> To scrape my Signal messages, you need access to my physical device, and you need my passcode.

Same with getting access to your iCloud/Apple account.

> To get access to iMessage messages, all you need to do is get my latest backup, or the backup of the person I talked to, off of Apple’s servers, for example, with a legal request, which completely bypasses the need for any user level auth/encryption.

As I said, anything stored in a cloud will have some oversight. Anyone that thinks storing something in a cloud is secure from oversight is dim.

If you think anyone from enforcement can just get your iCloud/Apple account, that would also mean they are able to access your device and everything on it including your "encrypted end to end" Signal messages that are plaintext on your client.

Messaging apps also get cam/mic/location/contacts permissions, Signal is no different, one more entity with your face/voice/place/friends.

You can trust Signal, a third party, rock on. Acton is involved in both, from WhatsApp, went to Facebook, and then when people stopped trusting Facebook he made Signal to catch those leaving. The story is he didn't trust Facebook, no one should, but can you trust Signal/Acton or is it a front. You decide. Problem is you trust them so much they got ya. I mean Elon Musk and Edward Snowden recommend it... is must be safe /s. Signal is maybe safe, maybe safe from some five eyes, but not all eyes not in the five. Even then, there are always ways to get in via dependencies and devs (mainly devops) are the weak link today sadly.

Agree to disagree, good discussion though.

Article 13 part 2?

C‘mon…. Sounds like you looked at some Linux 25 years ago.

Why?

Sounds like my 9 year old.

There is no consent required in a public place with public officials where there is no expectation of privacy.

SaaS (Software as a Service) is the new financial model. People who can't afford a monthly/yearly subscription plan for Windows will, reluctantly, start to migrate to other, non-subscription, OS platforms.

IIRC the law in Australia made it illegal to not link the content. You legally are required to link to it, and pay for the privilege.

The problem is this is a law that dictates the formation of a civil contract between private entities.

If news companies want to negotiate a contract with Google and co that has Google pay them to link to their content, let them do that. However, they’ve been unsuccessful at that because they have no leverage. If they delink from Google they stop getting traffic from Google, so they actually lose revenue.

I’d agree that if Google were causing harm regulation would be appropriate. But if the website tells Google to not index them they start losing revenue strongly suggests Google is not doing harm to the website being linked, but is instead providing a mechanism for revenue.

And even if regulation were appropriate, it should not be regulation that mandates a civil contract between two private entities. It should be, “Google cannot link to news sites.” By mandating a civil contract between two private entities it gives artificial leverage to the news companies, which can give unreasonable demands and Google is forced to accept.

Again, the news companies don’t want that outcome because it causes them to lose revenue. So this is only about the news companies having their cake and eating it too.

> You dismiss user level auth

To scrape my Signal messages, you need access to my physical device, and you need my passcode. To get access to iMessage messages, all you need to do is get my latest backup, or the backup of the person I talked to, off of Apple’s servers, for example, with a legal request, which completely bypasses the need for any user level auth/encryption.

Agree to disagree

That's not my experience with it. It wrote some really solid GDScript for me which I thought was impressive because it's a very specific programming language.

Yea. Google isn't the reason why these news organizations are losing money.

I can't speak for the role of facebook and other social media, but another major culprit would be the thousands of low effort click-bait ad-driven blogs and news aggregators on the other hand, that do zero original reporting but just repaste the same stuff from the original news websites, which also junk up the google search results even worse.

I would but they look pretty bad, break in weird ways and you cant game. Been the issue for forever.

Quick, take responsibility and lay off more people.

You dismiss user level auth/encryption like it is nothing. If anyone had access to user level auth why go to the backup file, just go to the device, load up Signal and scrape their messages.

All other messaging apps have the "ghost user" problem confirmed.

Signal has a shim for spam that is very unclear, I'll just say that. There are other things around Signal that make is sus in my opinion.

> The source code for spam detection is not public.

So there is a plausible deniability reason to hide some code... you have to trussssst. Here's the kicker, you can't check for spam if you aren't seeing the message.

Even on the self installed versions...

> Signal's servers are partially open source, but the server software's anti-spam component is proprietary and closed source due to security concerns

Signal does handle users being added better, but this could just be theater as well.

> The real problem with the GCHQ proposal is that it targets a weakness in messaging/calling systems that’s already well-known to providers, and moreover, a weakness that providers have been working to close — perhaps because they’re worried that someone just like GCHQ (or probably, much worse) will try to exploit it. By making this proposal, the folks at GCHQ have virtually guaranteed that those providers will move much, much faster on this.

> And they have quite a few options at their disposal. Over the past several years researchers have proposed several designs that offer transparency to users regarding which keys they’re obtaining from a provider’s identity service. These systems operate by having the identity service commit to the keys that are associated with individual users, such that it’s very hard for the provider to change a user’s keys (or to add a device) without everyone in the world noticing.

> As mentioned above, advanced messengers like Signal have “submerged” the group chat management into the encrypted communications flow, so that the server cannot add new users without the digitally authenticated approval of one of the existing participants. This design, if ported to in more popular services like WhatsApp, would seem to kill the GCHQ proposal dead.

I personally don't trust Signal for a few reasons beyond these items, but if you trust them then rock on.

Trudeau is insane, apparently.

We can assume the majority of people go with the default settings. iMessage conversations, by default, end up in a backup file on iCloud that is not end to end encrypted. Signal conversations, by default, do not.

> We designed iMessage to use end-to-end encryption

Which again is worthless when a plaintext version is also being uploaded in the form of iCloud backups, which are on by default. The same isn’t true for Signal.

You’ll have to provide a source for your claims about Signal’s ghost users. As far as a compromised client, that’s not something any messaging client can defend against, and if a service is end to end encrypted, it shouldn’t matter if the endpoint server is entirely compromised.

> breaking their encryption as it is custom

That’s the cool part, it’s not. It’s based on the same old algorithms that have been around for years. ECDSA, ECDH, AES, etc. if I remember correctly

It depends on your definition of opsec but just a reminder that we’re in a thread about Signal and end to end encryption specifically.

Take Linux instead. Don't let the visual update fool you.

Yeah this bugged me too. Its hard to get people to switch but I used to be able to convince them to use it as their SMS app too it was easier. I can't remember the reasons they dropped support, I'd assume because it's easier to develop without the unsecured bit

[deleted]

> end to end encrypted chat service

End to end means nothing though when a client isn't in your control and may have another user attached. Again, common in many messaging apps.

iMessage is end to end encryption to iMessage, just like Signal to Signal. If you use SMS it is not.

> We designed iMessage to use end-to-end encryption, so there's no way for Apple to decrypt the content of your conversations when they are in transit between devices. Attachments you send over iMessage (such as photos or videos) are encrypted so that no one but the sender and receiver(s) can access them

Apple can't magically make SMS secure, it is not secure by default as it was really from telephone diagnostics and repurposed for messaging. So when you message Android it goes SMS. SMS was from SS7 and really only for diagnostic or messages to customers for testing. MMS is better but still not that great. Apple should bring iMessage to Android and do better on messengers, it is leading many people to third parties that open up opsec issues.

> With Signal, the whole idea is you shouldn’t have to trust Signal with your messages, because they don’t have the ability to read them, even if they wanted to.

That is a bold statement. Yes, on the surface. Again, ghost users, compromised clients, endpoints can have problems. Also Signal does have a proprietary shim for monitoring, spam checking and other things, could easily be used to surveil or sift. There are probably a dozen ways or more to get around it currently at the dependency level or breaking their encryption as it is custom.

The best opsec is always less third parties.

take everything you read on that site with a grain of salt. it's not the apex of journalism if you know what I mean.

Can't get a job anywhere these days

Pretty much, "we are not banning locks, of course not. But we will be requiring there to be a cutout in the frame so we can push the door open and walk in to check your kids. We will only walk in to check on your kids, promise"

The thing you’re missing is, if you’re using Signal you specifically want an end to end encrypted chat service.

The OS doesn’t upload that data in unencrypted form. You can analyze for yourself with a MITM proxy.

iMessage is secure, as long as you don’t care for your messages remaining end to end encrypted, and you trust Apple to have a copy of your messages. Is that reasonable to you? Maybe, maybe not.

With Signal, the whole idea is you shouldn’t have to trust Signal with your messages, because they don’t have the ability to read them, even if they wanted to. Yes, it could have holes like any software, so this can really be simplified to: use the tool with a known issue for sure, vs use the tool that might have an issue in the future but for now is known to be safe.