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The US Govt 5 years ago: e2e encryption is for terrorists. The govt should have backdoors.
The US Govt now: Oh fuck, our back door got breached, everyone quick use e2e encryption asap!
The Australian government tried to straight up ban encryption some years ago.
I laughed so much at that. Encryption is literally just long complicated numbers combined with other long complicated numbers using mathematical formulae. You can't ban maths.
If I remember correctly, there's also a law in Australia where they can force tech companies to introduce backdoors in their systems and encryption algorithms, and the company must not tell anyone about it. AFAIK they haven't tried to actually use that power yet, but it made the (already relatively stagnant) tech market in Australia even worse. Working in tech is the main reason I left Australia for the USA - there's just so many more opportunities and significantly higher paying jobs for software developers in Silicon Valley.
You can’t ban maths.
tell me about it; it tried that against my teacher in middle school
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More like 23 years ago when the Patriot Act was signed, and every time it has been re-authorized/renamed since. Every President since Bush Jr. is complicit, and I'm getting most of them in the previous 70-ish years (or more) wish they could've had that bill as well.
Oh gee, forcing companies to leave backdoors for the government might compromise security, everyone. Who'd have thunk it? 🤦
It's probably also good practice to assume that not all encrypted apps are created equal, too. Google's RCS messaging, for example, says "end-to-end encrypted", which sounds like it would be a direct and equal competitor to something like Signal. But Google regularly makes money off of your personal data. It does not behoove a company like Google to protect your data.
Start assuming every corporation is evil. At worst you lose some time getting educated on options.
End to end is end to end. Its either "the devices sign the messages with keys that never leave the the device so no 3rd party can ever compromise them" or it's not.
Signal is a more trustworthy org, but google isn't going to fuck around with this service to make money. They make their money off you by keeping you in the google ecosystem and data harvesting elsewhere.
google isn't going to fuck around with this service to make money
Your honor, I would like to submit Exhibit A, Google Chrome “Enhanced Privacy”.
Google will absolutely fuck with anything that makes them money.
This. Distrust in corporations is healthy regardless of what they claim.
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It could be end to end encrypted and safe on the network, but if Google is in charge of the device, what's to say they're not reading the message after it's unencrypted? To be fair this would compromise signal or any other app on Android as well
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Signal doesn't harvest, use, sell meta data, Google may do that.
E2E encryption doesn't protect from that.
Signal is orders of magnitude more trustworthy than Google in that regard.
There's also Session, a fork of Signal which claims that their decentralised protocol makes it impossible/very difficult for them to harvest metadata, even if they wanted to.Tho I personally can't vouch for how accurate their claims are.
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until the republicans ban them so they can find queer kids and pregnant people getting healthcare and people reading books
All that happens under Dems, too. Stop giving them a pass.
Y’all keep hitting that downvote button. I’d like to know how many of you are ok with fascism when it’s a Dem at the helm.
Yup. The Apple-FBI encryption dispute started under Obama, as did the Snowden leak.
Neither party is particularly pro-encryption, because governments in general see encryption by the public a hurdle for their operations (i.e. you don't need encryption if you have nothing to hide).
Encryption isn't a partisan issue, and my understanding is that both major parties suck about equally on this issue.
It’s a wonder they’re not also trying to outlaw printing presses at this point. They openly believe that we are not entitled to private conversations.
It seems we're moving that direction. Physical media in video games is becoming less and less common, more and more stores are digital only (and Google made a deal w/ Mastercard to get that data), and ebooks are likely to overtake physical books in the near-ish future.
Guess where all that data ends up? The government can just pay retailers to get transaction data, so if the police wants to dig up dirt on you, it's easier than ever.
That's pretty messed up IMO, and I'm not happy with this trend given where privacy protections are at these days...
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The Snowden leaks came out when Obama was president. Obama was the one who said, "The only people who don't want to disclose the truth are people with something to hide". The republicans and democrats are the same fucking people.
Only if you look at it in the most general, limited, pov. Are they the same people on corporate greed? Not all, but mostly yes. Are they the same people on encryption? Yes. Are they the same on human rights? Absolutely fucking not. If the only thing important for you is encryption, voting isn't going to change the government's policy decisions. However, if things other than encryption and corporate greed are important, then voting for a Republican is voting against your interests. History is filled with people who can't see past their own fucking biases and look out for the greater interest..... So you have a lot of historical company.
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All that happens under Dems, too
Fucking what? Which democrats are banning books and putting together lists of trans children?
And no, I'm not a fan of the DNC, I'm just not a fucking dishonest piece of shit.
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A good advice: start learning how to self host, specially a matrix instance.
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Like Signal?
Yes, like Signal!
Which does not only use end-to-end encryption for communication, but protects meta data as well:
Signal also uses our metadata encryption technology to protect intimate information about who is communicating with whom—we don’t know who is sending you messages, and we don’t have access to your address book or profile information. We believe that the inability to monetize encrypted data is one of the reasons that strong end-to-end encryption technology has not been widely deployed across the commercial tech industry.
Source: https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/
I haven't verified that claim investigating the source code, but I'm positive others have.
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Sounds bad I guess, but the USA has been spying on us for a long time now. Is the bad part that it's China?
Bets on this being directly related to back doors that US spy agencies demand be installed?
RTFA
The third has been systems that telecommunications companies use in compliance with the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA), which allows law enforcement and intelligence agencies with court orders to track individuals’ communications. CALEA systems can include classified court orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which processes some U.S. intelligence court orders.
So, bet won?
Wouldn't surprise me. "We're doing this to be helpful to you!" is actually moustached disney villain behavior.
^ similar to the prisoners with cats gimmick. "look how nice we're being to our prisoners" is actually "stop yelling at your bunkmate or we'll take away your cat"
When a whole nation's communications are intercepted by another entity, yes, the bad part is that it's another nation. Especially an adversarial one.
This is not about individuals' personal privacy. It's about things that happen at a much larger scale. For example, leverage for political influence, or leaking of sensitive info that sometimes finds its way into unsecured channels. Mass surveillance is powerful.
Everybodies aunt at thanksgiving:
"I should be fine. I only trust the facebook with my information. Oh, did I tell you? We have 33 more cousins we didn't know about. I found out on 23andme.com. All of them want to borrow money."
Real encrypted apps, ...or just the ones their own government can use to spy on them?
In the voice of Nelson Muntz: "Nobody spies on our citizens but us!"
The reporter mentioned signal, though the gov spokespeople didn't seem to recommend any specific app
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End-to-end encryption is indispensable. Our legislators (no matter where we live) need to be made to understand this next time they try to outlaw it.
“So it’s like a filter on the tubes?” - Our legislators
"you wouldn't put a dump truck full of movies on a snowy road without chains on the tires would you?"
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On January 20th: The cyberattack is coming from inside the house!
Dumbfuck and his cronies now have access to PRISM and ECHELON. Again.
Hear me out, maybe we should update pots and sms to have optional end-to-end encryption for modern implementations as well...Optional as backwards compatible and clearly shown as unencrypted when used that way to be clear.
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There's been a lot of good research done lately on how to achieve trusted communication on untrusted platforms and over untrusted channels. Encryption is a big part of that.
And there are a number of scenarios where the ISP creates a hostile environment without having been compromised by an external actor. A malicious government, for example, or an ISP wanting to exploit customer communications for commercial reasons.
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this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2024
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