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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

#381

Post by dane-pgp »

Barrin92 wrote: post #137
ziftface wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The widespread abuse of power in government agencies makes this argument a little naive imo. The vast majority of what they do has very little effect on anyone's safety. I'd rather be able to communicate privately and let people keep selling drugs if they want to.

> the widespread abuse of power[...] The vast majority of what they do has very little effect* doing a lot of work here. To what degree is that simply anti-governmental sentiment rather than an honest evaluation of the agencies in question? Say you'd be living in a narco neighborhood in Mexico were cartels regularly shoot civilians up in private wars, have you considered how badly institutions could do in comparison?

Have you considered that the institutions ostensibly serving those civilians might have been infiltrated by the cartels, and that giving them more power might not have the effect you want?

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

#382

Post by rndmind »

codewiz wrote: post #272

> this subpoena requested a wide variety of information we don’t have, including the target’s name, address, correspondence, contacts, groups, calls. Couldn't they easily use the phone number associated with the Signal account to find the target's name? Even if the account uses a pre-paid SIM without a credit card attached, the telco could still reveal the location of the device and probably its IMEI, which could be…

As other posters have pointed out, the onus is not on signal to connect a phone number with a person's physcal address. Besides, what about burner phone numbers, silly...

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

#383

Post by germinalphrase »

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.

We’re not even a hundred years out from culturally and legally discriminating against an entire race of people in the US. Democracy has been stable here (and continues to be) but for whom was it representative?

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

#384

Post by rndmind »

walrus01 wrote: post #20

As an ISP: This is a very boilerplate subpoena. Whether or not the specific FBI agent knows or cares what Signal is, I'm about 99% certain it's just the result of a copy/paste from a template.

Thank you for providing some reality into this farce of a forum. hackernews has completely gone down the toilet! The number of daily topics from NBC/WSJ/etc. is out of control, this might as well be reddit.

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

#385

Post by thegrimmest »

amatecha wrote: post #329
lettergram wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped supporting the ACLU when they started doing this: Fighting against due process: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/see-you-court-aclu-sues... claiming there's no men: https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1196877415810813955 and this: https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1199725066302308354 Telling families to discuss pronouns: https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1250795126584217602 and this: https://twitter.com/ACLU/st…

Trans rights are human rights, and entirely relevant to and tied in with civil liberties. Why do you have a problem with people identifying as what feels right to them? Who cares? It doesn't harm anyone. Oh no, that person identifies as "she/her"?! I'm _offended_!! Come on, that's just embarrassing. If it's not relevant to you and you're not going to bother trying to understand it or empathize with it, scroll past. T…

I'm offended at the hijacking of my language and the blind insistence that the definitions of words have changed and that biological sex isn't a thing. The world "man" has always first and foremost meant "adult male human" (like "rooster" means "adult male chicken"). "Trans men are men" is therefore a contradiction in terms. I don't mind trans people existing, they clearly do, and I certainly don't have a "phobia". "Transman" or "transwoman" seem perfectly adequate terms to describe them.

In so far as what people should be called, it has clearly always been a negotiation. If you say "Hello, my name is Alice" I'd be inclined to call you such. Your actions might however change my mind, and I might select a more vulgar, or more affectionate word. Yes it's polite to call people what they'd like to be called. But it's tyrannical to make politeness mandatory.

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

#386

Post by lgats »

grzm wrote: post #347
xvector wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN needs a way to save comments.

That's what the "favorite" link is for.

To clarify, you click the timestamp on the comment to get to the comment-specific "favorite" link

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

#387

Post by analyst74 »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #369
acjohnson55 wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

like drugs, prostitution, and myriad of other small time victim-less crimes?

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

#388

Post by mLuby »

craftinator wrote: post #136
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.

> Spying programs and laws will only worsen unless people really voice their concerns and elect the right people. I very much suspect that who is elected has nearly zero effect on spying programs.

From what I've read, Senator Ron Wyden is a relatively vocal opponent of surveillance. Hopefully he's not an outlier forever.

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

#389

Post by monetus »

repsilat wrote: post #352
ineedasername wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Does that type of speech, refusing to respect a person's identity, have any additional legal implications being that they seem to be public employees in a public school system? Discrimination as they argue in private businesses versus government ones? IANAL, just curious

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

#390

Post by mmoskal »

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…

You can also do it with major crypto tokens. At least with Fidelity Charitable. You get to deduct the market value and don’t pay capital gains.
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