Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California • Hacker News Board

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

#351

Post by jdavis703 » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 2:17 AM UTC

ASalazarMX wrote: post #344

Meekro wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since several people are asking why the ACLU isn't what it once was, let me answer that. In 1978, the ACLU successfully defended the right of neo-Nazis to march in the predominantly Jewish town of Skokie, Illinois. This action reflected their commitment to free speech, regardless of how offensive the speech might be. The movie "Skokie" and documentary "Mighty Ira" are based on this event-- I highly recommend them bec…

Freedom of speech is such a bizarre thing in USA. I understand citizens need the right to voice their opinion without fear of government repression; but citizens shouldn't believe they have the right to insult and behave antisocially to other citizens. Any kind of white supremacist behavior is not something to be treasured as freedom, because that enables their harmful behavior against other citizens.

As a Black American who has fought against white supremacists in the street I would say the government has no right to prevent their free speech.

At the same time, I’m under no obligation as a private citizen to tolerate their odious speech. This even includes in business settings… At an old company I once asked our CEO to take down “sponsored content” from our home feed that was promoted by a group on the SPLC hate group list (for comparison we also regularly took down ISIS material.)

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

#352

Post by repsilat » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 2:21 AM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #302

Bud wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which actual rights is ACLU supposedly failing to support?

They have limited resources and so they cannot fight every single fight. Some people object to their current method of filtering. Apparently, groups tied to neo-nazi/white-supremacy are some of the ones they filter out of consideration, but they have done so in the past. Some people think the ACLU should fight specifically for such organizations to make a point that everyone, even hateful bigots, have the same rights…

> they cannot fight every single fight

I think "failing to support" in the grandparent comment is too weak for some. This is Glenn Greenwald on a recent ACLU amicus brief[1]:

>> This is the first time, at least to my knowledge, that ACLU is explicitly arguing in court that the First Amendment's free speech clause has been interpreted *too broadly* by courts, and are advocating *a more restrictive view* of what free speech means.

I'm not sure about that case in particular, but on your question of

> why not choose the group of people who are nicer?

I'd say the grim batman ACLU of my alternate-history fanfic cares more about precedent than it does about defendants.

1: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1449739621563346944

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

#353

Post by krapp » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 2:25 AM UTC

dcolkitt wrote: post #349

zarzavat wrote: post #327

[flagged]

Except it really doesn’t. The United States has been a stable democracy with absolute freedom of speech for two and a half centuries. The same for Switzerland and the UK (British hate speech laws were only installed in the 1990s). In contrast the country where the Nazis actually came to power, Weimar Germany, had some of the most extensive hate speech codes of any Western nation in the 1920s.

> The United States has been a stable democracy with absolute freedom of speech for two and a half centuries.

The United States has had plenty of limits on free speech throughout its history. Letting Nazis or the KKK or whomever speak their mind and publish their literature doesn't mean we have absolute freedom of speech, just fewer restrictions on speech than elsewhere.

And it's worth pointing out that the paradox of tolerance was written as a reaction to Nazi Germany. The Nazis were the kind of intolerant group that paradox was arguing shouldn't be tolerated, not because of their speech alone, but because of their willingness to use violence, and refusal to tolerate any speech but their own.

If one side incites violence with their speech and the other side merely tolerates them for the sake of free speech the violent side wins. That was the relevant lesson of Nazism, not that the Nazis never would taken power in a Germany that allowed them to speak and publish freely, because they did.

This is why the KKK is allowed to march, but not allowed to make terrorist threats or incite violence (which they would be, if the US had absolute free speech,) because even tolerating the speech of scoundrels has to have a limit.

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

#354

Post by overeater » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 2:29 AM UTC

jonas21 wrote: post #99

AlbertCory wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're exactly right, you don't pay capital gains tax, and DAFs really are the poor man's "tax-exempt foundation." Billionaires have access to much fancier schemes than this, and I won't even attempt to describe all those. But yeah, I imagine "donating their shares without capital gains taxes" figures into them. I just noticed you said "trusts for their kids" -- that's something different. If the children can access…

Yeah, I didn't realize what an enormous difference this made until I ran the numbers. In your example above, let's say the person purchased those 10 Meta shares for $38 each at the IPO and they're worth $322 each now. That's $3220 in proceeds and a $2840 capital gain. The taxes on this depend on income level and state of residence, but let's say they're in CA making $300K/year. They'll pay 20% federal capital gains t…

Isn't that double counting? In the first scenario, $2252 is the amount that they get in their bank account post-tax (marginal). In the second scenario, they get $0 in their bank account post-tax (marginal), and there is a deduction but that occurs on the amount donated so they don't really gain $1459 but rather avoided paying those taxes.

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

#355

Post by noisy_boy » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 2:29 AM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #83

Noticed that the last connection time is a date, rounded to the day. 1634169600000 (unix millis) Thursday, October 14, 2021 12:00:00 AM Well done. I immediately thought that having a millisecond granularity of last connection time could be used to roughly correlate who contacted whom, depending on what the "connected" event is considered.

And the URL they mentioned in the footnote is https://signal.org/bigbrother :)

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

#356

Post by dane-pgp » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 2:29 AM UTC

lazide wrote: post #319

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sub poena is basically a rubber stamp after filling out a form. Do you have a source for that?

Oldie but a goodie, and I doubt the numbers have improved - but essentially they are never denied for FISA at least. Which is basically the definition of rubber stamping no? [ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.zdnet.com/google-amp/articl... ]

The obvious counter-argument, unfortunately, is that the government has a clear idea of which requests the FISA court would reject, and therefore never bothers making such requests. That would mean the court is correctly preventing executive overreach and there's nothing to worry about.

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

#357

Post by dboreham » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 2:32 AM UTC

jdavis703 wrote: post #351

ASalazarMX wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom of speech is such a bizarre thing in USA. I understand citizens need the right to voice their opinion without fear of government repression; but citizens shouldn't believe they have the right to insult and behave antisocially to other citizens. Any kind of white supremacist behavior is not something to be treasured as freedom, because that enables their harmful behavior against other citizens.

As a Black American who has fought against white supremacists in the street I would say the government has no right to prevent their free speech. At the same time, I’m under no obligation as a private citizen to tolerate their odious speech. This even includes in business settings… At an old company I once asked our CEO to take down “sponsored content” from our home feed that was promoted by a group on the SPLC hate…

Hopefully you meant "fought against".

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

#358

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 2:34 AM UTC

otterley wrote: post #29

upofadown wrote: post #13

>Because everything in Signal is end-to-end encrypted by default, the broad set of personal information that is typically easy to retrieve in other apps simply doesn’t exist on Signal’s servers. The E2EE in Signal only protects the actual content of messages. In the case where Signal takes an assertive action, and the users are not paying any attention to their "safety numbers" (probably the most common case) they co…

A judge can sign an order commanding a witness or party to preserve documentation and evidence, under penalty of contempt of court. However, there is still a great deal of uncertainty as to what actions the subject of the subpoena must take in order to preserve that evidence. It's pretty clear that you have to disable automated destruction mechanisms, you can't disable any recording functions you may already have, an…

[deleted]

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

#359

Post by nextaccountic » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 2:36 AM UTC

personjerry wrote: post #308

olah_1 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why there should not be a single entity that runs the network. Make it fully decentralized with economic incentives for node operators. some projects trying to do this now are Status, Session, Sylo

That already exists, it's called the Internet

Problem is, messaging platforms in "the Internet" aren't interoperable. If I use service X, I usually can only talk to people that also uses X. So "the Internet" is mostly composed of silos.

Silos are the reason that platforms get centralized in the first place: people generally enjoy using the same X as their peers, so they can communicate in a single platform.

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

#360

Post by zie » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 2:37 AM UTC

jollybean wrote: post #263

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…

"Do you have no other way of investigating these criminals?" "Could you not put an officer out to surveille them?", Your argument kind of falls on itself there --> We can surveil them in person, but not digitally? Why? I think the tech crowd has this wrong. The issue - as you have indicated - is not 'By What Means To Surveil'. The issues are: Legitimacy, Proportionality, Oversight. Messages, tech, sign language, in p…

They can easily read all the signal messages they want, by getting the phone Signal was installed on(assuming the user is logged into Signal, which 99% chance the answer is yes).

They are not willing or able to do that for whatever reason, but the ability exists.

I agree the technology used is a secondary issue, but Law Enforcement got lazy when they were able to wire-tap phones willy nilly whenever they wanted. They need to get un-lazy again. They can do all they want to do without needing un-encrypted traffic, un-encrypted traffic just makes them not have to work as hard.

I'm fine with them having to work harder instead of them getting to see all the communications they could ever dream of.