7 ms·

A Texting Truth Often Forgotten in Politics: Your Phone Remembers Everything

89 points by aaronbrethorst 10y ago

jgrahamc 10y ago
This is why you use Wickr instead. PS Down vote is annoying. This is precisely why I use Wickr for some communications. It gives me a text message like experience with messages that are automatically deleted from my phone and recipient's.
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  That assumes you can trust 1) the (proprietary) application on the recipient's end to delete the message, 2) the recipient to not save the message some other way, and 3) the opaqueness of the protocol preventing anyone from writing a replacement client that doesn't delete messages. There's no way to guarantee deletion; if the recipient can read it, the recipient can save it.
  - taneq 10y ago
    In the end it will always come down to the 'analog hole' - no matter how airtight the digital implementation, you'll never stop the user at the other end from taking a photo of the screen.
    - edisoncarter 10y ago
      Not an analog photo, no. However, an airtight digital implementation would absolutely do stop anyone from recording anything they're not allowed to record -- and it wouldn't be really airtight if ownership of non-aligned equipment was tolerated :P
- exDM69 10y ago
  Can we trust Wickr? I have used it for some communications I would not like to get to wrong hands (but the consequences of getting lost are not too harsh), yet I have roughly zero confidence that the messages aren't stored and that they are delivered end-to-end secure. It's not open source (?) so it can't be audited. The server infrastructure may be wiretapped and/or backdoored by law enforcement together with a gag order. It's headquartered in the US, which I don't trust. They claim to be end-to-end encrypted but how can I tell, let alone the general public who aren't familiar with crypto. I've used Wickr because the other parties I was communicating with were using it. But since I wasn't trusting the other party (cryptography can only assure trust, not create it) so I might have been using smoke signals instead. For my use, it still does beat text messages because at worst it's security by obscurity and my local (non-US) law enforcement can't easily get their hands on the data.
  - jgrahamc 10y ago
    I never stated I trusted Wickr to not be backdoored. Just that it would be better than a text message.
    - exDM69 10y ago
      That depends on the adversary. For something I don't want to get into the hands of local law enforcement (outside US), Wickr might be better than text messages. But I trust my network provider more when it comes to keeping the data safe, if I don't mind that local LEO agencies can readily access it. They are under strong legal and contractual obligations not to disclose the information to third parties and have better funding than Wickr. Wickr probably does a pretty good job, but they might be backdoored (ie. keep plaintext of communications and/or metadata) and might get hacked and leak the data and release it in the internet.
- angry_octet 10y ago
  It is interesting that the aides's solution is similar (BlackBerry instant messages) which, apparently, RIM does not archive (though I'll bet the Canadian CSE does). An interesting property of BBM is that organisational policy can be enforced for message deletion. It is not implausible that future iphones will have to supply some proof of being un-tampered before being allowed to join Apple's overlay network. In the short term, switch to Signal or WhatsApp, and don't send anything naughty. Have a scheduled deletion policy written down and follow it.
dredmorbius 10y ago
"Data are liabilty" has become a mantra of mine. And while it frequently afflicts those utterly disenfranchised (see the parallel HN item on asset forfeitures, aided by scanning or having employees hand over travel records), it also hits those in power. The difference is that whilst the disenfranchised may find themselves arrested or disencashed, the powerful seem to find a harsh spotlight shined on them, but largely avoid harsher penalties. Not always, and not entirely successfully. But information, it turns out, is not power, but a power multiplier. If you have a great deal of power, information used against you diminishes that somewhat, but can only multiply your attackers' own power by so much. It's a rather interesting dynamic.
- mtgx 10y ago
  I wish politicians used that mantra, too, and made laws that basically split information into various classes or levels of sensitivity. Companies would still be free to collect whatever data they want. But the higher the sensitivity level, the punishment becomes progressively bigger, too, in case of a data breach that exposes that information (and the punishment should be almost automatic when it happens). I believe that should give companies enough incentive to: 1) collect only the absolutely necessary data that they need 2) if they do collect more sensitive data, invest heavily in protecting it
  - pjc50 10y ago
    This is pretty much exactly what European data protection law says. Although it doesn't put very much emphasis on protection against accidental disclosure, it's more intended against deliberate disclosure.
  - xg15 10y ago
    I disagree. Cynical me thinks this plan would first and foremost give companies incentive to gain control about whichever agency is tasked with setting the sensitivity levels - and make sure all interesting data is classified as "minimum sensitive"... You could even use this as a tool to gain an unfair market advantage: 1) develop some proprietary (reversable) obfuscation algorithm 2) market the algorithm as "data anonymization" and lobby to get the "anonymized" data classified as insensitive 3) you can now collect the same data as your competitors but have to obey lesser security standards than they have. Unless they purchase the algorithm from you. 4) profit! But even if that scheme worked, it doesn't seem to protect the end user against things companies intentionally do with the data that are not in the user's interest. Including "intentional data breaches", aka selling the data to third parties. (or getting acquired by a third party)
draw_down 10y ago
This story is silly.
- aethos 10y ago
  Why? (not agreeing or disagreeing, just asking)
JoshTriplett 10y ago
Another truth often forgotten: the recipient's phone remembers everything, too. You might use full-disk encryption on your phone, but that doesn't matter if the recipient doesn't.
- Frqy3 10y ago
  And the networks on both the sender's and receiver's side keep a copy of the messages for a certain time. Depending on local data retention laws, these may then be kept for some mandatory longer period.
  - draugadrotten 10y ago
    and the networks also keep more than just the messages: they keep the location the phones where at when sending and receiving the messages. and the locations of any other phones nearby, at the same time.
  - exDM69 10y ago
    It's a good idea to assume that texts are stored forever. There's no technical reason to remove ~140 bytes of data when storage is cheap. Your local data retention laws and the network's practices may vary or they may be under pressure from law enforcement to keep things longer than necessary. They will not disclose in public how long they are stored, so better assume forever.
    - __s 10y ago
      Especially when that 140 bytes is text, one of the most compressible forms of data
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    That much you can protect against with end-to-end encryption.
- mtgx 10y ago
  Another forgotten truth: most chat apps don't use end-to-end encryption by default, and the majority of the few that do, don't self-destruct the messages (you hear that Signal/Whatsapp teams?!).
jheriko 10y ago
i'm not sure the problem is the careless messages - its the bad behaviour that is 'let slip' i know its not exactly the point of the article, but the way i deal with my frustration over this is by doing whatever i can whenever i can. if everyone did this our leaders might actually be doing the important work of maintaining and improving society, law and order instead of the bullshit work of being power hungry scum. the fact that we call them politicians says it all imo...
joezydeco 10y ago
"Dance as if nobody is looking, write emails as if they will be read aloud in a deposition"
- dexterdog 10y ago
  But when you are dancing somebody could be filming and updating to YouTube so maybe you should dance accordingly.
  - ptaipale 10y ago
    I guess the point of that proverb is that even if you dance badly, you'll at most be ridiculed, but possibly become a hit. You will likely not be imprisoned. (Well, in Western countries anyway... except if the dance contains hand movements or such that are illegal. I mean, if it's just a dance, no problem.)
    - hx87 10y ago
      Exactly, and once these sorts of videos become common enough in society that everyone has at least one, they won't even harm your chances at employment.
    - cortesoft 10y ago
      I don't know, some guy I am only 6 degrees separated from disagrees.
zhte415 10y ago
An additional node, or vector: You phone's IME. You probably don't think about your IME that much. I started thinking about it when it made typing various strings of pinyin (input of Romanised Chinese) much easier because it recognised what I was typing.
ksk 10y ago
How long until they start subpoena-ing your browsing history from Google?
- pboutros 10y ago
  https://www.aclu.org/blog/how-private-your-online-search-history https://www.aclu.org/blog/how-private-your-online-search-his...
Freestyler_3 10y ago
Yes, they are sorry they got caught. Next time you hope they will use better ways to hide their secrets. What great journalism. *they = could be anyone.
gsmethells 10y ago
So do photographs and screenshots. :)
- Nadya 10y ago
  I disagree: http://i.imgur.com/bkjvUCy.png http://i.imgur.com/bkjvUCy.png Screenshots prove nothing. A better choice are 3rd-party archives (EG: Internet Archive) where you can view a page or take a "snapshot" of what the page looked like at a certain time. While it isn't arguably 100% secure - it is far more trustworthy than random screenshots since it adds several steps before anyone can say "it is manipulated".
sailfast 10y ago
This is interesting - I can't tell from the article if the text message was divulged by the receiving party or through a subpoena. I understand that SMS can be captured by the provider and they can be subpoenad, but what about messages sent via a third party service (iMessage, WhatsApp, etc) that are (at least notionally) encrypted and not visible to the service? Would an individual be compelled to present these in court?
bhhaskin 10y ago
This just ins't politics and it isn't just text messages. Anything you send over the wire could comeback.

This is why you use Wickr instead. PS Down vote is annoying. This is precisely why I use Wickr for some communications. It gives me a text message like experience with messages that are automatically deleted from my phone and recipient's.

JoshTriplett 10y ago
That assumes you can trust 1) the (proprietary) application on the recipient's end to delete the message, 2) the recipient to not save the message some other way, and 3) the opaqueness of the protocol preventing anyone from writing a replacement client that doesn't delete messages. There's no way to guarantee deletion; if the recipient can read it, the recipient can save it.
- taneq 10y ago
  In the end it will always come down to the 'analog hole' - no matter how airtight the digital implementation, you'll never stop the user at the other end from taking a photo of the screen.
  - edisoncarter 10y ago
    Not an analog photo, no. However, an airtight digital implementation would absolutely do stop anyone from recording anything they're not allowed to record -- and it wouldn't be really airtight if ownership of non-aligned equipment was tolerated :P
exDM69 10y ago
Can we trust Wickr? I have used it for some communications I would not like to get to wrong hands (but the consequences of getting lost are not too harsh), yet I have roughly zero confidence that the messages aren't stored and that they are delivered end-to-end secure. It's not open source (?) so it can't be audited. The server infrastructure may be wiretapped and/or backdoored by law enforcement together with a gag order. It's headquartered in the US, which I don't trust. They claim to be end-to-end encrypted but how can I tell, let alone the general public who aren't familiar with crypto. I've used Wickr because the other parties I was communicating with were using it. But since I wasn't trusting the other party (cryptography can only assure trust, not create it) so I might have been using smoke signals instead. For my use, it still does beat text messages because at worst it's security by obscurity and my local (non-US) law enforcement can't easily get their hands on the data.
- jgrahamc 10y ago
  I never stated I trusted Wickr to not be backdoored. Just that it would be better than a text message.
  - exDM69 10y ago
    That depends on the adversary. For something I don't want to get into the hands of local law enforcement (outside US), Wickr might be better than text messages. But I trust my network provider more when it comes to keeping the data safe, if I don't mind that local LEO agencies can readily access it. They are under strong legal and contractual obligations not to disclose the information to third parties and have better funding than Wickr. Wickr probably does a pretty good job, but they might be backdoored (ie. keep plaintext of communications and/or metadata) and might get hacked and leak the data and release it in the internet.
angry_octet 10y ago
It is interesting that the aides's solution is similar (BlackBerry instant messages) which, apparently, RIM does not archive (though I'll bet the Canadian CSE does). An interesting property of BBM is that organisational policy can be enforced for message deletion. It is not implausible that future iphones will have to supply some proof of being un-tampered before being allowed to join Apple's overlay network. In the short term, switch to Signal or WhatsApp, and don't send anything naughty. Have a scheduled deletion policy written down and follow it.

dredmorbius 10y ago

"Data are liabilty" has become a mantra of mine. And while it frequently afflicts those utterly disenfranchised (see the parallel HN item on asset forfeitures, aided by scanning or having employees hand over travel records), it also hits those in power. The difference is that whilst the disenfranchised may find themselves arrested or disencashed, the powerful seem to find a harsh spotlight shined on them, but largely avoid harsher penalties. Not always, and not entirely successfully. But information, it turns out, is not power, but a power multiplier. If you have a great deal of power, information used against you diminishes that somewhat, but can only multiply your attackers' own power by so much. It's a rather interesting dynamic.

mtgx 10y ago
I wish politicians used that mantra, too, and made laws that basically split information into various classes or levels of sensitivity. Companies would still be free to collect whatever data they want. But the higher the sensitivity level, the punishment becomes progressively bigger, too, in case of a data breach that exposes that information (and the punishment should be almost automatic when it happens). I believe that should give companies enough incentive to: 1) collect only the absolutely necessary data that they need 2) if they do collect more sensitive data, invest heavily in protecting it
- pjc50 10y ago
  This is pretty much exactly what European data protection law says. Although it doesn't put very much emphasis on protection against accidental disclosure, it's more intended against deliberate disclosure.
- xg15 10y ago
  I disagree. Cynical me thinks this plan would first and foremost give companies incentive to gain control about whichever agency is tasked with setting the sensitivity levels - and make sure all interesting data is classified as "minimum sensitive"... You could even use this as a tool to gain an unfair market advantage: 1) develop some proprietary (reversable) obfuscation algorithm 2) market the algorithm as "data anonymization" and lobby to get the "anonymized" data classified as insensitive 3) you can now collect the same data as your competitors but have to obey lesser security standards than they have. Unless they purchase the algorithm from you. 4) profit! But even if that scheme worked, it doesn't seem to protect the end user against things companies intentionally do with the data that are not in the user's interest. Including "intentional data breaches", aka selling the data to third parties. (or getting acquired by a third party)

draw_down 10y ago

This story is silly.

aethos 10y ago
Why? (not agreeing or disagreeing, just asking)

JoshTriplett 10y ago

Another truth often forgotten: the recipient's phone remembers everything, too. You might use full-disk encryption on your phone, but that doesn't matter if the recipient doesn't.

Frqy3 10y ago
And the networks on both the sender's and receiver's side keep a copy of the messages for a certain time. Depending on local data retention laws, these may then be kept for some mandatory longer period.
- draugadrotten 10y ago
  and the networks also keep more than just the messages: they keep the location the phones where at when sending and receiving the messages. and the locations of any other phones nearby, at the same time.
- exDM69 10y ago
  It's a good idea to assume that texts are stored forever. There's no technical reason to remove ~140 bytes of data when storage is cheap. Your local data retention laws and the network's practices may vary or they may be under pressure from law enforcement to keep things longer than necessary. They will not disclose in public how long they are stored, so better assume forever.
  - __s 10y ago
    Especially when that 140 bytes is text, one of the most compressible forms of data
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  That much you can protect against with end-to-end encryption.
mtgx 10y ago
Another forgotten truth: most chat apps don't use end-to-end encryption by default, and the majority of the few that do, don't self-destruct the messages (you hear that Signal/Whatsapp teams?!).

jheriko 10y ago

i'm not sure the problem is the careless messages - its the bad behaviour that is 'let slip' i know its not exactly the point of the article, but the way i deal with my frustration over this is by doing whatever i can whenever i can. if everyone did this our leaders might actually be doing the important work of maintaining and improving society, law and order instead of the bullshit work of being power hungry scum. the fact that we call them politicians says it all imo...

joezydeco 10y ago

"Dance as if nobody is looking, write emails as if they will be read aloud in a deposition"

dexterdog 10y ago
But when you are dancing somebody could be filming and updating to YouTube so maybe you should dance accordingly.
- ptaipale 10y ago
  I guess the point of that proverb is that even if you dance badly, you'll at most be ridiculed, but possibly become a hit. You will likely not be imprisoned. (Well, in Western countries anyway... except if the dance contains hand movements or such that are illegal. I mean, if it's just a dance, no problem.)
  - hx87 10y ago
    Exactly, and once these sorts of videos become common enough in society that everyone has at least one, they won't even harm your chances at employment.
  - cortesoft 10y ago
    I don't know, some guy I am only 6 degrees separated from disagrees.

zhte415 10y ago

An additional node, or vector: You phone's IME. You probably don't think about your IME that much. I started thinking about it when it made typing various strings of pinyin (input of Romanised Chinese) much easier because it recognised what I was typing.

ksk 10y ago

How long until they start subpoena-ing your browsing history from Google?

pboutros 10y ago
https://www.aclu.org/blog/how-private-your-online-search-history https://www.aclu.org/blog/how-private-your-online-search-his...

Freestyler_3 10y ago

Yes, they are sorry they got caught. Next time you hope they will use better ways to hide their secrets. What great journalism. *they = could be anyone.

gsmethells 10y ago

So do photographs and screenshots. :)

Nadya 10y ago
I disagree: http://i.imgur.com/bkjvUCy.png http://i.imgur.com/bkjvUCy.png Screenshots prove nothing. A better choice are 3rd-party archives (EG: Internet Archive) where you can view a page or take a "snapshot" of what the page looked like at a certain time. While it isn't arguably 100% secure - it is far more trustworthy than random screenshots since it adds several steps before anyone can say "it is manipulated".

sailfast 10y ago

This is interesting - I can't tell from the article if the text message was divulged by the receiving party or through a subpoena. I understand that SMS can be captured by the provider and they can be subpoenad, but what about messages sent via a third party service (iMessage, WhatsApp, etc) that are (at least notionally) encrypted and not visible to the service? Would an individual be compelled to present these in court?

bhhaskin 10y ago

This just ins't politics and it isn't just text messages. Anything you send over the wire could comeback.