5 ms·

You mean Trumps wet dream, Palantir? What a perfect vessel for public/private cooperative actions! I'm sure his buddy Pete would give him a huge referral.

indolering 10y ago
I've had at least half-a-dozen non-techie friends signup for Signal since Trump's election.
- hlieberman 10y ago
  Signal is awesome! However, it does very little to help the very case we'd have to deal with around NSLs. Signal doesn't aim to conceal metadata about who is communicating, just what they are communicating about.
- colordrops 10y ago
  I'm not sure what to think about Signal. It's got some great supporters like the EFF, but on Android, it requires about a dozen permissions, most unnecessary. It also requires your phone number to register, and uses a Twilio API at registration. WTF? What are peoples' thoughts on Silent Phone? It's written by the creator of PGP, only requests permissions when it needs them (at least on Android 6 and up), and stores encryption keys locally.
- james_pm 10y ago
  But not under Obama or (potentially Hillary)? What about Trump makes them so fearful now where they weren't under the current state of affairs. I'm not saying that a Trump presidency isn't a great way to convince people to get a Signal account, but it strikes me that NSA spying and everything else that's gone on over the past decade should have been enough.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    Obama put the left to sleep. Ironically Trump will probably be the best possible outcome for civil liberties as people will actually fight him.
    - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
      I hope you're right. I fear that they will continue to sleep.
    - 3131s 10y ago
      > Obama put the left to sleep I agree with this 100%. Suddenly people care about mass deportation, for example, but where were they when Obama was deporting a record 2.5 million people? They are terrified of Trump's "deportation force", not realizing apparently that many such deportation forces (e.g. ICE) already exist. Some things that the left should have cared about under Obama: * initiating new undeclared wars * expanding the surveillance state * eliminating habeas corpus with the 2012 NDAA * killing two American citizens extra-judicially * fracking * selling arms to radicals and brutal foreign regimes * the Honduran coup * CIA black sites / torture (forced rectal 'feeding' to the point of rectal prolapse, for example) * prosecuting whistleblowers * raiding legal dispensaries / grow ops and wholesale continuing the ludicrous war on drugs * pro-corporate policies like the TPP, ACA, and the bailouts * running up the national debt another 10 trillion or so * contracting out development of astroturfing software from HBGary / Operation Earnest Voice I could go on. The real left barely exists anymore in America.
      - amckinlay 10y ago
        Is that the same NDAA that gives the military law enforcement powers?
  - hackuser 10y ago
    The increased fear is not based on the capabilities, which as you said have existed for awhile, but on what Trump will do with them. They feel he has fascist tendencies or intentions and does not respect for American traditions or law. (I'm not trying to make partisan points; I'm only saying that there is a large cohort that feels that way. Obviously, many in the U.S. voted for Trump.)
    - ozaark 10y ago
      > They feel he has fascist tendencies or intentions and does not respect for American traditions or law. These illegal capabilities have been spreading regardless of party or political promises.
      - rconti 10y ago
        Absolutely. And I don't doubt that Hillary wouldn't have expanded them further; if anything she's more hawkish than Trump. That said, only one of these two people is asking for names of every government employee who has attended a climate science meeting in the past 5 years. The implications are truly chilling.
        throwanem 10y ago
        "Chilling" seems a bit histrionic. It's an interesting challenge to the customary, but as far as I know extraconstitutional, idea that cabinet departments operate independently of the sitting president rather than, like the rest of the executive branch, serving at his pleasure. If law exists to mandate this arrangement, I'd be obliged to anyone who wil make me aware of it; absent that, it seems like something that's purely de facto, albeit at this point quite longstanding, and open to challenge by any president who so chooses. I'm not surprised to see Trump mount such a challenge, because he is likely ill accustomed to tolerating independent fiefdoms within an organization he nominally heads. But he's far from the first president to try it on, and I very much doubt he'll find more success than his predecessors - indeed the latest on this particular story seems to be that DOE has told him to go to hell, and if that sounds like hyperbole then it's no more so than a lot of the headlines I've just seen.
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    Not agreeing with people's apprehensions about Trump is one thing, but ignorance of why people are apprehensive isn't credible. I do not believe that you are cognizant of privacy issues but unable to see any qualitative difference between him and Obama (or HRC).
    - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
      > Not agreeing with people's apprehensions about Trump is one thing, but ignorance of why people are apprehensive isn't credible. I do not believe that you are cognizant of privacy issues but unable to see any qualitative difference between him and Obama (or HRC). The specter of Trump has been there the entire time. The danger of mass data collection isn't merely the current President, it's that we have an election every four years. Go start encrypting everything now. Better late than never. But all the things you sent unencrypted during Obama's presidency, that you didn't stop them from keeping, now Trump will have all of it.
- kuschku 10y ago
  Signal explicitly states they do not try or can protect you from state actors. Sure, that's easy to miss in the entire "supported by snowden" marketing, but we've had actually a debate about that on HN before.
  - colordrops 10y ago
    > Signal explicitly states they do not try or can protect you from state actors. Where do they state that?
    - kuschku 10y ago
      In every single debate I had on HN where I complained that Signal reduces the privacy of people at risk of state surveillance, such as journalists, political activists, etc, because they bothered to use GPG before, and now switch - due to the marketing - to Signal, it was always said (even from OWS members themselves) that Signal is not designed to protect against that, instead, it is designed to improve the safety of the average citizen.
      - colordrops 10y ago
        Could you provide a link to the comments? I'm currently discussing Signal with some friends and this would be helpful.
  - lima 10y ago
    Of all the messaging apps, Signal is probably the most secure. They're just being realistical about it. If a nation-state is targeting you, relying on a particular app, no matter how secure, isn't enough and they don't want to make false promises.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      Is it? People at risk of state surveillance would usually switch to GPG or OTR with FLOSS apps before, and usually throw proprietary stuff from their devices. Now, they use Signal. I'm not sure if that's more secure. In fact, I'd argue Signal is less secure. Moxie himself has argued before that the intention of Signal is not to be more secure than these options, but to be a solution that everyone can use that's more secure than Telegram/The old WhatsApp protocol without Axolotl/etc.

indolering 10y ago

I've had at least half-a-dozen non-techie friends signup for Signal since Trump's election.

hlieberman 10y ago
Signal is awesome! However, it does very little to help the very case we'd have to deal with around NSLs. Signal doesn't aim to conceal metadata about who is communicating, just what they are communicating about.
colordrops 10y ago
I'm not sure what to think about Signal. It's got some great supporters like the EFF, but on Android, it requires about a dozen permissions, most unnecessary. It also requires your phone number to register, and uses a Twilio API at registration. WTF? What are peoples' thoughts on Silent Phone? It's written by the creator of PGP, only requests permissions when it needs them (at least on Android 6 and up), and stores encryption keys locally.
james_pm 10y ago
But not under Obama or (potentially Hillary)? What about Trump makes them so fearful now where they weren't under the current state of affairs. I'm not saying that a Trump presidency isn't a great way to convince people to get a Signal account, but it strikes me that NSA spying and everything else that's gone on over the past decade should have been enough.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  Obama put the left to sleep. Ironically Trump will probably be the best possible outcome for civil liberties as people will actually fight him.
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    I hope you're right. I fear that they will continue to sleep.
  - 3131s 10y ago
    > Obama put the left to sleep I agree with this 100%. Suddenly people care about mass deportation, for example, but where were they when Obama was deporting a record 2.5 million people? They are terrified of Trump's "deportation force", not realizing apparently that many such deportation forces (e.g. ICE) already exist. Some things that the left should have cared about under Obama: * initiating new undeclared wars * expanding the surveillance state * eliminating habeas corpus with the 2012 NDAA * killing two American citizens extra-judicially * fracking * selling arms to radicals and brutal foreign regimes * the Honduran coup * CIA black sites / torture (forced rectal 'feeding' to the point of rectal prolapse, for example) * prosecuting whistleblowers * raiding legal dispensaries / grow ops and wholesale continuing the ludicrous war on drugs * pro-corporate policies like the TPP, ACA, and the bailouts * running up the national debt another 10 trillion or so * contracting out development of astroturfing software from HBGary / Operation Earnest Voice I could go on. The real left barely exists anymore in America.
    - amckinlay 10y ago
      Is that the same NDAA that gives the military law enforcement powers?
- hackuser 10y ago
  The increased fear is not based on the capabilities, which as you said have existed for awhile, but on what Trump will do with them. They feel he has fascist tendencies or intentions and does not respect for American traditions or law. (I'm not trying to make partisan points; I'm only saying that there is a large cohort that feels that way. Obviously, many in the U.S. voted for Trump.)
  - ozaark 10y ago
    > They feel he has fascist tendencies or intentions and does not respect for American traditions or law. These illegal capabilities have been spreading regardless of party or political promises.
    - rconti 10y ago
      Absolutely. And I don't doubt that Hillary wouldn't have expanded them further; if anything she's more hawkish than Trump. That said, only one of these two people is asking for names of every government employee who has attended a climate science meeting in the past 5 years. The implications are truly chilling.
      - throwanem 10y ago
        "Chilling" seems a bit histrionic. It's an interesting challenge to the customary, but as far as I know extraconstitutional, idea that cabinet departments operate independently of the sitting president rather than, like the rest of the executive branch, serving at his pleasure. If law exists to mandate this arrangement, I'd be obliged to anyone who wil make me aware of it; absent that, it seems like something that's purely de facto, albeit at this point quite longstanding, and open to challenge by any president who so chooses. I'm not surprised to see Trump mount such a challenge, because he is likely ill accustomed to tolerating independent fiefdoms within an organization he nominally heads. But he's far from the first president to try it on, and I very much doubt he'll find more success than his predecessors - indeed the latest on this particular story seems to be that DOE has told him to go to hell, and if that sounds like hyperbole then it's no more so than a lot of the headlines I've just seen.
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  Not agreeing with people's apprehensions about Trump is one thing, but ignorance of why people are apprehensive isn't credible. I do not believe that you are cognizant of privacy issues but unable to see any qualitative difference between him and Obama (or HRC).
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    > Not agreeing with people's apprehensions about Trump is one thing, but ignorance of why people are apprehensive isn't credible. I do not believe that you are cognizant of privacy issues but unable to see any qualitative difference between him and Obama (or HRC). The specter of Trump has been there the entire time. The danger of mass data collection isn't merely the current President, it's that we have an election every four years. Go start encrypting everything now. Better late than never. But all the things you sent unencrypted during Obama's presidency, that you didn't stop them from keeping, now Trump will have all of it.
kuschku 10y ago
Signal explicitly states they do not try or can protect you from state actors. Sure, that's easy to miss in the entire "supported by snowden" marketing, but we've had actually a debate about that on HN before.
- colordrops 10y ago
  > Signal explicitly states they do not try or can protect you from state actors. Where do they state that?
  - kuschku 10y ago
    In every single debate I had on HN where I complained that Signal reduces the privacy of people at risk of state surveillance, such as journalists, political activists, etc, because they bothered to use GPG before, and now switch - due to the marketing - to Signal, it was always said (even from OWS members themselves) that Signal is not designed to protect against that, instead, it is designed to improve the safety of the average citizen.
    - colordrops 10y ago
      Could you provide a link to the comments? I'm currently discussing Signal with some friends and this would be helpful.
- lima 10y ago
  Of all the messaging apps, Signal is probably the most secure. They're just being realistical about it. If a nation-state is targeting you, relying on a particular app, no matter how secure, isn't enough and they don't want to make false promises.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    Is it? People at risk of state surveillance would usually switch to GPG or OTR with FLOSS apps before, and usually throw proprietary stuff from their devices. Now, they use Signal. I'm not sure if that's more secure. In fact, I'd argue Signal is less secure. Moxie himself has argued before that the intention of Signal is not to be more secure than these options, but to be a solution that everyone can use that's more secure than Telegram/The old WhatsApp protocol without Axolotl/etc.