51–60 of 283 posts
Signal is headquartered in the US and presumably has no employees in Sweden (and perhaps the entire European Union). There is utterly nothing the Swedish government can do to stop Signal except for pressuring app stores and/or ISP-level censorship. Preemptive surrender is extremely disappointing, especially for a non-profit - there isn’t even any revenue that can be ‘fined’ by the EU!
There is a reason why Free Software (as in freedom) was invented: To ensure that those who create the software do not overpower those who use the software. The idea, that companies or politicians can force the user's machine to work against it's owner, is wrong. And it is wrong, because to be a human in the 21st century means in most cases, that your digital devices and your digital interactions are a core part of wh…
> The idea, that companies or politicians can force the user's machine to work against it's owner, is wrong. You are hinting at something important here. Let me strengthen your point: to own an object means to subject it fully to your own will. If the object can act in a way that favors someone else's interests over yours, you do not own it. This is true of pretty much any device running proprietary software. A litmu…
(Reproducible builds is a cool technique.)
Signal is headquartered in the US and presumably has no employees in Sweden (and perhaps the entire European Union). There is utterly nothing the Swedish government can do to stop Signal except for pressuring app stores and/or ISP-level censorship. Preemptive surrender is extremely disappointing, especially for a non-profit - there isn’t even any revenue that can be ‘fined’ by the EU!
Yes, Signal may be headquartered in the US, but that doesn't mean they can just ignore the laws of other countries, which is exactly what may happen here, depending on the outcome.
Sweden may propose a backdoor (a utterly shitty idea, I agree) which Signal may decline (which this submission is about). Then the next step is either Sweden giving up on the request, or placing fines on Signal until they comply or outright ban it, or Signal deciding it isn't worth it (prevent Swedish users from using Signal).
All within their capacities and rights, even though I again think it would very stupid approach.
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There is no evidence or reason to believe that US intelligence agencies can access signal messages when used properly. It would be much simpler for them to compromise the phones of targets vs break the signal protocol. This is generally true of secure communication systems, the flaws tend to be in usage and endpoint security, not in the protocol implementation.
It seems like a lot of these proposals are coming out of Europe—assuming I’m not mistaken (and I may well be), why is Europe cracking down so much on privacy?
It's not just privacy, Europe is cracking down on freedoms generally. Free speech, the right to silence, the presumption of innocence, etc. Most of this is being done to address the increasing terrorism threat we now face on a daily basis. Freedoms really only work in societies where people broadly share the same values and cooperate, but European societies are fragmenting and increasingly becoming less safe and less…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All of them?
Well, only some claim to "remain committed to offering our users the highest level of security for their personal data" while turning off E2EE cloud storage for an entire country.
> The Armed Forces, on the other hand, are negative and write in a letter to the government that the proposal cannot be realized "without introducing vulnerabilities and backdoors that can be exploited by third parties First time I am seeing an organization against this. Kudos to them for standing up.
According to the original article (Swedish: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/signal-lamnar-sverige-om-... ), the reason for the armed forces to be against it is because they recently started advocating for its personnel to start using Signal to reduce eavesdropping, so backdooring Signal would decrease the armed forces security. > Men Försvarsmakten är negativa och nyligen uppmanade försvaret sin personal att börja…
> I ett brev till regeringen skriver Försvarsmakten att lagförslaget inte kommer kunna förverkligas ”utan att införa sårbarheter och bakdörrar som kan komma att nyttjas av tredje part”.
> In a letter to the government, the Swedish Armed Forces writes that the legislative proposal will not be able to be implemented "without introducing vulnerabilities and backdoors that may be utilized by third parties."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They haven’t been in a war since 1814, so they’ve had lots of time to develop other competences. I hear they also make amazing sourdough and can discuss the Beatles catalog at depth.
as a general rule countries that succeed with a policy of neutrality do so by having their military strong enough that they're mot worth fucking with.
That's not how Sweden remained "neutral" though, although I'm not sure I'd agree Sweden been neutral since 1814, wasn't exactly neutral before/during the second world war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_during_World_War_II
Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to the original article (Swedish: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/signal-lamnar-sverige-om-... ), the reason for the armed forces to be against it is because they recently started advocating for its personnel to start using Signal to reduce eavesdropping, so backdooring Signal would decrease the armed forces security. > Men Försvarsmakten är negativa och nyligen uppmanade försvaret sin personal att börja…
In fact, they are negative because they say that this can't be done without opening up the service to vulnerabilities that could be used by others. > I ett brev till regeringen skriver Försvarsmakten att lagförslaget inte kommer kunna förverkligas ”utan att införa sårbarheter och bakdörrar som kan komma att nyttjas av tredje part”. > In a letter to the government, the Swedish Armed Forces writes that the legislative…
While I don't personally agree with the law, I genuinely hope we witness a major corporation withdraw from a market just so we can finally observe the concrete impact of these types of threats. (Even though their position is understandable in this particular case.)
Why are European countries trying to pull one off from the China playbook, while simultaneously being shocked that companies react to authoritarian moves in the exact same way as they have done in the past, is beyond me. Is the hubris so large that they honestly can't conceive their "requirements" as being "literally the same as China?"