> Last connection date: 1634169600000 (unix millis)
> Account created: 1606866784432 (unix millis)
This response of the user information they have is hilarious.
Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
51–60 of 618 posts
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why messaging apps need to be decentralized and built on top of protocols that cannot be censored or meaningfully monitored.
With enough effort, anyone can go to jail. America held a taxi driver for 17 years at Guantanamo Bay with no evidence. Tech won’t save you from the state. As always, if your threat model includes a state actor, you are going to have a bad time. For all intents and purposes, their resources are unlimited. Freedom is won in the courts and the legislature, not in the code (although tech is as useful tool for keeping gov…
Yes, but their tyranny must also increase in order to circumvent the technology. They will increasingly resort to actions like you described. Hopefully the population will eventually revolt and put an end to the corrupt government once it becomes unacceptably totalitarian.
Freedom is won through weapons. Encryption is a potent weapon, it can defeat states, militaries. Before computers, it used to be a military tool. It must be democratized, the whole world must use it.
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#53What 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...
They send an empty push message to the device. This then causes the app to wake up, and fetch the actual message from Signal's servers.
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#54The government still has the capability to subpoena the individual responsible for the behavior they don't like.
They've only gotten used to going after the intermediary, and it feels uncomfortable for them to have this power removed and reset back to the mean.
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#55It’s easy so say net win for society is privacy. But it’s important to also acknowledge it does come at a cost — there exists criminal behavior that most reasonable people would agree is bad and should be stopped that may reach a dead end with services like Signal. In formulating your statement that examining criminal behavior is a problem, you are suggesting there shouldn’t be ways to uncover crimes.
Exactly. This same thing happens one time too many, it gets outlawed.
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#56>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…
As far as I understand Signal can't just save all the data because of how the app/server are architected:
They use sealed sender: https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/
Private contact discovery: https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/
And a "Private Group System" which is supposed to keep group membership information from the server: https://signal.org/blog/signal-private-group-system/
Though of course they could still push malicious updates.
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Another benefit, it sounds like, is that you don't have to pay capital gains on selling those shares. Like, let's say your intent is to donate $10k to some charity, out of the goodness of your heart and/or as a tax write off. You don't have that in cash, but do in stock. You could liquidate $10k of stock, pay capital gains on it (if it appreciated since acquisition), then donate it. So you're out the capital gains ta…
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 it, it's not a DAF. But trusts are much more complicated, and someone who understands them (which I don't) can hold forth here.
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#58thanks Signal, thanks ACLU
https://www.aclu.org/ https://signal.org/donate/
Nothing is free, support these folks.
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#59thanks Signal, thanks aclu
https://www.aclu.org/ https://signal.org/
Nothing is free, support these folks.
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Another benefit, it sounds like, is that you don't have to pay capital gains on selling those shares. Like, let's say your intent is to donate $10k to some charity, out of the goodness of your heart and/or as a tax write off. You don't have that in cash, but do in stock. You could liquidate $10k of stock, pay capital gains on it (if it appreciated since acquisition), then donate it. So you're out the capital gains ta…
You indeed don't have to pay long term capital gains tax, although you do have to pay short term capital gains tax.