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Signal. Privacy. (upload.wikimedia.org)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Link to article from main Lemmy❤️ developer about Signal privacy. Mostly fair points. I kinda distrust so centralized services but basically we have no other options (Matrix is buggy in many aspects). What can you say about this article?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Many great answers in here but can someone address this point?

Signal could very well be another Crypto AG-style honeypot: the Swiss company which provided secure communications services to ~120 governments throughout the 20th century, and was secretly ran by the CIA and West German Intelligence.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I think if we assume that we run on our devices code that is public we are safe (without additional built in things, backdoors). This code is checked many times so it is good. If you use Android you can use some forks of official Signal client (Molly, Signal-FOSS) and be safe 🙂

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

My question to those who think Signal is a honeypot is when will they trigger it? Signal gets subpoenaed fairly often amd it always returns next to nothing. If signal is a CIA project, they probably would have used it by now.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Lemmy devs don't have a lot of ground to complain about services being insecure imo.

[+] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

He said it long time ago, is he still, maybe it is pr for money, we don't know 🤷

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Snowden doesn't make any public statements any more without express permission from the Russian government. You can't trust anything he's said in the past few years, especially not since the war began.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Snowden doesn’t make any public statements any more without express permission from the Russian government.

Can you provide sources for this?

It might make sense for him to self-censor to avoid angering one of the few places that are allowing him to stay but even that's not a given: if he felt something needed to be said badly enough, he's shown to be the type of person who would rather something be said and take the repercussions on the nose than to leave something unsaid.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Can you provide sources for this?

The source is that Russia murders its own oligarchs the second they fall out of Putin's favor, and anyone who holds up a blank sign in protest of the regime gets shipped off to the front lines. No way that man would survive a second if he ever went against the party line. Which means he hasn't done so.

It might make sense for him to self-censor to avoid angering one of the few places that are allowing him to stay but even that’s not a given: if he felt something needed to be said badly enough, he’s shown to be the type of person who would rather something be said and take the repercussions on the nose than to leave something unsaid.

And yet he's happily kept his mouth shut about Russia actively committing genocide.

If I were him, I'd get on the next plane to the US and happily spend the rest of my life in Leavenworth rather than allow myself to become a propaganda tool for a bunch of genocidal fascists. The fact that he hasn't done that speaks volumes about his character. None of it's good.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago

Can you provide sources for this?

The source is that Russia murders its own oligarchs the second they fall out of Putin’s favor, and ships anyone who holds up a blank sign in protest of the regime gets shipped off to the front lines. No way that man would survive a second if he ever went against the party line. Which means he hasn’t done so.

A simple no would have been sufficient. I'm not interested in baseless speculation. I had hoped you had actual evidence, which would intrigue me greatly. As it is, I have someone's imagination put to paper.

If I were him, I’d get on the next plane to the US and happily spend the rest of my life in Leavenworth rather than allow myself to become a propaganda tool for a bunch of genocidal fascists.

He's not saying anything. He's not being a propaganda tool. You can make a rather weasily attempt to say his not denouncing something is in essence supporting it and thus being a propaganda tool, but that's a stretch and rather disingenuous.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This is posted relatively often, and every time it is posted I feel compelled to note that said dev has not articulated any real reason to consider Signal insecure beyond an implicit conspiracy theory with no real meat to it.

"Signal's use luckily never caught on by the general public of China (or the Hong Kong Administrative region), whose government prefers autonomy, rather than letting US tech control its communication platforms, as most of the rest of the world naively allows."

When you're holding up China as an example for the world to follow for privacy, I have a hard time taking ANYTHING else you're claiming seriously.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

“Signal’s use luckily never caught on by the general public of China (or the Hong Kong Administrative region), whose government prefers autonomy, rather than letting US tech control its communication platforms, as most of the rest of the world naively allows.”

When you’re holding up China as an example for the world to follow for privacy

I interpret that quote to say that China doesn't trust US tech like the rest of the world does. It's not saying that China has more privacy and the rest of the world should follow, it's saying that the rest of the world also shouldn't be so naively trustworthy of US tech either.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

And they offer no reasonable basis for distrusting Signal, the tech that they attempt to vilify. Given said dev's past comments, it is reasonable to infer that the reference to China presents them as an example to be followed here.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Ok, two things are happening here.

they offer no reasonable basis for distrusting Signal, the tech that they attempt to vilify.

One, is that they did provide what they considered reasonable basis for distrusting Signal. Given that they thought Signal should not be trusted, the quote you posted is pretty obviously to be interpreted as: thankfully China hasn't naively adopted a compromised communications platform with a USA intelligence backdoor. Now, if you want to say their basis for distrust is not reasonable, or is false, that's completely fine. But in doing so it doesn't change the author's intent behind the quote which you posted.

Given said dev’s past comments, it is reasonable to infer that the reference to China presents them as an example to be followed here.

Two, is that it should be pretty clear they are saying China should be followed here in a very specific and explicit way: they aren't saying follow China in every way under the sun. It's very obvious from context and from what is explicitly said that they mean: China's distrust and refusal to adopt (what they consider) a platform with USA backdoors should be followed. And I think that's an entirely reasonable statement to make. No one should naively adopt compromised communications platforms.

There is no honest reading of the quote (especially given the rest of the context of the essay leading up to the quote) that could lead someone to conclude that this particular essay is (1) advocating for and supporting China spying on its citizens and (2) advocating for other countries following China in spying on citizens. It's pretty obvious the only honest reading of this is: "I believe Signal has USA backdoors. Given that, I'm glad China hasn't adopted its use heavily. I also think other countries should follow China in not naively accepting such technologies".

Again, you can disagree with the foundational reasons for distrust, and that could be very useful. But painting the essay and quote the way you (and others here) are is just intellectually dishonest. Disagree with what is actually said, not with what you imagine (or wish) was said.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago

Key of the previous comment is reasonable. One might as well say that Trump provided a reasonable basis for denying the election results, or that climate deniers are being reasonable in denying the wealth of evidence supporting the idea of man-made climate change. If we're willing to reject abjectly idiotic claims in one case, we should be rejecting them across the board whether we like the politics of the person in question or not.

TL;DR: The author is engaging in agenda driven conspiracy porn which they know or should know is false. As such, it is reasonable to assume that they're either willfully ignorant or acting in bad faith.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't think the problem is that China doesn't trust the US but rather that China wants to spy on their citizens.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago

Ok then you're wilfully misreading the quote. That quote is not cryptic in the least. I have no clue why the parent comment is framing it as "holding up China as an example for the world to follow for privacy". It doesn't follow from the quote in any way.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

In January 2021, after WhatsApp, the most popular messaging app in the world, became acquired by Facebook, and announced its sharing of data with its new parent, Signal became the top downloaded app in > 70 countries.

Errr…

WhatsApp was acquired by meta back in 2014.

2021 was when WhatsApp released updated terms of service that allowed them to connect to Facebook servers and share the data they needed/wanted to.

This article seems like the average low effort hit piece against signal that keeps on popping up.

I still think signal is the easiest messaging app out there for the average user to gain a little more privacy in their digital lives.

[+] [email protected] -7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This same thing has been reposted here so much. So I am going to copy-paste my original response once again.

Governments routinely fund the development of secure and open communication systems because they themselves benefit from having such communication tools which can be trusted. By the logic presented in this "essay", one shouldn't be using the internet at all. What you need to check is whether Signal's technical claims about its encryption is true or not. There is nothing in this article that raises any question on Signal's encryption. We already know how much data Signal has on its users through their responses to various legal subpoenas over the years (spoiler: its pretty much nothing).

Here are some cool links for you to check out:
https://signal.org/bigbrother/
https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/new-documents-reveal-government-effort-impose-secrecy-encryption

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Why is it beneficial for the government to have these tools? They already have such for internal use. I am sure that the officials do not use Signal. Why not kill Signal as an organization so that users don't even think of leaving WhatsApp?