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British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages

reuters.com

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Re: British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages

#61

Post by ranger_danger »

clawoo wrote: post #22

One needs to ask themselves, what is more likely? 1. The /feds/ broke Snapschat's end to end encryption and they're monitoring for all traffic with designated stopwords, or... 2. One of his friends reported him, one way or another, or.. 3. Snapchat's end to end encryption is... not. I can't find any definitive statement that the chat messages themselves are E2EE, only that photos and videos are encrypted and the key…

I think there's arguably several things going on in reality.

I don't think anyone has "broken" proper encryption that any major service is using, but I believe there is proof that the encryption is being bypassed in one of multiple ways.

One way could be through things like Pegasus, the Israeli spyware that can be silently installed on mobile phones. How this gets onto the device in the first place is not disclosed, but with the major app stores already having the capability to remotely install apps without your permission, this is obviously a very easy way to do it.

There have also been leaked US government documents stating that they have systems in place to monitor unencrypted messages from major proprietary apps like Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram etc. I think any time you don't have the source code to at least the client program, there's no guarantee it's properly encrypting things in the first place.

Also it's possible the Whatsapp and similar programs are simply compromised by design, to where even though messages DO use E2EE, the client program itself could still be intercepting the messages secretly BEFORE they're encrypted and then doing who knows what with them. Without the source it's hard to know.

And with UK being part of Five Eyes I don't doubt at least some of this tech is shared with them.

Re: British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages

#62

Post by screenothethird »

chmod775 wrote: post #31

So these people do not want to talk about and are generally unable to provide examples of their surveillance stopping an actual threat because "they do not want to give away their capabilities", but when they get shown up for being absolute fools by taking an obvious joke seriously, they have no problem starting noisy court proceedings? They were likely just so giddy that they finally got something , they didn't stop…

[dead]

Re: British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages

#63

Post by vhguru »

clawoo wrote: post #22

One needs to ask themselves, what is more likely? 1. The /feds/ broke Snapschat's end to end encryption and they're monitoring for all traffic with designated stopwords, or... 2. One of his friends reported him, one way or another, or.. 3. Snapchat's end to end encryption is... not. I can't find any definitive statement that the chat messages themselves are E2EE, only that photos and videos are encrypted and the key…

Group chats generally don’t have E2EE. Most apps provide that only for one-to-one conversations. Group E2E encryption is a difficult problem.

Re: British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages

#64

Post by wasdfff »

somenameforme wrote: post #58
chmod775 wrote: post #31

So these people do not want to talk about and are generally unable to provide examples of their surveillance stopping an actual threat because "they do not want to give away their capabilities", but when they get shown up for being absolute fools by taking an obvious joke seriously, they have no problem starting noisy court proceedings? They were likely just so giddy that they finally got something , they didn't stop…

At least in the US a lot of the surveillance is probably illegal and cannot be used in court. They way they get around this is parallel construction. [1] Reuters had an awesome article about this a long time ago, which seems to have been removed from their site. [2] The NSA or whoever spies on somebody they're not supposed to be spying on. They see he's e.g. selling drugs, and further spying shows the time of a sell.…

How often does this even get used? How does the NSA even communicate to a police officer in the field? I think you give local cops a ton of credit. At the end of the day it looks like there are more hard drugs available on the street than ever before despite all the spooky tech and warrantless searching.

Re: British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages

#65

Post by tgv »

chatmasta wrote: post #19
Daviey wrote: post #16

It's an /assumption/ that British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages, as the article literally states, "The trial did not make clear how the British services managed to have access to Verma's private messages, the judge stressed." The truth is, it isn't public knowledge how this unfolded and anything suggesting otherwise is conjecture. Also, this post doesn't' reflect the article title, "Spa…

If we're speculating, a much more likely explanation is that Snapchat moderation teams monitor certain words in certain areas, flagging for example any message containing "bomb" sent from an airport. This is arguably even creepier than government surveillance, since it implies Snapchat employees are looking at the content of private chats and the user may never know.

It also means that there's no encryption, or the key is known to Snapchat employees (and therefore to everybody who has enough money).

Re: British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages

#66

Post by digging »

wasdfff wrote: post #64
somenameforme wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the US a lot of the surveillance is probably illegal and cannot be used in court. They way they get around this is parallel construction. [1] Reuters had an awesome article about this a long time ago, which seems to have been removed from their site. [2] The NSA or whoever spies on somebody they're not supposed to be spying on. They see he's e.g. selling drugs, and further spying shows the time of a sell.…

How often does this even get used? How does the NSA even communicate to a police officer in the field? I think you give local cops a ton of credit. At the end of the day it looks like there are more hard drugs available on the street than ever before despite all the spooky tech and warrantless searching.

> At the end of the day it looks like there are more hard drugs available on the street than ever

Nobody said they're doing it to get drugs off the street.

Re: British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages

#67

Post by squigz »

wasdfff wrote: post #64
somenameforme wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the US a lot of the surveillance is probably illegal and cannot be used in court. They way they get around this is parallel construction. [1] Reuters had an awesome article about this a long time ago, which seems to have been removed from their site. [2] The NSA or whoever spies on somebody they're not supposed to be spying on. They see he's e.g. selling drugs, and further spying shows the time of a sell.…

How often does this even get used? How does the NSA even communicate to a police officer in the field? I think you give local cops a ton of credit. At the end of the day it looks like there are more hard drugs available on the street than ever before despite all the spooky tech and warrantless searching.

I think selling drugs was a simple, if dated, example. And nobody suggested the NSA would contact an officer 'in the field' - they said contacting the agency/department

Re: British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages

#68

Post by PretzelPirate »

krisoft wrote: post #23
_chu1 wrote: post #18

This is why even if you aren't doing anything wrong, you should always use E2E encrypted communication.

> even if you aren't doing anything wrong I mean... joking about bomb threats at an airport is not "not doing anything wrong". Should we throw the person in prison for it? No, of course not. Is it a dumb thing to do? I think so. Very dumb. > you should always use E2E encrypted communication I agree with that.

I had a gate agent joke about needing to check a replacement plane for bombs before we can board. She said it over the intercom and then said "I probably can't joke about that at an airport."

There was a lot of laughter and it made me far less annoyed about the delay. It was hilarious.

Re: British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages

#69

Post by goodSteveramos »

wasdfff wrote: post #64
somenameforme wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the US a lot of the surveillance is probably illegal and cannot be used in court. They way they get around this is parallel construction. [1] Reuters had an awesome article about this a long time ago, which seems to have been removed from their site. [2] The NSA or whoever spies on somebody they're not supposed to be spying on. They see he's e.g. selling drugs, and further spying shows the time of a sell.…

How often does this even get used? How does the NSA even communicate to a police officer in the field? I think you give local cops a ton of credit. At the end of the day it looks like there are more hard drugs available on the street than ever before despite all the spooky tech and warrantless searching.

They aren’t going after drugs they are going after people for their political beliefs. Remember when the IRS audited every organization just for having the word “patriot” in their name?

Re: British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages

#70

Post by wannacboatmovie »

vhguru wrote: post #63
clawoo wrote: post #22

One needs to ask themselves, what is more likely? 1. The /feds/ broke Snapschat's end to end encryption and they're monitoring for all traffic with designated stopwords, or... 2. One of his friends reported him, one way or another, or.. 3. Snapchat's end to end encryption is... not. I can't find any definitive statement that the chat messages themselves are E2EE, only that photos and videos are encrypted and the key…

Group chats generally don’t have E2EE. Most apps provide that only for one-to-one conversations. Group E2E encryption is a difficult problem.

> Group E2E encryption is a difficult problem.

Not if it was architected properly from the beginning.

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