Convincing people to use apps such as Signal is hard work and most can’t be convinced. But with those you manage to convince, do you feel happy to talk to them on Signal?
The problem is these people use Signal on Android/IOS which can’t be trusted and IOS has recently been in the news for having a backdoor. And it has also been revealed that american feds are able to read everyone’s push notifications and they do this as mass surveillance.
So not only do you have to convince people to use Signal which is an incredibly difficult challenge. You also have to convince them to go into settings to disable message and sender being included in the push notifications. And then there’s the big question is the Android and IOS operating systems are doing mass surveillance anyway. And many people find it taking a lot of effort to type on the phone so they install Signal on the computer which is a mac or Windows OS.
So I don’t think I feel comfortable sending messages in Signal but it’s better than Whatsapp.
These were some thoughts to get the discussion started and set the context.
The way I see it, any step is better than no step at all.
There are no shades of grey in encrypted communications.
Your messages are either plain text or not to 3rd party.
Sometimes it appears to be encrypted, but there loopholes that make it possible to significantly reduce decryption costs. It is plain text to those who put the loopholes, like specially crafted constants in the algorithm.
There are indeed shades of grey. Not only the presence of encryption itself matters, but the metadata, as well as details of the implementation. For example, Signal has all the messages encrypted - but it has the capability to know the identities of everyone and to build their social graph due to centralization.
Took years to get all the ppl I care about on signal & now the effort was definitely worth the reward.
Why don’t you feel comfortable on signal? Honestly it’s worked out for the best in my use case bc I have ppl that use android, iOS, windows, Linux & macOS, so it’s great to not have to deal with shit media quality or messages not going through bc of all the different operating systems. It’s E2EE so I’m not too worried about mass surveillance within my signal groups.
Also, iOS back door? I must have missed that. Haven’t seen any news about that.
This maybe be what they are referring to: https://9to5mac.com/2023/12/27/most-sophisticated-iphone-attack-chain-ever-seen/
“Feel,” “happy,” “comfortable”… Privacy doesn’t care about your feelings.
And it has also been revealed that american feds are able to read everyone’s push notifications and they do this as mass surveillance.
Speaking of the feds, it was they who funded the creation of Signal, which is one of the reasons it ought not be trusted.
History shows that you shouldn’t automatically trust encryption technologies from the US government.
- Scientific American: NSA Efforts to Evade Encryption Technology Damaged U.S. Cryptography Standard
- Washington Post: How the CIA used Crypto AG encryption devices to spy on countries for decades
Wow, the whole argument of the article is basically: funded in part by US government = bad, and making a lot of assumptions, nothing more.
The fund is designated to: “support open technologies and communities that increase free expression, circumvent censorship, and obstruct repressive surveillance as a way to promote human rights and open societies."
One should question the commitment of a fund that dedicates itself to “obstructing surveillance”, while being created by a government who runs the most expansive surveillance system in world history. And how the US might define the terms “human rights”, and “open society” differently from those who know the US’s history in those areas.
How laughable, that is not an argument, it’s nothing more than a guessing game, ignoring that there are different parts of government and different objectives can be true.
Signal’s use luckily never caught on by the general public of China, whose government prefers autonomy, rather than letting US tech control its communication platforms, as most of the rest of the world naively allows. (For example, India’s most popular social media apps, are Facebook and Youtube, meaning that US surveillance giants own and control the everyday communications of a country much larger than their own). Signal instead became used by US and western activists, and due to the contradictions of surveillance capitalism, also now its general populace.
You have to be kidding right? Championing china, which created a fucking surveillance state and is heavily monitoring the citizens, as an example?
“Feel,” “happy,” “comfortable”… Privacy doesn’t care about your feelings.
The motivation to do the work, spend time learning the risks and available mitigations, disrupt existing social connections in order to adopt something better, inconvenience friends and family, partially isolate one’s self by avoiding the popular systems… all of these things are part of improving privacy in the real world, and at least for many people, fueled by a person’s feelings. Don’t discount the human factors just because you can’t quantify them.
Yeah, i did use words that express feelings in this topic I created and it was intentional because when people have to deal with something that involves uncertainty or something so advanced they don’t understand it entirely then they can become uncomfortable and scared even though maybe there isn’t something to be scared about or maybe the fear is justified.
My post was intended to be a discussion starter so we can dig into this, get to the truth and help everyone including myself to understand everything better.
I figure it’s best to assume that there is no privacy on the internet.
I’ve been in IT to close to 40 years and I don’t say anything online that I wouldn’t say in public.
Will people read this and stop using the internet or stop caring about privacy?
I’m not saying don’t use the Internet. I’m saying be aware, be careful. Don’t let companies sell your information. Use two factor authentication. Encrypt everything you can. Scan your system for malware. Don’t open suspicious emails. Be proactive, but realize at some point someone could compromise your security.
That is not “no privacy” though. Absolute privacy is probably unachievable indeed, but you can be pretty high on its spectrum.
Cynicism is a self-fulfilling prophesy. If everything’s bad then there’s no reason to care, and if nobody cares then everything will be bad.
For things to get better, or not get worse, cynics depend on others to care about those things. To me that feels terribly like freeloading.
Got to start somewhere.
