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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

#361
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

The issue is the internet doesn't provide the required service for individuals to find each other directly.

We need DNS for everyone, not just the rich...er those bothering to register a name.

Make it GUID based, and let people contact each other by GUID instead of phone number.

Preferably add privacy enhancing encryption too so that only those with your public key could decrypt your GUID DNS entry to then find your IPv6 address.

Or something smarter than that probably.

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

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EFF takes weird policy positions. They're against speed cameras, but in favor of the status quo (police with guns manually pulling people over for speeding in cities).

It’s even worse. The police don’t pull people over for speeding anymore (that’s good, at least from the “guys with guns” perspective). But the bad part is drivers are now emboldened to drive recklessly. These people now kill and injure more than the police — looking at the latest numbers police violence is down while traffic violence is up. IMO speed and red light cameras would do a lot to reduce the use of police wh…

Well said. But you could also state your final sentence as “… would do the job that police are supposed to do but aren’t…” I see what you’re getting at, though. Another related area where we could reduce their use is ticketing for vehicle window tint violations. In California, vehicles can’t have tint on the front windows because it’s quite dangerous when other people can’t see drivers. Tons violate it, and it’s historically been “enforced” as a broken tailight-esque reason to pull over POC and search them for drugs, etc. In areas where parking violations are enforced, the parking enforcement officers could easily check this and issue tickets.

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

#363
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.

"Shouldn't behave antisocially", as in e.g. that whole asbo thing that the Brits had until very recently? I'm very glad US doesn't have anything like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour_order

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

#364
post #22

What I don't understand about the whole Signal E2EE model is that while your messages themselves may be encrypted, they are still sending push notifications over Apple's servers, which have to go through APNS. Often the entire message contents can be contained in the push notification. Does anybody know if Apple's notifications are E2EE? I doubt that gov't doesn't have access to the push notifications...

Here's how encrypted notifications can be decrypted on the device-

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/...

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

#365
post #30
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing here, but wouldn't they just push the e2ee message through APNS? Then decrypt client side. Or does Apple require plaintext messages for push notifications (that seems bad if they do)?

When you craft a push notification server-side, it contains the payload in plaintext. Now, that is probably encrypted in Apple-land, but my point is that the gov't probably has sunk its teeth into Apple already. So, yea signal's encryption may be open source and proven, but I doubt Apple's doesn't have a backdoor.

Not true. The server can send encrypted (not plaintext) payload. The client can then use a NotificationExtension to decrypt the payload as it comes in.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/...

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

#366
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

They also are against doing anything about homeless people. When people come up with ideas on how to solve the homeless situation, like trying to get drug addicts into rehab programs or mentally ill people into hospitals to get them the medication they need, the aclu is against it. They would rather addicts and mentally ill languish on the streets and live in tents.

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

#367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you want cost the taxpayer significantly with potentially months of unneeded work and expose cops to potentially more danger to ultimately arrive at the same result? How exactly is this better?

> to ultimately arrive at the same result [citation needed] Further: Wiretapping is illegal without a warrant. I believe the spirit of the law there implied that wiretapping of [previous, historical conversations] was _always_ illegal, since a wiretap could only be tracking future conversations by its very nature. The nature of communication has changed, such that all conversations theoretically have a permanent, his…

Ironically, under totalitarian regimes, citizens find themselves faced with the choice between either following the unwritten rules of the regime (which require them to break the laws as written) or following the written laws (which are an impediment to the regime, and thus cause one to be guilty of more nebulous crimes like "sedition").

I don't disagree that overly broad laws are a problem in non-totalitarian countries, but I think that regimes like Stalin's are a special case.

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

#368

[flagged]

This is a distortion of the paradox of tolerance, it doesn't endorse censorship. The paradox of tolerance only comes into play when views start getting translated into actions. Let the Nazis march down Skokie. Action should only be taken against them if they start acting on their views. Removal only happens in the interest of self-preservation. The paradox of tolerance is not an endorsement of censorship.

That is a particular solution to the paradox of tolerance, it is not the paradox itself

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

#369
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

It can be made illegal to be an operator and to use those incentives in the sanctioned marketplace.

The state can shut down anything in theory. In practice it is much harder in a liberal democracy to shut down a network where operators are numerous, interchangable and have low capital requirements.

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

#370

[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 UK has never had unqualified free speech. For most of our history we haven't had it at all. This wiki article is quite good on this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kin...

Further back we had punitive taxes on newspapers, laws on blasphemy, laws on obscenity, laws against "sedition" and most kinds of assembly..

The idea that the UK is a bastion of liberty is mostly a confection, really. The only thing we are a bastion of is liberty for the very wealthy - and only in the last twenty years or so have we really had a strong conception of rights in law. Our supreme court only got created in 2007: in all those historic free speech cases before then (and all the rest) the outcome was decided by literal aristocrats who had inherited a title.

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