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

#491

Post by maccard » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 8:52 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #412

8note wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is, what do you do when they gain power?

You prevent them from gaining power by winning debates against them and demonstrating to everyone why they're wrong. I mean have you actually seen the "science" used to claim even the existence of different races? It's all misleading statistics and pseudoscience. You group a bunch of people together based on geographical origin and then observe some differences in the averages between the two groups, ignoring that th…

> You prevent them from gaining power by winning debates against them and demonstrating to everyone why they're wrong.

"A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots."

It doesn't matter how solid your facts are if people are listening to vox pops of people who back their own internal beliefs.

> There is no way for a Nazi to win that on the facts because the facts are against them. Which is why they have so little actual support.

They don't need support, they just need an echo chamber to be encouraged. Pop onto stormfront and try convince a handful of posters there and see how far you get.

> There are probably more trolls pretending to be Nazis than there are actual Nazis.

If x% (where x is some suitably small number) of a group are the only ones who truly believe it, and the rest are just trolls, then increasing the population size leads to both more trolls and more Nazis. It also doesn't matter to anyone whether the person spewing vitriol is actually a Nazi or a troll when the abuse is directed at them.

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

#492

Post by michaelmrose » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:10 AM UTC

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #399

dannyw wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you aware of how easy it is to find drugs and prostitutes?

Is it? I honestly don’t know. Seriously. I’ve never been offered drugs by anyone in my life and I couldn’t tell you if someone standing on a street-corner is someone simply wanting to cross the street when the lights change or an undercover cop… or an actual prostitute. What am I supposed to be looking for? (Yes, I’m on-the-spectrum and don’t get invited to parties, so I’m not representative of everyone else’s experi…

I've never paid for sex but prostitution is commonly known as "escort" services which are trivial to find and drugs are mostly sold by word of mouth wherein you socialize with the kind of folks who buy illicit substances and are introduced.

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

#493

Post by bmakdbd » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:21 AM UTC

GhettoComputers wrote: post #487

bmakdbd wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which race? Are you actually serious? You don’t know which race the US discriminated against in the past 100 years? The answer is black people aka African-Americans (as well as Chinese but that’s just outside the 100 years) [1] You do realise that black people did not have freedom of speech for almost all of America’s history? The idea that America is some bastion of free speech is utter nonsense, when you consider…

Are you actually serious? You don’t know which race the US discriminated against in the past 100 years? Japanese people. Who got their expensive real estate in places like Santa Monica seized during WW2 and were placed in camps?

Are you actually serious? You don’t know which race the US discriminated against in the past 100 years?

Native Americans.

Who stole pretty much all of their land, sent them on death marches [1] and kept them out of politics with discriminatory policies?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears

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

#494

Post by Retric » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:28 AM UTC

GhettoComputers wrote: post #484

analyst74 wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is the fentanyl death rate or trafficking of underage girls harmless?

The fentanyl death rate is almost exclusively an outgrowth of US drug policy. Compare US and Swiss rates of OD’s for some perspective.

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

#495

Post by Out_of_Characte » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 10:07 AM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #106

Out_of_Characte wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The end doesn't justify the means. Police in democratic societies have less power on what they are allowed to do in order to stop crimes, uncover crimes or prosecute criminals. Like requiring a search warrant or how long the police can hold you, interrogate you and so forth. But speech in general has always been a private matter, encryption only reinforces the status quo of society. What argument do you have that les…

I have family members that have gone through violent crime that now have PTSD, and due to lack of evidence because of the inability to read chat logs, the perpetrator is free and the case never brought against him. Meanwhile Encrochat's non-encryption ended up allowing a multinational set of drug cartels to be taken down. It's not difficult to come up with such examples.

I dont wish to come off as unsympathetic because no one should have to experience violent crime. But dont you consider the danger of weakening encryption through law? Facebook and google are giants that have earned all their money because they are able to read everything people say on their platforms in plaintext. Once you weaken encryption for police, you weaken it for everyone with a motive like the police or the state.

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

#496

Post by jrootabega » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 10:09 AM UTC

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…

It wouldn't be a very elaborate rationalization. e.g. "Banks have KYC and AML requirements. We have an information economy. 'Misinformation' is the equivalent to funding terrorism. Therefore, information-exchange platforms will also be required to perform KYC and AIL or be prosecuted. Compute providers, ISPs, payment processors, and crypto exchanges [assuming they still exist when this hypothetical is actually proposed] will be forbidden from serving any platforms that don't."

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

#497

Post by ComodoHacker » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 10:10 AM UTC

shakna wrote: post #413

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tor was created for the US Navy to hide their intelligence operatives and wouldn't work for that purpose without the rest of that noise. It requires that everyone uses it for anyone to reasonably be considered hidden.

Do you have any source on that?

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

#498

Post by hvdijk » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 10:16 AM UTC

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #311

willhinsa wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the ACLU, they have lost the institutional interest in fighting for free speech. Fighting for the rights of digital Nazis to march, so to speak, is not something the ACLU defends today. Here's a recent NYT article discussing this change in the organization: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html

Yep... once noone defends the nazis, anyone can be branded a nazi, and you lose one more right (free speech). And sadly, the word 'nazi' has lost all of it's meaning in the last years, and has gone from swastika carrying Hitler supporters to someone who doesn't want illegals working below minimum wage to take his job.

If people come to a different country to make a better life for themselves than they would in the countries they were originally from, what's wrong with that? If you're regarding them as sub-humans who don't deserve to work to make a decent life for themselves, rather than directing your anger at the employers who exploit those unable to rise up against the poor pay/working standards/..., we could argue over whether "Nazi" is the best word to describe those views, but it's irrelevant, we should be talking about those views. Do you think you're entitled to a better life than someone else solely based on the fact that you're born in one place and they're born in another? Do you perhaps think the responsibility lies with them to get themselves fired so that that poor employer who always wanted to employ you and pay you a decent wage but was somehow tricked by them can now do so?

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

#499

Post by ChrisKnott » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 10:29 AM UTC

int_19h wrote: post #447

mLuby wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> proportionality and tactics are rare and unique Are they though? First it's "only" to catch the super-terrorists. Then it's only to catch the murderers. Then it's for VIP missing person cases. Then it's petty crime. Then it's for political opponents. Then nobody dares ask anymore about "legitimacy, proportionality, oversight." When those in power grant themselves more power, the onus is on them to prove they can't…

And to be clear, this isn't some hypothetical slippery slope, either - we've literally already seen it happen. E.g. various legislation passed ostensibly to target terrorism is routinely misused. Here's just one example that predates the Patriot Act, even: https://www.hrw.org/report/2010/07/04/without-suspicion/stop... .

I don't think your link supports what you're saying at all...? In fact it gives examples of police forces voluntarily limiting it's use, essentially the opposite of a slippery slope...

Are you confusing S44 with S60 Stop and Search?

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

#500

Post by shakna » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 10:34 AM UTC

ComodoHacker wrote: post #497

shakna wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tor was created for the US Navy to hide their intelligence operatives and wouldn't work for that purpose without the rest of that noise. It requires that everyone uses it for anyone to reasonably be considered hidden.

Do you have any source on that?

It's not exactly a secret and any discussion of Tor's history will immediately bring it up, but sure.

> For the onion router to work properly, the Navy needed to step back from running it. A cloaking system is not useful if all the cloaks say “Navy” on them. “If you have a system that’s only a Navy system, anything popping out of it is obviously from the Navy,” Syverson says. “You need to have a network that carries traffic for other people as well.” Tor Project was incorporated as a nonprofit in 2006 to manage operations. [0]

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-01-23/tor-anony...