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U.S. government seeks Facebook help to wiretap Messenger
- _bxg1 8y ago"it could make similar arguments to force companies to rewrite other popular encrypted services such as Signal and Facebook’s billion-user WhatsApp" Umm... Signal is open-source, so unless they outlaw encryption across the board, the worst-case scenario is someone just has to fork it.
- craftyguy 8y agoThere's no guarantee that the client you install on your device is built from the same source code that is publicly available, unless you build the client yourself from that source code. I suspect no one is doing that at this point (since Noise died with CopperheadOS).
- seorphates 8y agoRight, for the masses, but for focused enterprise, like a well resourced gang, for instance, refortifying your security is just another build away. Add on some sneakernet transport and side-load instructions and the only people affected by a weakened platform is everyone else.
- eatbitseveryday 8y agoWould [perfect] forward secrecy prevent a government from asking an entity from decrypting intercepted and recorded transmissions?
- mjevans 8y agoForward Security is about creating a single session key and then ensuring that it isn't trusted after the session. This is a good best practice and SHOULD be used everywhere. It does not prevent any attacker, government or otherwise, from making client implementations do things like: * add in third party key distribution (backdoor the conversation) * send a 'backup' of keys or other details to a central server * directly man in the middle by only establishing a "secure" connection to a middle server * compromise the situation in other ways; E.G. using a flawed "random" source BTW, if you can't build the client your self from source, how do you KNOW the above isn't being done?
- mjevans 8y agoI think it has become abundantly clear that a fully peer to peer, encryption required (non-optional), no single central server infrastructure solution is the answer. No points to tap. No point in tapping the data. If they want to capture conversations it's time to go back to the proper old ways of actually spying on high-value targets.
- paulcole 8y agoIsn’t this what Slack is?
- codemac 8y agoIt's my recollection that Slack is emphatically not p2p, has that changed?
- fuzzybeard 8y agoSlack is multi-tenant hosted SaaS. Single point of failure.
- Arubis 8y agoSlack literally stands for Searchable Log of All Content and Knowledge. It’s incredibly useful and transformative for what it is. It’s about the furthest thing possible from private.
- paulcole 8y agoOK, this is all news to me. I have to go delete a bunch of stuff.
- dboreham 8y agoYou're thinking of Signal.
- ribosometronome 8y agoMoving away from a centralized infrastructure and having fully P2P doesn't necessarily mean there's no points to tap, does it? It's just mildly more difficult than a subpoena to Facebook asking for all messages.
- CGamesPlay 8y agoAt what point does the technical community stop trying to technically interfere with the efforts of law enforcement, and start trying to change the laws that make law enforcement behave this way?
- craftyguy 8y agoProbably at the point where elected officials start to care. They won't care until their voters care, and most voters don't seem to care about or understand the issue here since it does not affect most of them in any meaningful/measurable way.
- noobermin 8y agoI think they care. A majority of the country did not want NN to be repealed but it was. The problem is their vote means little and understandably, many tune out and don't vote or choose between lesser of two evils.
- WillPostForFood 8y agoA majority of the country has no idea what new neutrality is nor do they care. The only way you get to polls indicating a preference either way is by describing the regulations to the recipient first.
- s73v3r_ 8y agoI dunno, despite the supposed popularity of repealing the Affordable Care Act, the GOP, having control of all parts of the legislative process, couldn't get it done.
- bodas 8y agoSo we should give up trying to help people in oppressive countries and just shop them to the authorities?
- EvilEndures 8y ago> At what point does the technical community stop trying to technically interfere with the efforts of law enforcement, and start trying to change the laws that make law enforcement behave this way? Law enforcement and government are addicted to power to an unhealthy degree. Convincing people to voluntarily give up power is rarely successful. You seem to believe majority support is enough to make something happen. It is not. The Public Option has 75% popular support. Medicare-For-All has 59% popular support. Yet we have neither.
- crb002 8y agoFacebook's Haxl team openly discusses their ability to wiretap Messenger at scale for anti-spam. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT6VJkkhy0o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT6VJkkhy0o Users should be given the option to use peer to peer strong encryption with friends they whitelist.
- rhizome 8y agoEasily tapped central server(s) is my nutshell theory of why rightwing extremists aren't being kicked off of Twitter. Third-party doctrine, and all that.
- Consultant32452 8y agoI honestly can't tell what groups are being banned, nor what the rules are. Isis isn't banned but random right winger is. Jimmy Dore and Kyle Kulinski have pointed out seemingly random left wingers getting banned, Sarah Jeong gets a blue check. It all seems so random and incoherent. I am genuinely lost.
- rhizome 8y agoYou are definitely lost if you think Sarah Jeong should be sanctioned.
- Consultant32452 8y agoI don't think anyone should be censored/sanctioned. ISIS, Alex Jones, Antifa, let them all speak as far as I'm concerned. But to the extent that there are currently censorship rules in place, I genuinely do not understand them. Enforcement seems genuinely random and arbitrary. Sarah Jeong mocks white racists, no ban, fine. Candace Owens copy/pastes Sarah Jeong's tweets, gets banned, not fine. A world in which Alex Jones gets banned but ISIS does not is total insanity. To reiterate, I don't want any of the above to be banned/censored. However, in an world in which the above facts exist, I am suggesting I do not understand what the rules are at all. It seems random and arbitrary.
- qrbLPHiKpiux 8y agoFace to face still the most secure. No tech involved. Just saying.
- fkshit 8y agoNot everyone has the means to walk over and talk in person, grandpa
- qrbLPHiKpiux 8y agoI know. Just know it’s a compromise. I’m late 30’s BTW
- ezoe 8y agoIt happens because Facebook's design is fundamentally flawed for the security.
- occamrazor 8y agoHow is it fundamentally flawed?
- egberts 8y agoWut? Go to Github and cobble a MitM proxy.
- jetti 8y ago"Law enforcement agencies forcing technology providers to rewrite software to capture and hand over data that is no longer encrypted" Would this, or could this, fall under compelled speech? Especially if an employee is using the product themselves?
- annadane 8y agoArticle on HN: "The government shouldn't be trying to do this, we need encryption, decentralized services" Article on Reddit: "Delete Facebook! Fuck Zuckerberg."
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y agoBoth reasonable reactions, just different takes.
- felixvolny 8y agoOne is a consumer’s answer, the other one is a creator’s answer. Makes sense, as these are the respective target audiences of the two communities.
- sneak 8y ago*a different department of the US government. We already know that the NSA wiretaps Messenger at will extrajudicially via PRISM and other programs.
- tribesman 8y agoThe other day i posted a rant on p2p here on HN and everyone was like, huh! Use whatsapp. We need to build our own p2p and e2e secure chat client like whatsapp which works on every platform. Sure, it's possible - skype was exactly this before except for the e2e part. Why we techies can't? Let's make a group and dissect the problem in our free time. Who is up for it?
- mos_basik 8y agoSome people are working on this problem. You might be interested in looking at the Matrix standard [0] or some of the things built using it like Riot [1], a Slack-like web client supporting text, voice and video communication for one-on-one or group contexts. 0: https://matrix.org/docs/guides/faq.html https://matrix.org/docs/guides/faq.html 1: https://about.riot.im/what-is-riot/ https://about.riot.im/what-is-riot/
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- throw2016 8y agoIt's strange for the same issues with China there is 'outrage', and then for the exact same things here we see hand waving and 'technical' solutions. What technical solution is going to protect the human being from the indignity of security personnel presuming the right to going through your personal papers and thoughts? And this is already in effect in US airports with no pushback. It is this denial by many about what is happening at home and the absence of mainstream protests and push back that has allowed the the rise of surveillance capitalism, the NSA, secret courts, secret orders, secret processes and brazen surveillance demands by governments. The worse it becomes the more the need to posture and distract by seeking to hold others accountable for the very things you are neck deep in.
- hsienmaneja 8y agoReading the comments here reminds me of how silo’ed this community is, philosophically speaking.