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That's not true, because US companies are allowed to export E2E technology in products. Chinese companies are not given the same leeway. All Chinese messenger c

by 0xy 6y ago

That's not true, because US companies are allowed to export E2E technology in products. Chinese companies are not given the same leeway. All Chinese messenger clients are not encrypted and are fully surveilled. That is not true for US messenger clients.

xtracto 6y ago
IIRC American companies (specially service companies, but surely also hardware companies) can be forced to introduce backdoors and other spying mechanisms and then force them not to disclose such a thing (i.e. Lavabit, Groklaw, Room 641 and equivalent Google and Facebook programms). For us that don't live in the US or China, it is just a matter of choosing between two evils. And in being pragmatics, the 90% of the population outside of China and the US does not give a damn if the US or China are spying in their mundane conversations.
- dodobirdlord 6y ago
  > IIRC American companies (specially service companies, but surely also hardware companies) can be forced to introduce backdoors and other spying mechanisms and then force them not to disclose such a thing (i.e. Lavabit, Groklaw, Room 641 and equivalent Google and Facebook programms). You recall incorrectly. By extension of the First Amendment, US companies are protected from being forced to introduce functionality so as to collect or decrypt information (or for any other purpose). Carrying out original work for the government is considered to be speech, and as a result cannot be compelled. If the data is already collected and available in a decrypted form to the company a court order can compel the data to be turned over as evidence, as is the case with any data (or any thing) held by anyone (with narrow exceptions related to the 5th amendment). This was a topic of national attention several years ago when the FBI tried (and failed) to compel Apple to create and sign a custom software update to unlock an iPhone. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–Apple_encryption_dispute https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–Apple_encryption_dispute
Daho0n 6y ago
And yet from the free to export US we keep finding backdoors and hardcoded admin passwords in things that are supposed to be way more secure than a random chat client. Even if all of them are actually bugs I'm not sure that is any better. No E2EE to share my shopping list with my girlfriend versus the piss poor security in enterprise hardware from manufacturers like Cisco etc? At least I can download another chat client. Purging US enterprise equipment from my company, home and ISP? Not so much.
- 0xy 6y ago
  Huawei's security doesn't come close to Cisco's security practices. Mostly because the vast majority of their hardware and software was sourced from stolen IP (Huawei had cash bounties for employees to provide stolen IP to the company). If you sell stolen technology, you don't truly understand how it works or how to secure it. Given the choice, I'd choose Cisco every day of the week. It's not perfect but then again there's no such thing as perfect security. With an E2E messenger, you can be sure that most likely your communications are not being intercepted. With a Chinese company, your communications are never secure. Not only are Chinese software products not secure, but they'll lie to you about their security. Zoom claimed to have E2E encryption on calls which turned out to be an egregious fabrication (on top of them exporting calls to Chinese servers).
  - uzakov 6y ago
    What are your thoughts on Ubiquity?

by 0xy 6y ago

xtracto 6y ago

IIRC American companies (specially service companies, but surely also hardware companies) can be forced to introduce backdoors and other spying mechanisms and then force them not to disclose such a thing (i.e. Lavabit, Groklaw, Room 641 and equivalent Google and Facebook programms). For us that don't live in the US or China, it is just a matter of choosing between two evils. And in being pragmatics, the 90% of the population outside of China and the US does not give a damn if the US or China are spying in their mundane conversations.

dodobirdlord 6y ago
> IIRC American companies (specially service companies, but surely also hardware companies) can be forced to introduce backdoors and other spying mechanisms and then force them not to disclose such a thing (i.e. Lavabit, Groklaw, Room 641 and equivalent Google and Facebook programms). You recall incorrectly. By extension of the First Amendment, US companies are protected from being forced to introduce functionality so as to collect or decrypt information (or for any other purpose). Carrying out original work for the government is considered to be speech, and as a result cannot be compelled. If the data is already collected and available in a decrypted form to the company a court order can compel the data to be turned over as evidence, as is the case with any data (or any thing) held by anyone (with narrow exceptions related to the 5th amendment). This was a topic of national attention several years ago when the FBI tried (and failed) to compel Apple to create and sign a custom software update to unlock an iPhone. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–Apple_encryption_dispute https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–Apple_encryption_dispute

Daho0n 6y ago

And yet from the free to export US we keep finding backdoors and hardcoded admin passwords in things that are supposed to be way more secure than a random chat client. Even if all of them are actually bugs I'm not sure that is any better. No E2EE to share my shopping list with my girlfriend versus the piss poor security in enterprise hardware from manufacturers like Cisco etc? At least I can download another chat client. Purging US enterprise equipment from my company, home and ISP? Not so much.

0xy 6y ago
Huawei's security doesn't come close to Cisco's security practices. Mostly because the vast majority of their hardware and software was sourced from stolen IP (Huawei had cash bounties for employees to provide stolen IP to the company). If you sell stolen technology, you don't truly understand how it works or how to secure it. Given the choice, I'd choose Cisco every day of the week. It's not perfect but then again there's no such thing as perfect security. With an E2E messenger, you can be sure that most likely your communications are not being intercepted. With a Chinese company, your communications are never secure. Not only are Chinese software products not secure, but they'll lie to you about their security. Zoom claimed to have E2E encryption on calls which turned out to be an egregious fabrication (on top of them exporting calls to Chinese servers).
- uzakov 6y ago
  What are your thoughts on Ubiquity?