Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

signal.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 618 posts

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

#451

Post by tomcooks »

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.

If you think opinions should have a limit, I doubt you understand the right to voice one's opinion.

I'm sure you heard about the Golden Rule, as long as you follow it you should be allowed to express yourself.

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

#452

Post by tomjen3 »

sundvor wrote: post #179
Thorentis wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised the FBI has tried to get a custom keyboard into the Play Store yet, or asked Google to add a key logger to the stock one. Sure, the legality is blury at the moment , but it's just a matter of changing some laws and then that becomes legal.

They could just product a service that masquerades as a grammar checker provider. Come to think of it, that'd be the perfect place to go to demand a wiretap - at least one such popular "LY" service already exists. I'm still shaking my head at what many regular users will agree to..

It is perfectly possible to be a grammarly user and not upload everything to it, but if I am running a script or draft of a blog post through it, what harm is there?

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

#453

Post by AnthonyMouse »

thegrimmest wrote: post #442
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two adult brothers somewhere in New York City. They have both of the same parents. One of them is 5'3" and the other one is 6'½". What's the probability that one of them is Dutch and the other one is Taiwanese? If your answer wasn't zero I would like to see your work.

If they are brothers then I suppose they could be mixed Taiwanese-Dutch. But that really isn't the point is it? I'm talking about trends in populations. It's an answer to the question of "Why do we see different representation of these groups on the height spectrum?", not "Explain the difference between these two individuals". Edit: Also to assert that, given two random people on opposite ends of the height spectrum,…

> It's an answer to the question of "Why do we see different representation of these groups on the height spectrum?"

But we already know that, by and large. It's genetics. And the thing we know about genes is that they align very poorly with "races".

It's like grouping animals by color. Then you discover that brown animals are bigger than red animals, because bears are brown and bears are big whereas cardinals are red and cardinals are small. But sparrows are brown. Using the logic of "race" we put the sparrows in the same category as the brown bears. The black bears go in with the black housecats. The red housecats are with the cardinals.

The fact that you can find statistically significant differences between the color groupings doesn't mean you're not doing something preposterous.

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

#454

Post by thegrimmest »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #453
thegrimmest wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are brothers then I suppose they could be mixed Taiwanese-Dutch. But that really isn't the point is it? I'm talking about trends in populations. It's an answer to the question of "Why do we see different representation of these groups on the height spectrum?", not "Explain the difference between these two individuals". Edit: Also to assert that, given two random people on opposite ends of the height spectrum,…

> It's an answer to the question of "Why do we see different representation of these groups on the height spectrum?" But we already know that, by and large. It's genetics. And the thing we know about genes is that they align very poorly with "races". It's like grouping animals by color. Then you discover that brown animals are bigger than red animals, because bears are brown and bears are big whereas cardinals are re…

But there are groupings of people by genetic markers which correlate to linguistic/cultural origin. These aren't "races" per se but they are a valid and interesting taxonomy of people. And unsurprisingly given they are determined by genetic distance, these groups tend to have a more homogenous physical appearance. When we're talking about IQ, asking "why is does it differ across identifiable groups of people?" seems to be a very controversial question to ask or attempt to answer, often getting you lumped in with the Nazis, which was my original point.

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

#455

Post by DeathArrow »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #397
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.

Honestly I’m surprised it’s legal to run a Tor exit-node at all given the sheer volume of morally reprehensible things that go through it - regardless of its utility for journalistic freedom.

Probably most Tor exit nodes are run by agencies trying to snoop on traffic.

I wouldn't trust Tor to solely protect my identity since there might be ways to attack it. But it can be an useful asset in a "pipeline" designed to protect one's identity.

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

#457

Post by snugghash »

jodrellblank wrote: post #405
pennaMan wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would go further and ask for mandatory 24/7 surveillance of elected officials for transparency and to combat corruption every time they bring up this bullshit.

In the UK the government introduced a "record of everyone's internet history" law and then exempted themselves from it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13087339

I just noticed that my jaw dropped for the first time in recent memory. Wow. Slow clap. UK, US, China... just wow

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

#458

Post by strogonoff »

olah_1 wrote: post #270
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…

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

> This is why there should not be a single entity that runs the network. Make it fully decentralized with economic incentives for node operators.

Just make the network work based on open protocols, where anyone can run a server that interoperates with others. (Matrix.)

For the non-developer end-user, they can use one of the existing servers, who in theory could charge their users.

Yes, it would be hard to maintain branding cohesion, and the product/service would lose to a centralized service. However, transitioning to heterogenous social/messaging landscape (from current oligopolies) could make smaller services like that competitive.

IMO it’s not clear we should treat a legal/political issue with technical workarounds, it doesn’t seem sustainable.

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

#459

Post by DeathArrow »

zarzavat wrote: post #327

[flagged]

>This is the paradox of tolerance.

What does rights have with tolerance? ACLU were trying to protect the rights. Now they do it only if that isn't interfering with their moral standards.

I see this as a change of scope. Once their scope was rights of all, now it's rights of a particular group.

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

#460

Post by wraptile »

dcdc123 wrote: post #409
tptacek wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone curious, the account was created on Dec 1 2020, and last connected this October 13th.

Am I the only one sort of bothered by the fact they shared that specific information with the world? It may not seem like much, but that was user data.

I'm failing to see how this could be useful to anyone.
Post reply on HN