this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
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Privacy

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Signal Is More Than Encrypted Messaging. Under Meredith Whittaker, It’s Out to Prove Surveillance Capitalism Wrong (www.wired.com)
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (6 children)

Unless you’re reading all the code, understand the protocols, and compiling yourself you are placing your trust in someone else to do it for you. There’s no way around this fact.

That's why you have a lot of eyes on the code and security experts who dedicate their research to finding flaws and breaking algorithms. It's certainly a very different scenario from simply trusting people who run a server. The fact that this even needs to be said is frankly phenomenal. There's also a concept of reproducible builds, so even if you're not compiling everything yourself you can be reasonably sure that what's package in the binary was in fact compiled from the source. Again, these are solved problems.

SimpleX is almost there but it still continues to fail to notify me of messages, continues to crash, and the UX needs significant improvement before people are willing to put up with it.

If people genuinely care about privacy then it's important to promote apps that actually care about privacy by design and invest in improving these apps instead of just perpetuating the problem by recommending Signal. Even Matrix is far better in terms of privacy and it's plenty mature at this point.

Let me give you a history lesson, since you seem to have no clue about where Signal started and why they use phone numbers.

I'm well aware of the history, and the justifications. The fact remains is that I simply do not trust Signal knowing where it originates.

Fast forward to today and Signal is only using phone numbers as a spam mitigation filter and to create your initial profile that is no longer being shared with anyone unless you opt into it.

The correct statement is that Signal claims to do this, there is no way for an outside party to verify that this is actually the case, hence why it comes down to you taking what people operating Signal say on faith.

You’re 100% right. If you read the code, understand the protocols, and build the clients from source, you don’t have to trust anyone 😊

Trusting countless researchers an security experts to read the code, understand the protocols, and provide reproducible builds, is a lot better than trusting a sketchy US company that was started by the CIA and NED. I guess that's a concept that's difficult for some to wrap their head around though.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Even Matrix is far better in terms of privacy and it’s plenty mature at this point.

I would disagree, this guy's been finding issues and reporting them to Matrix for a while now and appears to find them every time he glances at the project. I LOVE Matrix. I would recommend it over Discord, Telegram etc, but I would not recommend Matrix over Signal.

The fact remains is that I simply do not trust Signal knowing where it originates.

This is fair. No critique against this stance.

Trusting countless researchers an security experts to read the code, understand the protocols, and provide reproducible builds,

I agree! Trust the countless researchers, security and cryptography experts.

... is a lot better than trusting a sketchy US company that was started by the CIA and NED.

You're gonna have to cite your sources.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (4 children)

I would disagree, this guy’s been finding issues and reporting them to Matrix for a while now and appears to find them every time he glances at the project.

Issues being found with technology is perfectly normal, and in fact contradicts your whole previous argument. People do find flaws, and then these flaws get fixed, and things get more secure in the process. That's how things work. However, the key difference is that Matrix doesn't harvest metadata like phone numbers by design while Signal does. That's not a problem that has been identified but cannot be fixed because Signal is central server that's controlled by a US company.

I agree! Trust the countless researchers, security and cryptography experts.

I love how I've addressed this numerous times but you're still unable to understand the difference. Trusting that the protocol works correctly is different from trusting people operating a server. Clearly this is a concept that is beyond your comprehension.

You’re gonna have to cite your sources.

Maybe go read up on where Signal comes from instead of spending your time trolling here. http://surveillancevalley.com/blog/internet-privacy-funded-by-spies-cia

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Matrix doesn’t harvest metadata like phone numbers by design while Signal does.

You're right, Matrix doesn't ask for a phone number but it damn sure leaks metadata like a sieve. Unless things have significantly changed in the last year, here's a list of things Matrix can see about you in an encrypted room, that an app like Signal cannot:

  • Your content
    • Your username
    • Your display name
    • Your avatar
    • Your rank within the room (admin, moderator, etc)
    • The Sent date of every message
    • A link to every message you responded to (the contents of which are encrypted)
    • Every emoji reaction you send, and to which message
    • (If on your home server) your IP address
  • The room content
    • The room name
    • The room icon
    • The room description
    • The room membership
  • Your changes
    • The time and message ID of messages you edit
    • The time and message ID of messages you delete
    • A history of rank changes (promotions, demotions) and who changes your rank
    • A history of things you do to other users, if appropriate
  • Room changes
    • Who enters the room and when
    • Who leaves the room and when
    • Who gets promoted/demoted and when
    • Changes to the room name, avatar, description, etc - when they happened-

I love how I’ve addressed this numerous times but you’re still unable to understand the difference. Trusting that the protocol works correctly is different from trusting people operating a server. Clearly this is a concept that is beyond your comprehension.

I clearly understand the difference, what you fail to address is that at the end of the day you are placing your trust in a third party, whether its the code, the protocols or a back-end server. Matrix removes the server if you host your own and never interact with other instances, but otherwise, you're still trusting the code and the protocols and that - as I've pointed out above - that what you're recommending isn't already leaking tons of data. And don't get it twisted, I'm ROOTING for Matrix, it just has a long way to go to address issues that Signal clearly identified early on would hold back the platform (federation + third party clients).

Maybe go read up on where Signal comes from instead of spending your time trolling here. http://surveillancevalley.com/blog/internet-privacy-funded-by-spies-cia

I know what you're talking about but you don't want to bring it up because its all tinfoil hat wearing flat-earth conspiracy theory web of poorly connected dots. Your response is the MAGA equivalent of "do your research". I've done my research. The onus is on you to bring forth the evidence. To quote Carl Sagan, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Don't try and connect dots that don't back up your claim and stand proud behind what's at best poorly thought out misinformation.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You’re right, Matrix doesn’t ask for a phone number but it damn sure leaks metadata like a sieve. Unless things have significantly changed in the last year, here’s a list of things Matrix can see about you in an encrypted room, that an app like Signal cannot:

None of the thing you listed are personally identifying information. I have to ask at this point, do you even understand what personally identifiable information is?

I clearly understand the difference, what you fail to address is that at the end of the day you are placing your trust in a third party, whether its the code, the protocols or a back-end server.

If you can't understand the fundamental difference between trusting that an algorithm is provably safe mathematically vs putting trust into some random people then it's clear that a rational discussion is not possible with you.

I know what you’re talking about but you don’t want to bring it up because its all tinfoil hat wearing flat-earth conspiracy theory web of poorly connected dots.

Imagine saying that without a hint of irony after Snowden revelations. Either you're a troll or the most gullible person to have ever walked this planet.

I'm going to stop replying to you here because I've said all there is to say on the issue and we're just going in circles. I think that you understand the problems with Signal perfectly well, as will anybody reading this thread. It's pretty clear that you're intentionally trolling, and there's no point continuing to engage with you. People can make their own mind whether they want to put their trust into a CIA outfit or not.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Imagine saying that without a hint of irony after Snowden revelations

Funny enough, "Edward Snowden has reiterated his faith in the Signal app by saying that he uses it every day." - published 2021.

I’m going to stop replying to you here because I’ve said all there is to say on the issue and we’re just going in circles.

Same here, lets end this amicably and find common ground. I think we're both pushing for what we believe is best in attempts to guide people towards a secure platform, can we both at least agree that SimpleX is superior under more threat models compared to other messengers, even if it does have a few UX issues it needs fix?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

I do think we can agree that SimpleX approach is the way to go long term. Cheers.

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