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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

#71

Post by Der_Einzige »

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.

Sorry, but by this example I shouldn't say "Hi" to my friend "jack" at the airport because it will sound like "hijack". I expect airports to have uniquely high numbers of "jokes" about airplane hijackings as such a thing is on everyones mind.

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

#72

Post by exe34 »

game_the0ry wrote: post #44

Personally, start from the premise that my iphone is a CIA tracking device. That changes my behavior accordingly. Though ideally I should expect privacy from the electronics I own.

You'd think if the CIA is so good at tracking, they'd know when you were joking.

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

#73

Post by siilats »

aaron695 wrote: post #10

There is no way British intelligence could have acted so quick, if it was true. Maybe if he/they were already being watched. This is an interesting theory, if it's technically possible would be it. For sure airports would watch such traffic if they technically can. "It was previously thought the WiFi network at London Gatwick Airport could have intercepted it, but an airport spokesperson told the BBC it didn't have t…

or maybe, hear me out, there was a person sitting next to him at the airport and saw his snapchat messages and freaked out?

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

#74

Post by [deleted] »

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.…

[deleted]

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

#75

Post by bilekas »

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…

The nerve they have to try and make the victim pay damages too?

"We messed up, send the Spanish authorities to scramble a jet to escort the flight, but he should pay for that"

The balls on these guys.

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

#78

Post by eterm »

thekevan wrote: post #76

I thought I read another article that said it was caught because he was connected to and using the airport's wifi.

That's not how wifi works.

Being on wifi doesn't mean that wifi network has access to your encrypyed communication.

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

#79

Post by mig39 »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #71
krisoft wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sorry, but by this example I shouldn't say "Hi" to my friend "jack" at the airport because it will sound like "hijack". I expect airports to have uniquely high numbers of "jokes" about airplane hijackings as such a thing is on everyones mind.

That was a great episode of Three's Company!

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

#80

Post by implements »

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…

> Most likely Snapchat's E2EE is just a facade, they probably have a dictionary of "funny" words on the device (and/or the server) and automatically flags the message in the internal systems when certain stopwords are being used.

On device content scanning notifies Snapchat of a certain type of threat, that + metadata goes to a real-time law-enforcement system which combines it with other sources to decide whether a lawful intercept is warranted - if so, Snapchat pulls the cached messages off the device and forwards them on.

It’s arguable that would be reasonable and legal, depending on the watchlist.

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