy of "countermanding orders" — to suit the changing interests of the public. Courts interpret the law, but only downstream of legislation. The executive can make regulation and executive orders, but only in agreement with the law. But at th…

I like this idea. A somewhat related idea I've had is that instead of giving the supreme court ultimate power to overrule and/or reinterpret existing legislation they instead would be given power to call a referendum. Each justice would have the ability to attach their own revised version of the law to the referendum and there would be a voting process to determine which version of the law to accept as canonical. Thi…

>This would prevent the kind of situation we have right now where the court is controlled by a minority group that is imposing its views with impunity

You're completely missing the point of the supreme court. It's explicitly not a democratic institution; it's purpose is to protect the constitutional rights of the minority from the tyranny of the majority. The other two branches are democratic; isn't that enough for you?

Surely you see the point of the US being a republic; rule by law, not by men. In your vision of the supreme court, if the majority decided they wanted to lock up some minorty and send them to gas chambers, the court couldn't do anything to stop them because the populace would vote for it in a referendum. That kind of thing has happened countless times in history in countries that didn't have a strong court system capable of protecting people's rights from the tyrrany of the majority.

Re: Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law

#238

Post by MisterBastahrd » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 9:24 PM UTC

23B1 wrote: post #35

derefr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but they don’t feel the same way about public benefits or rights associated with other technology that is being replaced When the government creates a law within recorded history — something like a wiretapping law — then the spirit of the law is well-known at time of creation. Usually, that "spirit" is that it's created to explicitly grant a capability to the government to do a thing for the benefit of the public u…

This is why the Federalist Papers are some of the most important documents when understanding the intent of the Constitution and Bill of Rights – and simultaneously the least read! I'm not saying that case law isn't also an important aspect of the 'law' and that the constitution shouldn't be amended – I'm not really a hardcore 'originalist' – I just mean that any time a SCOTUS ruling comes out, it's clear that in the…

The Federalist papers are one half of the story. It takes two sides to have an agreement, and it's a mentally convenient and lazy task to decide that because the sides came to an agreement that favored one of them, that the other is completely irrelevant to the discussion, ESPECIALLY when the nebulous task of trying to divine intent is concerned.

Re: Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law

#239

Post by logicchains » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 9:25 PM UTC

smugma wrote: post #69

domador wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society should require that the spirit and purpose of any law be included as a preamble to that law's text and be used in the interpretation, application, and future adaptation of that law. The spirit and purpose may be obvious at the time, but won't necessarily be that way to future generations. Laws with no explanation about their purpose or goals are like the compiled binaries of a program. Ideally, in the future…

That’s more aligned with countries that follow civil law work. They define the law and what it covers. In contrast, common law is more open to interpretation, changes over time, etc. Yes, this is super generalized, but the dichotomy explains two very different approaches to how countries approach their writing and interpreting of laws.

This is one of the reason common law countries are generally wealthier than civil law ones, because precedent is stronger in common law, so it's easier to do business (less uncertainty).

Re: Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law

#240

Post by somat » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 9:25 PM UTC

motohagiography wrote: post #90

chmod600 wrote: post #31

The water flowed under this bridge 20 years ago. This whole discussion seems like it’s happening in the wrong decade. The issue now is that it’s so easy to collect circumstantial information that is constantly leaked by GPS-enabled apps, searches, card purchases, clicks, cell phone tower data, etc. that governments don’t really need the actual contents of messages any more. I’m still glad Signal exists, but it’s part…

I wore a "this t-shirt is a munition" tee back in the day. With a quarter century of hindsight, I think encryption as a privacy tool may not have been a solution, but a sedative that prevented the smartest people from seeing how bad things really were and applying their courage to those problems.

Somewhat relevant xkcd.

https://xkcd.com/504/