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Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

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Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#501

Post by godelski »

qroshan wrote: post #460
godelski wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The keeping safe argument from government is indeed preposterous. As if that was their mission to keep us safe. Why are they allowing our nature to be destroyed in favor of money/economy? I don't think it is quite as simple as this (I'll preface this with saying I don't think we should have backdoors and that I wish we had STRONG encryption everywhere). I think the problem is that different departments have differe…

Thanks for this nuance answer. Unfortunately, "Nuance" will always lose to "Pitchfork", even in supposedly smart and intelligent communities like HN. There are ZERO people from the pitchfork community who understands the pressure of working in keeping a community, region or country safe. If there is a terrorist attack, the pitchfork people have to answer to ZERO questions, while CIA/NSA/Police will have to answer 'Wh…

I mostly agree, but I wouldn't call HN a pitchfork community. It can definitely get that way at times, but I think nuance is welcomed and generally encouraged here. Definitely the only way to keep it that way is to keep promoting it, so don't get disheartened. There's still hope.

> It is so easy to sit in their comfortable offices and homes and philosophize about privacy when you have no skin in the game.

And I definitely agree with this. But that's also why I made a big point into that lack of encryption actually gives these agencies more work (if we look at history). The problem is exactly what you note though, there will always be failure and we ask why they can't stop near impossible things to stop. Post hoc analysis is always easier than in situ.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#502

Post by mapgrep »

rdl wrote: post #424
wcathcart wrote: post #395

We were surprised to read this story and are not aware of discussions that would force us to change our product. We believe people have a fundamental right to have private conversations. End-to-end encryption protects that right for over a billion people every day. We will always oppose government attempts to build backdoors because they would weaken the security of everyone who uses WhatsApp including governments th…

If so, sounds like someone from FB Legal and the SEC should have Words with Bloomberg. Wouldn't be the first time they've intentionally maliciously misrepresented/lied about an infosec issue to the detriment of a company in order to move the market (Supermicro "grain of rice"...)

If you read the (short) story to the end, you will see it was first reported by the New York Times.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#503

Post by inimino »

brenden2 wrote: post #104
deogeo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the source code isn't available for audit by 3rd parties (or yourself), and you can't build it from source, then it was never really "secure" anyway. What lawmakers do or don't say is just noise. Careful - you're right that WhatsApp is untrustworthy, but laws that force them to add backdoors could well be applied to open-source code as well. Or make possession of non-backdoored software, open or not, illegal. Or…

If I can compile audited code from source myself, without any backdoors, then I can be reasonably assured there aren't any backdoors (excluding perhaps hardware level backdoors--but that's why we do the encryption in software). Implementing hardware backdoors that are opaque to end users is theoretically possible, but more difficult in practice. You could, for example, build a screen/monitor that just captures everyt…

How are you going to get that source code onto your phone, when loading unauthorized code becomes illegal? Who are you going to talk to, when everyone else is using the approved apps? Try to think ahead a little. This arrogant naive thinking is how geeks lose and politicians get it wrong while you're not paying attention and then everyone ends up living with the consequences.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#504

Post by scarejunba »

OpieCunningham wrote: post #329
blackflame7000 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If congress and the president decide they want to increase the SC to 99 justices and add and additional 90 of their choosing then that's when the US Constitution officially dies but it can be done according to the law.

What’s the difference between 9 of their choosing and 99 of their choosing?

You have to kill some of them to put the others in place. If you add 90 slots you can just fill the new 90 slots with your guys. That’s the theory of his statement.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#505

Post by inimino »

twoelfer wrote: post #155
brenden2 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, it's a super difficult problem. Having the source code available, and being able to validate the builds yourself makes everything a lot easier. It's one of the reasons the Debian project has worked so hard at reproducible builds: https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds/About Bugs can certainly occur (like Heartbleed etc) but the alternative (closed source opaque binary blobs) is much worse.

No ordinary person is capable of building anything from source.

Define "ordinary person", as plenty of people here have. However, there's very little difference between downloading a reproducible system that compiles everything on your machine and downloading a binary with a known checksum from a perspective of trust.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#506

Post by inimino »

UncleMeat wrote: post #209
brenden2 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to use Gentoo, and I built my entire OS from source. I'm not extraordinary in any way, I'm just an ordinary person who has a deep interest in software and computers.

I'd wager that fewer than 1/100,000 humans on the planet could feasibly build Gentoo from source.

It's a pretty automated process. I'd estimate 1/10 of all people who can use a computer and install software at all could do it if they wanted to and had sufficient time.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#507

Post by soulofmischief »

marmaduke wrote: post #417
wcathcart wrote: post #395

We were surprised to read this story and are not aware of discussions that would force us to change our product. We believe people have a fundamental right to have private conversations. End-to-end encryption protects that right for over a billion people every day. We will always oppose government attempts to build backdoors because they would weaken the security of everyone who uses WhatsApp including governments th…

Will you have something like a warrant canary [1] to let users know in case there ever is a compromise of security? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary

A warrant canary isn't proof of anything.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#508

Post by krick »

wcathcart wrote: post #423
technics256 wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you currently have any backdoors installed?

We do not. You don't have to take our word on this -- I wouldn't want you to. As others on this thread have pointed out it's possible enough to tear through our binaries that if we did have a backdoor it would be discovered.

I'm not sure it wasn't answered before, but why do you refuse to open-source the client app, since, as you say it yourself, you try to have no secrets on the client-side, encryption is supposed to be e2e, technology is well known and implemented in many alternatives and basically there seems to be nothing to protect in the app itself?

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#509

Post by rcw4256 »

wcathcart wrote: post #423
technics256 wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you currently have any backdoors installed?

We do not. You don't have to take our word on this -- I wouldn't want you to. As others on this thread have pointed out it's possible enough to tear through our binaries that if we did have a backdoor it would be discovered.

Please implement a warrant canary while you still can, before you are legally compelled not to.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#510

Post by conanbatt »

soulofmischief wrote: post #507
marmaduke wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will you have something like a warrant canary [1] to let users know in case there ever is a compromise of security? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary

A warrant canary isn't proof of anything.

A lack of one is.
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