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Everybody should draw his own conclusions. Some topics to consider, that those interestdd in such topics have to clear with themselves (source: all Wikipedia):
by acqq 8y ago
Everybody should draw his own conclusions.
Some topics to consider, that those interestdd in such topics have to clear with themselves (source: all Wikipedia):
“The Open Technology Fund (OTF) is a U.S. Government funded program created in 2012 at Radio Free Asia.”
“Radio Free X” (for different X” have a very long history of effecively being made and maintained by CIA.
“Clinton's policy was "heavily influenced by the Internet activism that helped organize the green revolution in Iran in 2009 and other revolutions in the Arab world in 2010 and 2011".[3]”
“Notable projects that the OTF has supported include The Tor Project, Open Whisper Systems,..”
Such associations can at least (directly or indirectly) influence some design decisions.
The best proof against the points like mine would simply be to allow those who want and know how to do that to really use the service completely anonymously, that is, especially without providing some phone number.
- willstrafach 8y agoIf you have this level of distrust, why use their service and expose your IP address to it? At that point, better to set up your own server.
- acqq 8y agoThere are, of course, different points of tradeoffs for everything related to security. So yours is not an argument that supports Signal’s feature set. Yes for “complete” security by all means use your own optical fiber network and your own crypto, with a touch of quantum cryptography custom made by Bruce Schneier et al just in case. We’re talking about someehing else here though.
- tptacek 8y agoThere are a lot more projects you can't support than Tor and Signal if you think accepting help from OTF taints them.
- acqq 8y agoI don't consider anything automatically "tainted." I'm considering the reason behind the Signal's decision to insist on acquiring the phone numbers and I don't have any better explanation than that. It is just their insisting on the phone numbers is their action that for me makes use of their product problematic. And the "Open Technology Fund" is surely an interesting beast, worthy knowing about, as well as the stories about the "Radio Free X" for some X. Some fascinating insights on that topic: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/review-a-mosque-in-munich-by-ian-johnson/article4324972/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/review-...
- tptacek 8y agoWhat does Radio Free Asia have to do with Signal? The only connection is that OTF, which is an RFA project, decided to spend money on open privacy and cryptography tools. Signal has repeated the reason they use phone number identifiers ad nauseam. The goal of Signal is to make text messaging secure. Those are the roots of the project. You're confusing the application with the underlying technology, which Signal has published and many other projects have exploited.
- acqq 8y ago> The goal of Signal is to make text messaging secure For whom is that messaging more “secure“ if the phone numbers are the (technically completely unneeded) requirement on which is insisted by the producers of Signal?
- tptacek 8y agoI don't think you understand. By "has its roots in text messaging", I mean literally SMS text messaging, the most popular messaging network on the planet. That is the goal of the project: to take the largest mainstream messaging network in the world and make it cryptographically secure. That network already has identifiers and a network of relationships: phone numbers and contact books. That's how Signal bootstraps itself. If you don't and never would send an SMS text message, you are not Signal's model target user and never were. Use something else; you have lots of choices. If not Signal, I recommend Wire, though I think you'll come out behind on the privacy tradeoffs.