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> the FBI can read every message in every backup without a warrant. Under what legal framework could this be possible?

sneak 6y ago
It's Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, aka FAA702, cited in Apple's transparency report as FISA (they turned over 30,000+ users' data without a warrant in 2019), and better known to the general public by its internal NSA codename of PRISM, thanks to Ed Snowden telling us that this is the primary, #1 source of information used by NSA spies. Apple wasn't lying when they said they "had never heard of PRISM"—until Snowden, it was not known by that name outside of the NSA/IC. It is regularly used against US users, in the US, as well as people in other countries. Snowden cited this use (resulting from a classified, private interpretation of FAA702 made by the classified FISA court) against US citizens as one of his main reasons for going public in the summer of 2013 with the fact that this is happening. https://www.eff.org/702-spying https://www.eff.org/702-spying https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act_of_1978_Amendments_Act_of_2008 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveil... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)
- bredren 6y ago
  Okay, I am familiar with prism. However, the context of this thread is to compare the relative security of Apple iMessage and iCloud backups with what happens to those messages when they are exfiltrated by Beeper. I do not see the existence of Prism belying the practical expectation of security Apple users get from iCloud and iMessage. It doesn’t make the point that beeper’s service has a similar level of security. But to your point, some apple iMessage users will unknowingly have their data shared with a third party if the recipient is using beeper and doesn’t tell them. Which makes having a friend quietly using beeper a bit like having a prism inquiry.
  - danShumway 6y ago
    > belying the practical expectation of security Apple users get from iCloud and iMessage. What practical expectation of security? iCloud backups are not E2E encrypted. If you're expecting that it should be impossible for anyone else to read your messages, then don't use iCloud. If you don't trust the people you're messaging, then don't message them. Trying to build a platform that guarantees security regardless of who you message is a fallacy, that system doesn't exist and people shouldn't think about security in those terms. If you send someone information, you can not guarantee with any messaging system that they won't copy that information and send it to someone else. Recipient trust is part of the equation. Any one of your friends can just copy and paste text out of iMessage, you have no technical guarantee that your messages are going to stay in Apple's ecosystem. If you send a message to someone with an Android phone, it gets sent in plaintext over SMS. If they're in a group chat, boom, no more encryption. Apple themselves can't keep your data in the iMessage environment, they exfiltrate it for you whenever you text someone who's not on iOS. And even if you don't have any friends on Android, all of the data that you're worried about leaking gets stored non-E2E encrypted to Apple's servers whenever anyone in your messaging pool turns on backups -- and I guarantee most of your contacts on iOS have backups turned on. But you're worried about security flaws in the Matrix protocol? Based on what? If you actually need E2E encryption, you shouldn't be using iMessage in the first place, you should be using something like Signal, a program where the default settings for you and your contacts aren't going to leak your messages and break their encryption. And at least Signal warns you in advance if a contact isn't on the same platform. At least it works on multiple operating systems so you aren't virtually guaranteed that it'll be impossible to do E2E chat with some of your friends.
    - bredren 6y ago
      Sms conversations are green to iMessage users. So the practical expectation of a blue message is at least the content is not going one or more carriers. So it is obvious when texting with someone that the content is flowing unencrypted over sms, and easily read by the phone company, let alone a request from LE. The problem with this service is it makes the conversation look like it is over iMessage. And while your comments about the factual trust level of the user or their choices around iCloud backups and password protection is always the base consideration—-beeper is being additionally introduced, possibly using a wholly unprotected iOS device along with their own cloud storage of the content. So the attack surface now includes not only the recipient and their trustworthiness and opsec in using the apple product but the entire opsec of this third party service. Dialing it up to, “well prism” or “trust of the other person” deliberately ignores my point which is beeper is being added as a listener in an opaque way to the iMessage user. When I say practical expectation, I am not worried about my contacts copying and pasting a conversation. They might but there would be a reason and I’m not worried about some kind of betrayal. Nor am I overtly concerned about a contact having their iCloud backup stolen and read. There are fairly robust measures Apple takes to prevent this including mandatory 2FA. It would take true determination. However this is marketed as an innocuous gateway for iMessage and it isn’t. As I mentioned above Beeper takes no responsibility for the loss of data and does not bear much reprisal if they leaked data. They can’t because it’s a startup.

It's Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, aka FAA702, cited in Apple's transparency report as FISA (they turned over 30,000+ users' data without a warrant in 2019), and better known to the general public by its internal NSA codename of PRISM, thanks to Ed Snowden telling us that this is the primary, #1 source of information used by NSA spies. Apple wasn't lying when they said they "had never heard of PRISM"—until Snowden, it was not known by that name outside of the NSA/IC. It is regularly used against US users, in the US, as well as people in other countries. Snowden cited this use (resulting from a classified, private interpretation of FAA702 made by the classified FISA court) against US citizens as one of his main reasons for going public in the summer of 2013 with the fact that this is happening. https://www.eff.org/702-spying https://www.eff.org/702-spying https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act_of_1978_Amendments_Act_of_2008 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveil... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

bredren 6y ago
Okay, I am familiar with prism. However, the context of this thread is to compare the relative security of Apple iMessage and iCloud backups with what happens to those messages when they are exfiltrated by Beeper. I do not see the existence of Prism belying the practical expectation of security Apple users get from iCloud and iMessage. It doesn’t make the point that beeper’s service has a similar level of security. But to your point, some apple iMessage users will unknowingly have their data shared with a third party if the recipient is using beeper and doesn’t tell them. Which makes having a friend quietly using beeper a bit like having a prism inquiry.
- danShumway 6y ago
  > belying the practical expectation of security Apple users get from iCloud and iMessage. What practical expectation of security? iCloud backups are not E2E encrypted. If you're expecting that it should be impossible for anyone else to read your messages, then don't use iCloud. If you don't trust the people you're messaging, then don't message them. Trying to build a platform that guarantees security regardless of who you message is a fallacy, that system doesn't exist and people shouldn't think about security in those terms. If you send someone information, you can not guarantee with any messaging system that they won't copy that information and send it to someone else. Recipient trust is part of the equation. Any one of your friends can just copy and paste text out of iMessage, you have no technical guarantee that your messages are going to stay in Apple's ecosystem. If you send a message to someone with an Android phone, it gets sent in plaintext over SMS. If they're in a group chat, boom, no more encryption. Apple themselves can't keep your data in the iMessage environment, they exfiltrate it for you whenever you text someone who's not on iOS. And even if you don't have any friends on Android, all of the data that you're worried about leaking gets stored non-E2E encrypted to Apple's servers whenever anyone in your messaging pool turns on backups -- and I guarantee most of your contacts on iOS have backups turned on. But you're worried about security flaws in the Matrix protocol? Based on what? If you actually need E2E encryption, you shouldn't be using iMessage in the first place, you should be using something like Signal, a program where the default settings for you and your contacts aren't going to leak your messages and break their encryption. And at least Signal warns you in advance if a contact isn't on the same platform. At least it works on multiple operating systems so you aren't virtually guaranteed that it'll be impossible to do E2E chat with some of your friends.
  - bredren 6y ago
    Sms conversations are green to iMessage users. So the practical expectation of a blue message is at least the content is not going one or more carriers. So it is obvious when texting with someone that the content is flowing unencrypted over sms, and easily read by the phone company, let alone a request from LE. The problem with this service is it makes the conversation look like it is over iMessage. And while your comments about the factual trust level of the user or their choices around iCloud backups and password protection is always the base consideration—-beeper is being additionally introduced, possibly using a wholly unprotected iOS device along with their own cloud storage of the content. So the attack surface now includes not only the recipient and their trustworthiness and opsec in using the apple product but the entire opsec of this third party service. Dialing it up to, “well prism” or “trust of the other person” deliberately ignores my point which is beeper is being added as a listener in an opaque way to the iMessage user. When I say practical expectation, I am not worried about my contacts copying and pasting a conversation. They might but there would be a reason and I’m not worried about some kind of betrayal. Nor am I overtly concerned about a contact having their iCloud backup stolen and read. There are fairly robust measures Apple takes to prevent this including mandatory 2FA. It would take true determination. However this is marketed as an innocuous gateway for iMessage and it isn’t. As I mentioned above Beeper takes no responsibility for the loss of data and does not bear much reprisal if they leaked data. They can’t because it’s a startup.