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

#251

Post by leesalminen » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 9:43 PM UTC

guy98238710 wrote: post #194

leesalminen wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So perhaps a new UK-focused app that everyone sideloads?

Except for iOS users, which is roughly 1/2 of all people in UK (according to a quick search).

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

#252

Post by b1n » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 9:44 PM UTC

I wonder if the Signal app would be automatically uninstalled from existing iOS and Android devices?

Hopefully the signal ban will demonstrate to enough people that they don't really own the phone in their pocket - if they don't control what's on it, they are just renting it.

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

#253

Post by leesalminen » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

int_19h wrote: post #234

leesalminen wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One could interpret "leaving the UK market" in such a way.

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

#254

Post by efnx » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

boomer918 wrote: post #245

efnx wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What folks are saying is that requiring a backdoor in encryption for “blessed” individuals is wrong. I can tell from your comment that you trust cops. Not all of us do (at least - not all of us trust all cops) and so we don’t want ANY cops to have a backdoor through EVERY encryption, for fear of what ONE of them may do, or ONE person in their chain of trust may do.

Sounds like we need to change the law to make privacy absolute, which of course will prevent legitimate crime investigations. We can't have it both ways here.

> which of course will prevent legitimate crime investigations

It would not prevent legitimate crime investigations, it would only keep that specific information obscured.

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

#255

Post by etothepii » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

mcpackieh wrote: post #98

ahzhou wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your insinuation that the UK will implement a Ukraine war draft in order to advance a totalitarian agenda is weird, unnecessarily conspiratorial, and dilutes your point. I encourage you to make one point and to make it well.

As long as conscription laws remain on the books, it should never be taboo to worry about those laws being put into practice.

I don't think you understand anything about the British system if you think that "removing laws from the books" matters at all.

As demonstrated by COVID regulations in emergency the law can be changed very quickly.

Modern armies (like NATO members) have really got very little to gain by conscription. Being a modern soldier has very little to do with being cannon fodder.

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

#256

Post by nerdbert » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 9:50 PM UTC

ipv6ipv4 wrote: post #87

This is the lasting legacy of Apple’s CSAM photo scanning debacle. Apple mainstreamed the concept, demoed the dystopian tool, and legitimized the discourse of this dystopian insanity. Apple executives should be ashamed of their direct role in this.

These laws were in the works for ages before Apple proposed its CSAM scanning tool.

That was an attempt to get out ahead of it and neuter the pressure for those laws. But there was so much opposition that Apple's strategy failed.

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

#257

Post by Eisenstein » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 9:51 PM UTC

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #173

Eisenstein wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry you think that your life is only meaningful in that it provides labor to capitalists.

Do you mind pointing out where that was stated or implied? Anything and everything I do is to satisfy my own curiosity and desires, but that's only because I got lucky. Everyone who didn't get lucky, well, they have to slave away in jobs that may not be fulfilling, or are menial, etc; and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Other people's lives are meaningless then, but not yours. Got it.

PS: Have you ever considered how paternalistic your view is?

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

#258

Post by nerdbert » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 9:55 PM UTC

boomer918 wrote: post #200

E2E apps and fully encrypted phones prevent the police from executing legitimate search warrants. This has never been the case with traditional communication mechanisms, e.g. phones, mail. I agree that privacy is important, but it's not absolute, by law. So what we're saying is E2E apps are more important than current law we have, and we want to invalidate the ability of the police to investigate crime. How can that…

You think no nefarious actors have ever used coded messages or even one-time pads to communicate via phone and email before the digital age?

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

#259

Post by mcpackieh » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 9:58 PM UTC

int_19h wrote: post #210

hammock wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s what Constitutional amendments are for, and it’s happened 27 times in the history of the US, most recently in 1992. The corporate media doesn’t typically like to talk about that process since it is a threat to the entrenched powers that be. The ombudsman of the American people is their state legislatures. We have sovereign states in the US. Let’s not add any more power to the federal apparatus to solve a perce…

We don't have state sovereignty even on matters as trivial as which recreational drugs to regulate. And a system that requires a 3/4 supermajority of not even the population but the state legislatures (with the net effect that some states have a much greater say in pushing through or blocking amendments than others) is hardly a sane or sensible way to gauge public sentiment on such matters.

> We don't have state sovereignty even on matters as trivial as which recreational drugs to regulate.

By the letter of the law, no. But in practice we do. The federal government is thus-far unwilling to defend their turf on this issue; they have de jure sovereignty but not de facto sovereignty. If a government finds itself politically incapable of exercising a sovereign power, then in a very real sense they no longer have it.

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

#260

Post by PartiallyTyped » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 10:03 PM UTC

Hizonner wrote: post #65

martin8412 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The laws don't apply to politicians, in fact they're explicitly excluded.

In practice, they often use the same services as everybody else, even for official business that they're not supposed to use them for. Sometimes they do that to intentionally try to get around archiving and transparency rules. Other times they do it because they're clueless and/or lazy. Those services don't know that an account belongs to a politician or that they're using it for exempt purposes. Politicians are ALWA…

The sad thing is that if any hacker was to show to the politicians what their actions entail, the hacker would get branded a criminal, and the politician's ratings would go up.