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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

#241

Post by AlbertCory »

AlbertCory wrote: post #19
fmakunbound wrote: post #4

Reminds me to donate to Signal again

Speaking of donations (a guy from a food bank whom I see in the Safeway parking lot didn't know this, so I think we can assume not everyone does): Most "donate" pages do not allow for "donor-advised funds (DAF)." They assume you're giving it with your before-tax money and presumably taking a tax deduction for it. In a DAF, which your financial institution surely offers, you can donate appreciated assets, e.g. your FA…

While we're on the topic: you can also leave your estate to a DAF. (If you're married or have kids, probably you should ignore this.)

So that money goes to charity, but what charities? You won't be here, obviously. When you're looking into this, see if your DAF administrator allows a "successor trustee." If not, that institution itself (Schwab, Vanguard, whatever) will disburse it.

If they do, you can pick someone whose values you trust to be the successor & disburse the money. (Probably someone younger than you!) You should ask them, or else they'll get a real surprising phone call right after you die.

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

#242

Post by feanaro »

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…

Who is this government that is not you and I and why should we cede any kind of goal to them in that case?

I simply disagree with the notion that I should be controlled and monitored by a third party just because someone else might do something evil.

We should always remember that power corrupts and definitions of evil change almost on a whim.

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

#243

Post by spullara »

Grimm1 wrote: post #236
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.”

I mean I do. EFF, Wikimedia, ACLU (Only EFF is really for this particular issue though)

ACLU lawyers are helping Signal with this.

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

#244

Post by cheschire »

rsj_hn wrote: post #233
ospray wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The thing is, your voice can also add to the din of noise that drowns out the signal. Not every vote adds signal. Here the problem is when you go down the ballot and reach the judges, schoolboard, and other offices where most people have no idea who the candidates are and many just vote randomly. In Arizona there was a campaign that unseated an incumbent schoolboard member by a rival candidate whose last name, if som…

I'm pretty sure many voters are voting based on colors. They researched which team they like the most and now they vote for that team each time. And likely true for more than just the USA.

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

#245

Post by orhmeh09 »

SMAAART wrote: post #157
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…

Half of the people in Congress don't really understand what this is all about; the other half who understands, uses Signal.

The ones who use Signal do not necessarily understand. It’s pretty hard to hand it to Matt Gaetz: https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-shock-jock-texts-that-coul...

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

#246

Post by MuffinFlavored »

teawrecks wrote: post #240
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I think you misread the post above. They're saying that the govt should be allowed to issue subpoenas, and nothing more. They shouldn't be allowed to mandate backdoors, or hack suspect's machines, etc. And citizens should be free to use cryptography to control their information. Also, "Impossible" is not the right term. "Extraordinarily expensive" is a better one. And yes, anyone can share public keys with each other…

> should be allowed to issue subpoenas, and nothing more

Issue a subpoenas for something they know they can't architecturally fulfill? I would imagine the government will get mad and shut them down, no?

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

#247

Post by stuartd »

aesh2Xa1 wrote: post #229
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.”

If you use Amazon.com for shopping, and you do, then you can choose Signal Foundation for your benefiting organization. It's a small amount of money, but it's a little bit for every purchase.

No, I don’t. Bought exactly one thing from Amazon in the last 18 months literally because I could not get it anywhere else (and I searched for a week before I gave up and bought my mechanical backlit Mac keyboard from the devil)

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

#249

Post by fragmede »

night862 wrote: post #216
mooneater wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

What's the distinction when donating to the foundation vs signal directly ( https://signal.org/en/donate/ )?

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

#250

Post by wruza »

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…

The problem lies not in encryption or key exchange itself. It’s in the fact that to make/use a solution that doesn’t suck in real life, you need a budget comparable to the entire crime you commit. As a developer, you may [help] create few keys and set up the encrypted scene for sending emails or even insecure chat messages, but your gang will fail even at groceries. All these apps are selling turnkey security in app stores, not something brand new.

can't you just tell your friend a key and exchange it offline and then communicate freely with no middleman

Yes, keywords are pubkey, fingerprint, diffie hellman. It’s easy to use, just run:

  openssl genrsa -des3 -out private.pem 2048
to generate a key pair, then export pubkey via:

  openssl rsa -in private.pem -outform PEM -pubout -out public.pem
Once you have you exchanged pubkeys and checked fingerprints offline, simply create a new secret key:

  openssl rand -base64 32 > key.bin
and encrypt that new key and also your message with it:

  openssl rsautl -encrypt -inkey id_rsa.pub.pem -pubin -in key.bin -out key.bin.enc
  openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -salt -in message.txt -out message.enc -pass file:./key.bin
Now just send .enc files over the wire. It is trivial to decrypt at their side, even my grandma can do that. She usually leaves raw files in her downloads folder though, but it’s easy to remove them via local crontab job.
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