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Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
- _zoltan_ 5y agosurely signal has at least the IP address used to connect to their service? aren't they by law required to log that?
- salawat 5y agoNo, why would they be? Just because everyone else logs more info than they should doesn't mean everyone has too.
- zucker42 5y agoWhich law requires you to log the IP address used to connect to your service?
- flipbrad 5y agoIn the EU, I'm afraid, the answer would be: plenty. Look at French law for instance.
- chki 5y agoCan you give more specifics? "French law" is quite broad.
- flipbrad 5y agoSure! https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jorf/id/JORFTEXT000023646013 https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jorf/id/JORFTEXT000023646013 On the books since 2011. Upheld in a recent decision of France's supreme court despite what some thought to be quite clearly contrary EU caselaw (which takes precedence over national law, roughly speaking) https://www.nextinpact.com/article/45613/comment-conseil-detat-a-sauve-conservation-donnees-connexion https://www.nextinpact.com/article/45613/comment-conseil-det...
- sigzero 5y agoSwitzerland required ProtonMail to log ip addresses. https://threatpost.com/protonmail-log-ip-address-french-activist/169242/ https://threatpost.com/protonmail-log-ip-address-french-acti... From that article: “The internet is generally not anonymous, and if you are breaking Swiss law, a law-abiding company such as ProtonMail can be legally compelled to log your IP address.”
- xorcist 5y agoThey have your phone number and (trivially reversible hashes of) your phonebook. They must keep this data hot because they can send "this specific person in your phonebook just installed signal" messages.
- gatgeagent 5y agoWhy did they even incorporate in the USA, I'd guess they'd have less work in like the Seychelles or Belize.
- bduerst 5y agoProtonmail is incorporated in Switzerland, but even then they have been compelled to give up user logs and ip addresses.
- kasey_junk 5y agoIf they were in the Seychelles or Belize they would be covered by the NSA and no subpoena would be required to get traffic data.
- zarzavat 5y ago[flagged]
- poszlem 5y agoThis is a distortion of the paradox of tolerance, it doesn't endorse censorship. The paradox of tolerance only comes into play when views start getting translated into actions. Let the Nazis march down Skokie. Action should only be taken against them if they start acting on their views. Removal only happens in the interest of self-preservation. The paradox of tolerance is not an endorsement of censorship.
- rfrey 5y agoThat is a particular solution to the paradox of tolerance, it is not the paradox itself
- zarzavat 5y agoThe paradox of tolerance arises because (neo)nazis want to abolish free speech, indeed they want to abolish entire groups of people. What is legally protected as speech and what is actually speech cannot be equal. For instance, speech that involves property damage is not protected, even though that is a common kind of speech in certain circumstances (e.g. graffiti "Romans go home") Conversely, some groups abuse free speech protections in order to intimidate others, e.g. Westboro Baptist church picketing funerals. I would call this an action because the primary intention is not expression but rather intimidation. It may be that such actions must be legally recognized as speech in order to maintain the enforceability of speech protections, as intent is a nebulous concept, but it is not obviously so and many jurisdictions don't recognize such things as speech.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago> The paradox of tolerance arises because (neo)nazis want to abolish free speech The argument you're making is that free speech is important so we need to protect it by censoring people who advocate imposing censorship. But then you're advocating imposing censorship, which implies you should censor yourself. Which is why it's a paradox. You still have to choose between "don't censor things" and "censor things" with the knowledge that if you choose "censor things" it's not just you who will be adding to the list of banned knowledge.
- aborsy 5y ago* But FBI has access to Pegasus-like spyware. If you have a phone number, a zero-click NSO spyware would provide full control over target device. * FBI could get user’s data from Apple if it’s an iPhone (considering that iOS is closed source), or force a malicious update to user through so many ways (including by pushing a bad update or manipulating safety numbers in signal). So why asking a messaging app that everyone knows doesn’t have the requested information?
- _kbh_ 5y agoOn your second point it seems that Apple is unwilling to assist the FBI with regards to pushing malicious updates to the operating system or apps. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–Apple_encryption_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–Apple_encryption_dispute
- khiner 5y agoThis makes me so happy
- davidrusu 5y agoAccount created: 1606866784432 (unix millis) That's Tue Dec 01 2020 23:53:04 UTC, consider this a heads up if that's when you started using signal.
- vmception 5y ago> Last connection date: 1634169600000 (unix millis) > Account created: 1606866784432 (unix millis) This response of the user information they have is hilarious.
- kps 5y ago> Last connection date: 1634169600000 (unix millis) Thu 14 Oct 2021 12:00:00 AM UTC Do they round?
- kube-system 5y agoIt's likely a date value (as literally stated) rather than date-time. It's not 'rounded' as much as the time value is simply not present.
- vaseem 5y agothanks Signal, thanks aclu https://www.aclu.org/ https://www.aclu.org/ https://signal.org/ https://signal.org/ Nothing is free, support these folks.
- alkdfdlkdslk 5y agoI just realized something. One of the only things contained is the account creation date. How hard would it be for the FBI to pull that text you get at that time/date to activate Signal? Not Impossible I would imagine? Edit: What raised my eyebrow is that the subpoena specifically asks for that. Why?
- ev1 5y agoSignal does not absolutely require real numbers/ban VoIP/etc. You can theoretically sign up with a cheap VoIP number.
- danieldbird 5y agoWhy has the dynamic become, the Government and it's Citizen's being seperate from one another. The government is funded by its Citizens. I remember a time when spying on EVERYONE was a bad thing.
- t-writescode 5y agoWas that day 9/10/2001? I remember those days, too. I miss some parts of them.
- Rd6n6 5y agoAnybody concerned about these issues should consider donating to their favourite non profit that can have an impact that works in the area. Most HN users can afford $20/year pretty easily (others could afford $200/month and not even notice it) As they say, “Put your money where your mouth is.”
- Grimm1 5y agoI mean I do. EFF, Wikimedia, ACLU (Only EFF is really for this particular issue though)
- gruez 5y ago>Wikimedia that's probably the least worthy of the ones in the list. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
- spullara 5y agoACLU lawyers are helping Signal with this.
- Grimm1 5y agoEven better then!
- lettergram 5y agoI stopped supporting the ACLU when they started doing this: Fighting against due process: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/see-you-court-aclu-sues-betsy-devos-over-new-campus-n1206981 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/see-you-court-aclu-sues... claiming there's no men: https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1196877415810813955 https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1196877415810813955 and this: https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1199725066302308354 https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1199725066302308354 Telling families to discuss pronouns: https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1250795126584217602 https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1250795126584217602 and this: https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1453779768063766529 https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1453779768063766529 I'm all for defending freedom of expression, religion, speech, etc. But this is weighing into topics that aren't really about freedom and in some cases they're actively fighting against freedom. AKA it's become way more political and one sided.
- colemannugent 5y agoThe latest installment in the "Government doesn't understand math" series
- toomuchtodo 5y agoI think that’s uncharitable. Everyone is going through the motions required of them, and this is the public demonstration of those mechanizations (although Signal is a bit cheeky, which is fun). The next step would be government requiring, through legislation, more invasive logging and data collection (Australia and parts of Europe have already seen the beginnings of this discussion) of messaging apps (“we’ve asked for what we can, they said they don’t have it and aren’t required to have it, what do you want us to do?”). When encryption and secure messaging is outlawed, only outlaws will have and use it.
- cassonmars 5y agoThis is why messaging apps need to be decentralized and built on top of protocols that cannot be censored or meaningfully monitored.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoWith enough effort, anyone can go to jail. America held a taxi driver for 17 years at Guantanamo Bay with no evidence. Tech won’t save you from the state. As always, if your threat model includes a state actor, you are going to have a bad time. For all intents and purposes, their resources are unlimited. Freedom is won in the courts and the legislature, not in the code (although tech is as useful tool for keeping government implantations in check). (I still use and donate to Signal, but have a healthy understanding of its limits)
- matheusmoreira 5y agoYes, but their tyranny must also increase in order to circumvent the technology. They will increasingly resort to actions like you described. Hopefully the population will eventually revolt and put an end to the corrupt government once it becomes unacceptably totalitarian. Freedom is won through weapons. Encryption is a potent weapon, it can defeat states, militaries. Before computers, it used to be a military tool. It must be democratized, the whole world must use it.
- tedivm 5y agoMy favorite part of their response is that they gave the timestamps in unix milliseconds.
- tptacek 5y agoFor anyone curious, the account was created on Dec 1 2020, and last connected this October 13th.
- egberts1 5y agoWas that you, Moxie?
- dcdc123 5y agoAm I the only one sort of bothered by the fact they shared that specific information with the world? It may not seem like much, but that was user data.
- wraptile 5y agoI'm failing to see how this could be useful to anyone.
- tptacek 5y agoIt's potentially useful to the target of the subpoena, who knows when they created their Signal account, and might thus now know that they're under investigation.
- _vvhw 5y agoIt's a form of warrant canary?
- DominikPeters 5y agoMe too. They could have blacked out some of the digits while preserving the milliseconds joke.
- 5y ago
- fmakunbound 5y agoReminds me to donate to Signal again
- artificialLimbs 5y agoI don't want to do that regularly so I signed up for an automatic donation subscription. https://signal.org/donate/ https://signal.org/donate/
- AlbertCory 5y agoSpeaking of donations (a guy from a food bank whom I see in the Safeway parking lot didn't know this, so I think we can assume not everyone does): Most "donate" pages do not allow for "donor-advised funds (DAF)." They assume you're giving it with your before-tax money and presumably taking a tax deduction for it. In a DAF, which your financial institution surely offers, you can donate appreciated assets, e.g. your FAANG stock, and take the entire amount as a tax deduction. So if your 10 shares of Facebook (excuse me, "Meta") stock are at 322, you can take a deduction of $32,200 this year. What's the catch? That money's gone, and you can't get it back. You can only "advise" your DAF to give it to a 501(c)(3) organization, which Signal is. There are no time limits. The good part, though, is you can probably have your DAF give the money anonymously, so the charity can't bug you every time they're having a fund drive.
- ndesaulniers 5y agoAnother benefit, it sounds like, is that you don't have to pay capital gains on selling those shares. Like, let's say your intent is to donate $10k to some charity, out of the goodness of your heart and/or as a tax write off. You don't have that in cash, but do in stock. You could liquidate $10k of stock, pay capital gains on it (if it appreciated since acquisition), then donate it. So you're out the capital gains tax. The method you describe seems more efficient, since you don't need to sell; you simply transfer ownership of the asset. Or is there still capital gains to be paid? I wonder if billionaires are setting up charities as trusts for their kids, then "donating their shares to charity?"
- 5y ago
- colinmhayes 5y agoResponding with millis since the epoch was a nice touch.
- upofadown 5y ago>Because everything in Signal is end-to-end encrypted by default, the broad set of personal information that is typically easy to retrieve in other apps simply doesn’t exist on Signal’s servers. The E2EE in Signal only protects the actual content of messages. In the case where Signal takes an assertive action, and the users are not paying any attention to their "safety numbers" (probably the most common case) they could in theory get message content with a MITM attack. With an less assertive action (simply saving the data) Signal could get access to things like contacts and phone numbers. Tutanota and Protonmail have both been forced in the past to take assertive actions to retain data as a result of legal warrants. Does American law even allow such warrants? If not then perhaps the USA is underrated as a place to base privacy oriented services.
- otterley 5y agoA judge can sign an order commanding a witness or party to preserve documentation and evidence, under penalty of contempt of court. However, there is still a great deal of uncertainty as to what actions the subject of the subpoena must take in order to preserve that evidence. It's pretty clear that you have to disable automated destruction mechanisms, you can't disable any recording functions you may already have, and you can't go and shred relevant papers in your possession; but whether a court can order you to write code or take other burdensome steps in order to record certain electronic records that you didn't record before to assist an ongoing investigation is still a very open question.
- sneak 5y agoReminder that this does not hold true for Apple's fake "end to end encrypted" iMessage: iCloud Backup, which is not end to end encrypted, uploads all of your iMessages* to Apple each night in a format that Apple can read without you (and turn over to the state upon legal demand such as this). Note that disabling iCloud Backup won't help you, as it's turned on by default and everyone else you iMessage with will be leaking your conversation plaintext to Apple for you. Disable iMessage. Use Signal exclusively. * if you use Messages in iCloud, iCloud Backup instead backs up the cross-device sync key instead of the iMessages themselves, which means Apple gets your iMessages in real time as they sync between your iCloud devices, instead of once per day https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1ZK1CT https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1ZK1CT is why fake pro-privacy Apple will never be able to run a story like Signal has here today.
- Croftengea 5y agoI'd love to see how would a similar WhatsApp's response look like.
- ziftface 5y agoProbably not the kind of thing they'd brag about in a blog post unfortunately
- leahacab 5y agoDoes Signal notify the relevant users regarding subpoena? The FBI request asks them not to but only says "Please do not", hardly required it seems
- tptacek 5y agoIt's required. There are statutes tying disclosure of subpoenas to Obstruction charges. This is not a new issue; subpoena secrecy was a thing before there was an Internet.
- walrus01 5y agoAs an ISP: This is a very boilerplate subpoena. Whether or not the specific FBI agent knows or cares what Signal is, I'm about 99% certain it's just the result of a copy/paste from a template.
- rndmind 5y agoThank you for providing some reality into this farce of a forum. hackernews has completely gone down the toilet! The number of daily topics from NBC/WSJ/etc. is out of control, this might as well be reddit.
- johnnyApplePRNG 5y agoJust curious, why does signal have the ACLU respond for them? I thought the ACLU was more of a protection against smaller entities who didn't have funding/legal firepower?
- tedivm 5y agoSignal is a 501c3 nonprofit- they don't have all that much funding or legal firepower beyond their regular operations. The ACLU also loves them, and getting a letter from the ACLU probably makes matters go away faster then getting a letter from some random lawyer.
- akouri 5y agoWhat I don't understand about the whole Signal E2EE model is that while your messages themselves may be encrypted, they are still sending push notifications over Apple's servers, which have to go through APNS. Often the entire message contents can be contained in the push notification. Does anybody know if Apple's notifications are E2EE? I doubt that gov't doesn't have access to the push notifications...
- NdMAND 5y agoI believe they are encrypted (and decrypted on device by the Signal app). They recently had to do some rewriting of the code for iOS15 - they share some comments about that here: https://community.signalusers.org/t/beta-feedback-for-the-upcoming-ios-5-24-release/38272 https://community.signalusers.org/t/beta-feedback-for-the-up... Hope it helps Edit: wow people were fast to reply…
- akouri 5y agoSweet, thanks for the link to that discussion. Looks like they're handling it :)
- tptacek 5y agoHandling what? They've never depended on Apple for encryption.
- Klonoar 5y agoI'm actually surprised they didn't use a notification extension before. They're surprisingly great as an API - I used it to dynamically render preview line chart images for a finance app I worked on a few years ago. Just send over the limited line data, render the image, and you're good to go.
- sdcooke 5y agoI don't know how Signal works but it is possible to send a silent encrypted push notification that the app can decrypt and show as a local notification.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoBeautiful. That's how you do it. I actually believe that law enforcement has the legal right to subpoena information, with a judge's consent, while investigating criminal activity. This is exactly the solution to that problem. These platforms should want to know as little about you as possible.
- teawrecks 5y agoIf neuralink/related tech ever gets to the point of mind-to-mind communication, without a doubt our law enforcement will claim they have the right to subpoena a person's thoughts. We may be setting a precedent now that is more important that we could ever think (pun intended).
- Marsymars 5y agoThat kind of technology would make the issue more obvious, but I already operate under the understanding that people's personal computing devices are effectively extensions of their minds. I read a good short story on the subject recently, "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_of_Fact,_the_Truth_of_Feeling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_of_Fact,_the_Truth_o...
- iammisc 5y agoNo the solution is functioning government. Government can tomorrow make encryption illegal. Why does everyone think the solution is technical when it's a cultural problem? The government has big guns and will use them to enforce the law.
- savant_penguin 5y agoAgreed, except when the government gets to make that subpoena a state secret
- ARandomerDude 5y agoWith very limited use, even secret subpoenas can be a good thing, for example in a counterintelligence situation where you don't want to tip your hand to a foreign intelligence service. The problem is abuse of that system.
- 14 5y agoLast I checked signal still required a phone number to use so it is an instant deal breaker for a lot of people. I have 3 kids I communicate with but they don’t have a cell number just use wifi when they can. If I could use signal with them I would. Instead I use Wire since it seems secure and doesn’t require a phone number. I can only imagine there are lots of other people with kids in my situation.
- ramsj 5y agoThreema is another app I've liked. They have a decent transparency report which shows the limited user data they collect/possess. Link: https://threema.ch/en/transparencyreport https://threema.ch/en/transparencyreport
- azinman2 5y agoIt’s easy so say net win for society is privacy. But it’s important to also acknowledge it does come at a cost — there exists criminal behavior that most reasonable people would agree is bad and should be stopped that may reach a dead end with services like Signal. In formulating your statement that examining criminal behavior is a problem, you are suggesting there shouldn’t be ways to uncover crimes.
- baq 5y agoExactly. This same thing happens one time too many, it gets outlawed.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ziftface 5y agoThe widespread abuse of power in government agencies makes this argument a little naive imo. The vast majority of what they do has very little effect on anyone's safety. I'd rather be able to communicate privately and let people keep selling drugs if they want to.
- Barrin92 5y ago>the widespread abuse of power[...] The vast majority of what they do has very little effect* doing a lot of work here. To what degree is that simply anti-governmental sentiment rather than an honest evaluation of the agencies in question? Say you'd be living in a narco neighborhood in Mexico were cartels regularly shoot civilians up in private wars, have you considered how badly institutions could do in comparison?
- lazide 5y agoSo you think the NSA is meaningfully making an impact in stopping, say, Los Angeles, or Orange County, from turning into Juarez? If so, how exactly?
- 5y ago
- vmception 5y agoThe government still has the capability to subpoena the individual responsible for the behavior they don't like. They've only gotten used to going after the intermediary, and it feels uncomfortable for them to have this power removed and reset back to the mean.
- vaseem 5y agothanks Signal, thanks ACLU https://www.aclu.org/ https://www.aclu.org/ https://signal.org/donate/ https://signal.org/donate/ Nothing is free, support these folks.
- rdtsc 5y agoNoticed that the last connection time is a date, rounded to the day. 1634169600000 (unix millis) Thursday, October 14, 2021 12:00:00 AM Well done. I immediately thought that having a millisecond granularity of last connection time could be used to roughly correlate who contacted whom, depending on what the "connected" event is considered.
- lightsurfer 5y agosignal social network? I'm in.
- onefuncman 5y agoShouldn't Signal be required to produce all the encrypted data stored for this user, in case law enforcement are able to get the associated private keys off the suspect's phone?
- gepoch 5y agoSignal stores messages on their servers until they're delivered at which point they're purged. Additionally, Signal's encryption scheme gives their messages the "forward secrecy" property which means that acquiring key material at some point in the future does not allow you to decrypt any previous messages. Any encrypted messages that they could provide would be useless. For more, check out their really interesting doc on the double ratchet algorithm that they use!: https://signal.org/docs/specifications/doubleratchet/ https://signal.org/docs/specifications/doubleratchet/
- stabbles 5y agoWhat worries me is that even though they don't own the data, they could be forced to push an update that will upload decrypted messages from people's phones. Not owning the client would be better
- zaik 5y agoNot owning any server would also help. Metadata, contacts and groups can easily be recorded if you own the server. Federation is a big reason why I consider XMPP superior to Signal.
- ViViDboarder 5y agoFederated servers are still servers. It’s nothing for the FBI to subpoena any server you’ve connected to and then any server that server connected to, etc. The important thing is minimizing the data that is collected, period. Otherwise you’re just obscuring the data storage.
- zaik 5y ago> It’s nothing for the FBI to subpoena any server you’ve connected to I can choose to use a server outside the US. I can choose to run a server in my basement and still talk to all my contacts. You simply do not have this freedom with Signal. Finally, I do not have to trust anyone about what (meta-)data is collected.
- ViViDboarder 5y agoIf you chose a server in your basement, then it’s communicating with federated servers. Those servers that your friends use have the same data that you’ve sent to them. So they don’t even need to find your main server, just collect enough. An out of the US host is easier for them actually. Say hello to NSA exploits without a warrant! Have you looked to see what metadata something like Matrix collects? How federation and contact lists work on that server?
- natch 5y agoImpressive, but why do they need to store the exact times of when the account was created and last accessed? I would think a very coarse time down to the month would be good for most system administration needs.
- loeg 5y agoLast accessed is rounded to the day.
- ChuckMcM 5y agoWhile I applaud Signal's response I expect this entire event (subpoena and response) will be provided as one of the exhibits to congress by the Department of Justice to justify their request that it be unlawful to provide such services. The DoJ will say, "See, here is this horrible crime we are investigating and because this company chose to make it impossible for law enforcement, with a warrant and a subpoena to get it, the criminal is going to go unpunished and that will be on you because you refused to mandate lawful access to communications." The Congressional response should be, "Do you have no other way of investigating these criminals?" "Could you not put an officer out to surveille them?", "Have you not seen the misuse that law enforcement has engaged in, with such capabilities? From petty revenge to stalking lovers who rejected them. Will you consent to mandatory surveillance of all law enforcement officers that is recorded and stored in a civil controlled repository so that officer conduct may be reviewed at any time?" They won't say that of course. But they should.
- zanethomas 5y agoWhen privacy is outlawed only outlaws will have privacy.
- meowface 5y ago>Will you consent to mandatory surveillance of all law enforcement officers that is recorded and stored in a civil controlled repository so that officer conduct may be reviewed at any time? I think this should be implemented regardless. But the danger is they can easily say "sure; your turn". Some in law enforcement may even genuinely want to do that for its own sake. I think that's a totally orthogonal thing to violating citizens' privacy and shouldn't be considered as leverage or a counterargument.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- arthur_sav 5y agoNothing any company can do about that. Spying programs and laws will only worsen unless people really voice their concerns and elect the right people.
- upofadown 5y agoHow did Signal know who they meant?
- loeg 5y agoPhone number.
- Trias11 5y agoSignal, please stop asking for mandatory phone number to register and use Signal. This raises privacy concerns and negates all the end-to-end encryption goodness you're offering.
- t-writescode 5y agoall of it? That's a bit of hyperbole. What is a more measured thought of how much of a negative impact there is? Certainly saying "I know that Janis and Nate talked on this day this many times / for this long" and "Janis and Nate had a detailed conversation covering lemons and lye" have two different levels of private information revelation; and E2E protects against the latter but not necessarily the former, so why does it negate _all_ the goodness?
- webmobdev 5y agoYes, this is why I am very suspicious of Signal as a front for the CIA / NSA. A phone number can reveal so much information about a person because many online and offline services now ask for it.
- jokoon 5y agoReveal, yes, read their message, no.
- webmobdev 5y agoWe have to hope so ... The message still goes through their server ...
- arminiusreturns 5y agoSignal is the best we have on mobile at the moment in my estimation, but after a cursory analysis of Moxy, I totally expect one day it will be revealed he has been compromised somehow. Nation state actors already have baseband roots, so as long as those arent your threat vector, you are probably, maybe, ok on signal. I find it really interesting that Bill Binney says, despite years of me hearing the opposite, that we shoild all be rolling our own crypto because its a form of decentralization. The more time goes on, the more I think hes onto something. The main problem I see is this: a future where only the hackers have privacy, and everyone else apathetically accepts their servitude and abuse. Furthermore, to maintain that privacy, hackers will have to be extremely selective in their friends, due to the invasive nature of the privacy violations from those around us, unbeknownst to them.
- aasasd 5y agoOh funny. Just ten days ago someone asked here in the comments about DDG: > Why, on any planet, would law enforcement issue a warrant to get user data from a company that doesn't have any user data?
- poundofshrimp 5y agoTo see if maybe they changed their ways without telling anyone?
- holtkam2 5y agoDope article
- Labo333 5y agoI'm worried that the provided information could be incorrect. For example, that user could have messages waiting to be delivered to himself. In that case, I think signal doesn't know the senders but should still disclose the number of those messages and their size. Signal erases that kind of information but I'm pretty sure that user must have had some messages delivered to them while signal was processing the subpoena. So pretenting they don't know anything else is just wrong IMO.
- sesuximo 5y agoIt seems theoretically possible for signal to not know the original sender nor the final recipient e.g. if they use their central servers as a tor middleman (I forget the real node type name)
- geophertz 5y agoI can't help but think the fact the account creation date (and last connection date, although less so for that) are not censored for a reason. The account creation date is basically equivalent to the phone number and would allow the owner of the account to know a subpoena was requested for them.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- thsr 5y agoPlease read between the lines: they surely sent similar letters to WhatsApp, Google, Facebook, etc. who happily complied...
- d1lanka 5y agoWell done Moxie Marlinspike and Signal team. Now don't pull any sketchy shit like Mobilecoin without being transparent.
- jayzalowitz 5y agoMobilecoin results in precisely this if someone looks into a transaction. What are you arguing for? Visible transaction histories that can be used to jail you?
- juandar 5y agoA few things: -this looks like more marketing than substance, to me. prosecutors send out shitloads of these subpoenas all the time (see eg here https://transparency.fb.com/data/government-data-requests/ https://transparency.fb.com/data/government-data-requests/) and I strongly suspect this was just a junior (or old) person who doesn't know what Signal is and sent a routine subpoena. They require next to no approvals. In other words, this isn't a coordinated attempt by DOJ to get Signal to start publishing records. -Ultimately this issue isn't that big of a deal to law enforcement. In 99% of cases they can just get the defendant's cell phone and look at his unencrypted messages in the Signal and Whatsapp applications directly. -I think in theory if a lot of platforms start doing end to end encryption globally, then things could get a little more interesting. But as far as I know for a lot of tech stacks (like ones more complex than simple messaging) that's difficult to do.
- zerobytes 5y agoIf we're talking about pure messaging here and not sending a jpg or other attachment, why not create an app that simply uses plaintext, like a terminal. Generate some 4096 bit keys and make it decentralised. Public keys could be shared among people willing to communicate. Anytime you have a central location where data is parsed, the time stamps and other metadata can be gleaned. The app could even fudge time stamps. I think the future of this is decentralised communications. At the centre of this entire issue is the notion that someone else think they have the right to intercept your communications. I believe a properly-implemted SSH plain text app using big keys would solve this to a point. The app could store all data in a self-encrypted file and self destruct if tampered with. Security is a process, not a product, as Bruce Schneier is famous for saying, so methinks that the process is as important as the product. SSH using massive keys is a proven thing and cracking 4096 bits of AES will not happen in the short or mid term. In fact, most serious cryptographers say the continents will shift before they can break it. Just a thought. I'm not a programmer outside of Bash/sed/awk and other *nix tools, so this isn't something I could develop, but as a decentralised tool, I think it could work if you were willing to use plain text only. The app could have random numbers as a beacon that can be changed at will and only those with that random number can communicate with you and you them. A la Google Authenticator or something similar.
- shepherdjerred 5y ago> 1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
- ViViDboarder 5y agoThe problem is not the encryption. The problem is adoption and ease of use. There are very many ways to encrypt messaging data by sharing public keys. There are also several decentralized, federated encrypted messenger apps. They are great options for folks, but frankly aren’t as easy to use or feature rich and thus not as widely used.
- codewiz 5y ago> this subpoena requested a wide variety of information we don’t have, including the target’s name, address, correspondence, contacts, groups, calls. Couldn't they easily use the phone number associated with the Signal account to find the target's name? Even if the account uses a pre-paid SIM without a credit card attached, the telco could still reveal the location of the device and probably its IMEI, which could be used to find other SIMs associated with it. I think Signal should stop pretending they're an anonymous service when their identity is based on phone numbers.
- rndmind 5y agoAs other posters have pointed out, the onus is not on signal to connect a phone number with a person's physcal address. Besides, what about burner phone numbers, silly...
- eertami 5y ago>Couldn't they easily use the phone number associated with the Signal account to find the target's name? What do you mean? They already have the telephone number. It is listed in the subpoena. All Signal is doing is confirming that this phone number has a Signal account - sure, it's not perfect, but I don't really see your point. They don't need Signal to be able to do any of the things you listed.
- ViViDboarder 5y agoFor what it’s work, as far as I know, Signal has never claimed to be an anonymous communication service. They are a secure communication service. This means they minimize the information that is in the clear and do this quite well. Now to your specific concern about the phone number. Signal only has your phone number and sign up time. This means that for someone to request your information, they’ll pretty much need that already. If you look at the subpoena you’ll see that the FBI is asking for data associated with the persons name or phone number. Name is something Signal doesn’t have. You’re right that it’s trivial to get with the phone number (and the FBI has obviously done this), but they must necessarily have this information to even request data from Signal. In other words, Signal doesn’t provide a means of leaking your name. What using a phone number identifier does do is allow someone to go from name to phone number to Signal request, though that Signal request with turn up very little data.
- stereoradonc 5y agoThis is a pure marketing stunt to convince naysayers- I'd steer clear of Signal. I have done that and will continue to do so.
- sweetbitter 5y agoThey do this every time.
- thrownoverboard 5y agoRelated: does anyone know why the Signal-Server code allows for toggling request logging? [0] If this allows for logging raw HTTP(S) requests server-side, presumably this could be grabbing the passwords generated and held on each device used for authentication [1]? There's also no mention of TLS termination in the Signal-Server repository on GitHub, or TLS between the Redis cluster in use. If FBI or NSA has compromised the AWS VPC, then all of this network traffic would be in the clear to be picked up behind the load balancer(s). The Account DynamoDB table [2] also seems to indicate more information is tied to the phone number in cleartext than what is indicated by the response? [0]: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server/blob/14f5271c20128d9f222c86af55a55a08094cd282/service/src/main/java/org/whispersystems/textsecuregcm/workers/SetRequestLoggingEnabledTask.java https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server/blob/14f5271c2012... [1]: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server/blob/14f5271c20128d9f222c86af55a55a08094cd282/service/src/main/java/org/whispersystems/textsecuregcm/auth/BaseAccountAuthenticator.java https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server/blob/14f5271c2012... [2]: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server/blob/14f5271c20128d9f222c86af55a55a08094cd282/service/src/main/java/org/whispersystems/textsecuregcm/storage/Account.java https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server/blob/14f5271c2012...
- ViViDboarder 5y agoThe HTTP request does not have the users private keys. That never leaves your phone. The DB table looks like signal creates UUIDs to represent users and devices. This isn’t really sensitive information but really just how you can see and revoke devices associated with your account. Maybe I’m misreading something tough. Do you have any reason to believe otherwise?
- thrownoverboard 5y agoAgreed that network compromise on the surface isn't a huge concern because of the Signal protocol itself. However, if the password (generated on each linked device) used for authentication is compromised, presumably it could be used to generate different keys altogether for an account. If the device password is compromised, then it seems feasible (but difficult) for some sort of attack be to be pulled off that could eventually lead to the compromise of messaging itself, or adding of another (shadow) linked device. The subpoena explicitly asks for: >Online Behaviors: Including device data, site interactions, and cookies if available >Activity Log: Including logs of click-stream data if available I would think device data would include things such as the number of devices associated with the phone number, which appear to be stored in the clear in the table, regardless of whether or not it is sensitive. Looking at the Device DynamoDB table, which is linked to the phone number, you'd also have things like the associated auth token + salt, GCM / APN IDs, public prekeys, etc. AWS DynamoDB is potentially going to have request logs for these requests as well, using the UUIDs, to associate finer-grained access timestamps. That may be useful for this case. It seems odd not to be using TLS within the VPC and storing these seemingly insensitive values encrypted within DynamoDB / SQS / etc. Doing so would ensure that compromise of the hosting provider is irrelevant. Why not terminate TLS on the Signal server itself, behind the load balancer? Why not use TLS for communications between the Signal server and the Redis cluster it uses? Why not encrypt phone numbers before storing them in DynamoDB?
- Lamad123 5y agoI need to get my mother to install and start using Signal!
- mrnzenews 5y agoWo2
- xvector 5y ago> Responsive Information in Signal’s Possession > Last connection date: 1634169600000 (unix millis) > Account created: 1606866784432 (unix millis) Impressively small amount of information. I wonder Account Created needs to be stored?
- CryptoPunk 5y agoThe primary blind spot in threat analyses conducted by law enforcement agencies, is that they do not consider potential threat vectors from bad actors within the state itself. This threat is why there need to be checks on the power of the state to conduct searches, one of which is privacy technology like encrypted communication networks.
- mal10c 5y agoGood for signal but if I were going to play devil's advocate, I would put myself in the shoes of folks in the government that want this information... I would contact Google or Apple and ask them to throw in some non-advertised APIs that take and then send screenshots of the signal app from the OS to a central server. Put another way, if the OS isn't fully trusted, it's still game over, even with all of the encryption in the world.
- DeathArrow 5y agoBut how do we know that complaints of law enforcement and spying agencies are not fake? Maybe they are made just to mislead their targets. Even if Signal operators can't provide them metadata, maybe they found ways to snoop on traffic.
- ThinkBeat 5y agoWhenever I read things like this, I think about Crypto AG. Solid impenetrable encryption from a neutral and privacy obsessed country. All a careful front for the CIA. The encryption was solid as far as I know but they the CIA had a back door. If there was a backdoor into the system somehow, it would be perfect to have stories such as the above to recruit criminals or even foreign intelligence to adopt it. As far as I know Signal is 100% legit and deliveres what they promise. and I use it myself. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/national-security/cia-crypto-encryption-machines-espionage/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/national-... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/11/crypto-ag-cia-bnd-germany-intelligence-report https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/11/crypto-ag-ci...
- shapefrog 5y agoYou can bang on about auditing open source for privacy all you want, but this is the audit that actually counts in my book.
- einpoklum 5y agoWhy does Signal has an organizational entity in the US? I thought they were Swiss or something.
- literallyaduck 5y agoCookies are part of the subpoena.
- sinuhe69 5y agoUnix timestamps and that is, no IP logs? It's hard to believe that the servers do not store IP addresses and other connection information.
- einpoklum 5y agoNote that the Signal LLC did not even try to object to providing information about their users. They provided as much information as they have. That is unfortunate.