4 ms·

I'm really skeptical about this. First of all, Facebook collects more user data than just about any company out there. They make most of their money off of adve

by jswny 10y ago

I'm really skeptical about this. First of all, Facebook collects more user data than just about any company out there. They make most of their money off of advertising and harvesting user data and metadata. Facebook is just about the last company I'd trust to encrypt data of mine. It's like them saying, "hey, I know we make most of our revenue off of collecting user data but I think we should throw away a huge portion of that." Additionally, from what I've gathered, they are going to role this out so that you have to specifically tell Messenger you want to encrypt a chat. Why would they not just make encryption universal? If anything, this makes it even easier for the government or other entities to target "suspicious activity." I'm far too skeptical of Facebook and how they are going about this whole process to be happy about it.

evgen 10y ago
It is opt in because there is a huge base of users who use Messenger via the web, and trying to do E2E in that environment is a fool's errand. If you had ever tried to deliver a crypto improvement to an actual shipping product I am sure you would know what sort of limitations one needs to operate within, but please feel free to continue risking other people's lives for the sake of feeling smug in your ignorant dismissal of this effort.
- justratsinacoat 10y ago
  >but please feel free to continue risking other people's lives for the sake of feeling smug in your ignorant dismissal of this effort OK, I'll bite. How does this commenter's opinion (which is, to be clear, that the feature does not make him/her happy) risk the actual lives of other conscious, living humans?
  - evgen 10y ago
    I replied above, but there are few communication tools with such a wide userbase that have forward-secrecy and similar strong E2E crypto built in and available. People die because of what they post to Facebook or what they send in Messenger, I know this for a fact. With E2E security locked to devices it means that in the few seconds it takes me to wipe my phone while someone is knocking on the door with a gun then the other party to the conversation is not going to be compromised. Is that sufficient?
    - justratsinacoat 10y ago
      A totally satisfying explanation! I apologize, you had every right to invoke the risking of lives. However, I hope your hopefully hypothetical dissident who is saying the things that cause armed men to knock knows to avoid Facebook altogether (you know, that company predicated on watching the things that you do and turning that knowledge into actionable data in exchange for money). Failing to do that is indeed an existential risk if one thinks one's speech is that threatening to $AUTHORITY_IN_BED_WITH_FB. I'll admit, too, that my reaction to your statements is colored by my other comment in this thread, which consists of being shirty about a dude who pontificated about PGP being unnecessary because of FB's new feature, which of course is ridiculous. Lives wouldn't be being lost, I reasoned, because only the foolhardy and unprepared dissident uses a surveillance network to organize dissent.
      - evgen 10y ago
        As a former FB employee I can empathize with the desire to avoid the mass data trawling that is involved in using the product, but having seen things from the inside I also know that people working there really, honestly do have users best interests at heart. During my tenure I worked on the effort to create Tor hidden nodes so that people could use FB via secure channels and watched the E2E effort go from Alec's wild idea to an actual product ready to ship. There are risks in using any centralized service, but having also poured almost a decade of money and sweat into an actual secure service only to see it wither because most people really didn't care I have finally come around to the idea that the efforts which will have the most long-term impact are the ones that subvert a popular service into providing the sort of security and privacy from government agencies that we all hope to eventually see. At some point you have to decide who is a greater threat, and FB doesn't have an army and really does try to do their best to resist overly-broad efforts by LEOs to gain access to user data. I understand why you would have absolutely no reason to believe any of this, but those of us who spent a bit of time toiling away inside will still keep trying to fight the good fight to deliver what people really need even if we have to put it in a sometime unpleasant wrapper.
        justratsinacoat 10y ago
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jswny 10y ago
  Let me be clear, I believe this is a step in the right direction. However, I remain generally skeptical of Facebook because I do not agree with a lot of their practices. I did not mean to be smug, I'm sorry if I came off that way. I understand what you are saying about E2E in the browser and I admit that your point is valid. I did not realize there was even a version of Messenger for the browser (I've only used the app version long ago). Could you elaborate on how my comment risks the lives of others? I'm quite confused by that statement.
  - evgen 10y ago
    I was probably being a bit defensive about claims that this is just a ploy, having sat next to the team working on this for the past year and seen what they had to fight for and push back against just to get this out the door and into people's hands. As far as risking the lives of other people, I think that in our world we tend to assume that being able to eastablish secure channels is not incredibly difficult. We know where to go and what tools to use. 99.99% of the planet lacks this knowledge, and if secure communication is not built in to the tools they use then they will not even know what they are missing. Facebook (and Messenger) is used in places where the wrong word can get you "dissappeared", and is used to organize events and movements that can have global consequences. Having a tool that enables you to easily establish a secure channel to someone else and know that if you destroy your device then no one, not even Facebook itself, can get the contents of your messages is a powerful thing. Even rubber-hose cryptography can't compromise you or the person you are communicating with. A useful and easy to use tool like Messenger with this new capability can have profound effects, and knowing that they are using something like the OWS libs to make it all work rather than rolling their own or just giving up and saying that security and mass-market tools cannot co-exist is something I think should be encouraged rather than dismissed.

by jswny 10y ago

evgen 10y ago

It is opt in because there is a huge base of users who use Messenger via the web, and trying to do E2E in that environment is a fool's errand. If you had ever tried to deliver a crypto improvement to an actual shipping product I am sure you would know what sort of limitations one needs to operate within, but please feel free to continue risking other people's lives for the sake of feeling smug in your ignorant dismissal of this effort.

justratsinacoat 10y ago
>but please feel free to continue risking other people's lives for the sake of feeling smug in your ignorant dismissal of this effort OK, I'll bite. How does this commenter's opinion (which is, to be clear, that the feature does not make him/her happy) risk the actual lives of other conscious, living humans?
- evgen 10y ago
  I replied above, but there are few communication tools with such a wide userbase that have forward-secrecy and similar strong E2E crypto built in and available. People die because of what they post to Facebook or what they send in Messenger, I know this for a fact. With E2E security locked to devices it means that in the few seconds it takes me to wipe my phone while someone is knocking on the door with a gun then the other party to the conversation is not going to be compromised. Is that sufficient?
  - justratsinacoat 10y ago
    A totally satisfying explanation! I apologize, you had every right to invoke the risking of lives. However, I hope your hopefully hypothetical dissident who is saying the things that cause armed men to knock knows to avoid Facebook altogether (you know, that company predicated on watching the things that you do and turning that knowledge into actionable data in exchange for money). Failing to do that is indeed an existential risk if one thinks one's speech is that threatening to $AUTHORITY_IN_BED_WITH_FB. I'll admit, too, that my reaction to your statements is colored by my other comment in this thread, which consists of being shirty about a dude who pontificated about PGP being unnecessary because of FB's new feature, which of course is ridiculous. Lives wouldn't be being lost, I reasoned, because only the foolhardy and unprepared dissident uses a surveillance network to organize dissent.
    - evgen 10y ago
      As a former FB employee I can empathize with the desire to avoid the mass data trawling that is involved in using the product, but having seen things from the inside I also know that people working there really, honestly do have users best interests at heart. During my tenure I worked on the effort to create Tor hidden nodes so that people could use FB via secure channels and watched the E2E effort go from Alec's wild idea to an actual product ready to ship. There are risks in using any centralized service, but having also poured almost a decade of money and sweat into an actual secure service only to see it wither because most people really didn't care I have finally come around to the idea that the efforts which will have the most long-term impact are the ones that subvert a popular service into providing the sort of security and privacy from government agencies that we all hope to eventually see. At some point you have to decide who is a greater threat, and FB doesn't have an army and really does try to do their best to resist overly-broad efforts by LEOs to gain access to user data. I understand why you would have absolutely no reason to believe any of this, but those of us who spent a bit of time toiling away inside will still keep trying to fight the good fight to deliver what people really need even if we have to put it in a sometime unpleasant wrapper.
      - justratsinacoat 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jswny 10y ago
Let me be clear, I believe this is a step in the right direction. However, I remain generally skeptical of Facebook because I do not agree with a lot of their practices. I did not mean to be smug, I'm sorry if I came off that way. I understand what you are saying about E2E in the browser and I admit that your point is valid. I did not realize there was even a version of Messenger for the browser (I've only used the app version long ago). Could you elaborate on how my comment risks the lives of others? I'm quite confused by that statement.
- evgen 10y ago
  I was probably being a bit defensive about claims that this is just a ploy, having sat next to the team working on this for the past year and seen what they had to fight for and push back against just to get this out the door and into people's hands. As far as risking the lives of other people, I think that in our world we tend to assume that being able to eastablish secure channels is not incredibly difficult. We know where to go and what tools to use. 99.99% of the planet lacks this knowledge, and if secure communication is not built in to the tools they use then they will not even know what they are missing. Facebook (and Messenger) is used in places where the wrong word can get you "dissappeared", and is used to organize events and movements that can have global consequences. Having a tool that enables you to easily establish a secure channel to someone else and know that if you destroy your device then no one, not even Facebook itself, can get the contents of your messages is a powerful thing. Even rubber-hose cryptography can't compromise you or the person you are communicating with. A useful and easy to use tool like Messenger with this new capability can have profound effects, and knowing that they are using something like the OWS libs to make it all work rather than rolling their own or just giving up and saying that security and mass-market tools cannot co-exist is something I think should be encouraged rather than dismissed.