15 ms·

Privacy is ok

306 points by TangerineDream 4y ago

Guthur 4y ago
We have far more to fear from those that peddle fear than from those we are told to be fearful of.
- thomassmith65 4y ago
  If a technology enables criminals to coordinate without any hope of detection that seems worthy of some fear to me.
  - zirgs 4y ago
    That's the price you have to pay if you want to live in a free country.
    - thomassmith65 4y ago
      The point of the original article is that it's not black and white. There is no, and never can be any, entirely free country. I want to be free enough to have good privacy, but not so free as to allow a crime ring to take over my town.
      - DocTomoe 4y ago
        Some people say that already has happened, and the crime ring is called "the government".
        p0pcult 4y ago
        >Some people Other people think those first people are complete nutjobs.
      - philippejara 4y ago
        if you are in a position a crime ring can take over your town, no amount of surveillance will help, it will most likely make the crime ring stronger by giving them access to it, there's a joke here about the government being already the crime ring I guess.
  - sabellito 4y ago
    Anyone can host an e2e chat solution, trying to take Signal down doesn't change anything for serious organised crime.
  - tmpburning 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - tensor 4y ago
    This has always been true. The old fashion way of doing it was called "getting together in person someplace private." Yes Signal makes it a bit easier, but also general technology makes it harder too.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    They can do that. The cat is out of the bag. Worst case they can just use GPG/PGP, S/MIME or a bunch of other ways. Backdooring a communication medium just means they won't use it in the first place.
- weakfortress 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - timbray 4y ago
    You're not allowed to drive at twice the speed limit, nor to smoke in enclosed public spaces, and, in certain pandemic situations, you shouldn't be allowed to breathe unobstructedly on strangers. Where's the privacy dimension?!
    - base698 4y ago
      What level of risk do you believe allows massive corporations to loot the government? 1 in 100,000? 1 in 10,000?
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    > To me, it's a binary choice. You are either for privacy or you are not. This is called black and white thinking and it's generally a intellectual dead end. Applying wanton black and white thinking is a sign of a mind incapable of nuance, and rich, deep thought.
    - spritefs 4y ago
      > Applying wanton black and white thinking is a sign of a mind incapable of nuance, and rich, deep thought. Can't think of one instance where a group was able to politically accomplish something on the basis of "nuance" If someone is making an appeal to "nuance", they're losing
      - kelseyfrog 4y ago
        Right, so what most people do when faced with a lack of knowledge is go out looking for it or maintain weakly held beliefs. To conclude that something isn't possible because one doesn't know of it is thought-limiting. This is the political version of claiming, "I don't know how to sew and I've never seen someone sew. Therefore sewing is impossible." It's stunningly wrong. I can't seriously believe someone would think this way.
- deleted 4y ago
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Xeoncross 4y ago
The 'government' is responsible for a couple orders of magnitude more harm than 'criminals'. We're talking hundreds of millions deaths worldwide over the last century. I'm much less concerned about the government knowing what the 'criminals' are talking about (there are plenty of other ways to track them) than I am with the government knowing what the citizens are planning on standing up for/against.
- theCrowing 4y ago
  He is right but I hate people talking about the government like it's some random entity. You are able to vote, you can decide who is the government AND here comes to the kicker you can even be IN the government. You just prefer to not be, you prefer to build artificial stuff to circumvent what your elected government does. It's so counterintuitive.
  - newZWhoDis 4y ago
    How do I vote out the FBI/CIA/NSA/ATF? The politicians change and they all stay the same or get more powerful
    - theCrowing 4y ago
      Well, get elected write a bill and find allies. That's how.
      - z3c0 4y ago
        Who would have thought it could be so simple?
        theCrowing 4y ago
        Nobody said it is easy and that's why you don't do it and prefer to write sarcastic comments on the internet.
deleted 4y ago
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grammers 4y ago
Totally agree with this. Yes, with privacy it's hard to 'eavesdrop' on the bad guys, but isn't it allowed to whisper? Why should having privacy be ok in real life, but not when you communicate digitally? So far no one has offered an honest explanation why we must monitor everything online, usually it's about protecting kids or defending against terrorists, but is this really it? It doesn't convince me. I'm happy using apps like Signal and Tutanota, and I believe everyone should do the same.
- clucas 4y ago
  I'm totally against mandated backdoors, and I am pro-privacy. But we should acknowledge that the communication environment we live in now is materially different than it has been in the past. The past ~15 years is the first time in human history it's been possible for humans to communicate (1) instantly, (2) across any distance, (3) with no possibility of eavesdropping (given the right software), and (4) via devices that are cheap and ordinary (i.e. expected to be owned and carried by just about anyone). Again, I think the harm of mandating backdoors far outweighs the benefit, but imagine your job is to make sure people aren't organizing mass terror attacks. I think you can take a look at the above environment and get a little worried, in a way you wouldn't be about people just whispering to each other in-person. When we say "no backdoors," we are truly making a tradeoff.
  - ls15 4y ago
    > Again, I think the harm of mandating backdoors far outweighs the benefit, but imagine your job is to make sure people aren't organizing mass terror attacks. I think you can take a look at the above environment and get a little worried, in a way you wouldn't be about people just whispering to each other in-person. When we say "no backdoors," we are truly making a tradeoff. I don't see the tradeoff, but just a very bad trade. Those who organize mass terror attacks will just find ways to evade the surveillance, while the masses will have lost their privacy. On top of that, terrorists could also benefit from a general lack of privacy. Recently the CCC found a device on ebay that contains biometric details of Afghans. Conveniently, the Taliban already has compatible devices that the U.S. military left in Afghanistan. The entire population of Afghanistan was biometrically catalogued without ensuring that the data, as well as the devices cannot be abused by Terrorists. The population has lost their privacy and on top of that, the Taliban now has tools that allow them to terrorize the population more efficiently. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34146283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34146283
deleted 4y ago
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jagged-chisel 4y ago
> Blackman says “The company’s proposition that if anyone has access to data, then many unauthorized people probably will have access to that data is false.” What on earth makes him think that?! This is exactly the answer I want, too.
WaitWaitWha 4y ago
History has shown us time and time again that when privacy is given away because "bad people can use it", without fail turns out to be detrimental to the law abiding citizens, with little to no impact to criminals. In many cases it further pushed the government into a dictatorial, even totalitarian regimes. This has happened with speech, journalism, gatherings, associating with people, religion, self defense, and many more. The very definition of a criminal is someone who ignores some laws, performs illegal (not legal) acts, including the laws that supposed to correct them. People need to stop voting on purely emotion, and vote more with logic and ethics. edit: add qualifier of "purely" & "more", as to acknowledge the responses and the nuanced problem around the overall topic.
- Xeoncross 4y ago
  Who's logic and ethics? I think that is the heart of the issue. Hard for all of us to stand together apart.
- whakim 4y ago
  I don't think blanket statements like this are true, and I don't think they're a healthy way to frame the debate. To take a non-trivial example, requiring cars to bear license plates - something almost everyone accepts, at least in the United States - has a lot of upsides like enforcement of traffic laws. Sure, perhaps traffic cameras aid totalitarian states in tracking the movements of citizens, but I think most people agree that license plates are a good societal tradeoff in terms of privacy. This is a long way of saying that, even as a strong privacy advocate, it's worth noting that the tradeoff is real and the terms of debate ought to be over whether the tradeoff is a good one or not. In the case of encryption, this is a difficult question for us to answer because we're essentially asking how many crimes might have been prevented or might have gone unpunished had the perpetrators used encrypted communications. That being said, I think the security state would be hitting us over the head with these statistics if they could actually make a coherent case - the fact that Reid Blackman is instead making a fallacious comparison between encryption and the nuclear launch codes suggests that the figures don't add up.
  - FigmentEngine 4y ago
spritefs 4y ago
Whether or not privacy is "OK" according to some random closet authoritarian NYT columnist is completely irrelevant If X columnist thinks encryption is a problem, they should be willing to live with the consequence that the Texas govt would be able to see the communications of women seeking out of state abortions There is no way to eliminate privacy for "bad" actors only but preserve it for "good" actors
- nuancebydefault 4y ago
  > There is no way to eliminate privacy for "bad" actors only but preserve it for "good" actors Exactly columnist's point.
- zirgs 4y ago
  And there's no way to ensure that only "good" actors will be able to use the backdoor. If there's a backdoor then "bad" actors will find a way to exploit it.
newaccount2021 4y ago
[dead]
guilhas 4y ago
Not for serving politicians, companies with public money contracts, listed companies CEOs, NGOs and charitable organizations receiving or giving a relevant number of millions in donations These people are far too corrupt to be left wandering by themselves
schappim 4y ago
For those who haven't read the post, the summary of Tim's Post is: Reid Blackman's article in the NYTimes argues that Signal App is dangerous because bad people could use it to plan nefarious activities and the legal authorities wouldn't be able to eavesdrop on them. However, it is impossible to address the downside of the app without completely shattering the upside of protected privacy. Blackman's claims about Signal's ideology are irrelevant because the math doesn't care - people are justified in wanting privacy, and there have been no credible proposals for taking away just the bad people's privacy. Signal is not the only end-to-end encrypted way to communicate, but it is a great piece of software and privacy is good. I'm really torn on this issue, as I understand both sides of the privacy debate. I am both a strong proponent of privacy, but I'm also an ecommerce business owner. Unfortunately, the same tools I use personally (VPNs, disposable email addresses, parcel lockers, etc.) are also utilized by fraudsters to make fraudulent orders. At this time, crypto payments appear to be the only viable way I can guarantee my customers' privacy and protect my business; however, the real-world market penetration for crypto is too low, and there are numerous other issues. This puts me in the sad position where "[complete] Privacy is NOT OK" for my business. I am currently exploring 3D Secure 2, what other options do I have?
- sabellito 4y ago
  How would having a backdoor to Signal help with your fraud issue? Are you sure you're a strong proponent of privacy?
  - schappim 4y ago
    I am attempting (poorly) to emphasize that this conversation requires more nuance. It is possible to be pro-privacy while simultaneously understanding why it is sometimes necessary to reveal private information.
    - sabellito 4y ago
      I understand what you're saying, and I also would love a middle-ground. However, as the article explains better than I could, there's no way to get the upsides of privacy while mitigating the downsides.
PaulKeeble 4y ago
Even if signal puts in a backdoor to allow wiretapping (and criminals) access the next thing that happens is someone makes another application that doesn't have it. Communication applications based on encryption aren't "hard" in the sense the maths is well established and a root of online business and a leaky system is worthless to businesses and many customers. Those that don't care will carry on with signal, everyone else will leave.
hwestiii 4y ago
Ticking time bomb, 2022 Edition?
philippejara 4y ago
It never fails to amaze me how people are currently ok with effectively wiretapping communication, compared to how it was treated back when wiretapping was a thing. That you have the NYT blatantly publishing something this brazen while ignoring completely the repeated surveillance scandals in the last decade is mind boggling. I know I should be charitable but there's no explanation I can find other than they're trying to create a second "x man bad" with elon for the guaranteed traffic now that trump is effectively neutered and irrelevant. Even during the heyday of the patriot act the mentality didn't seem this bad for americans, granted that could be my memory failing.
- Jorengarenar 4y ago
  >they're trying to create a second "x man bad" with elon now that trump is effectively neutered and irrelevant. Where did you get that Elon and Trump here from?
  - philippejara 4y ago
    elon is making a big stink(for whatever reason) about privacy and surveillance, going quite against the federal agencies that do it at least publically. jack dorsey pledging a million per year to signal in the wake of these revelations is the entire reason the piece this is responding to exists. trump outrage bait(and real things) was probably the single most guaranteed way to get traffic for these outlets idk like I said there is no conceivable way I can think of why would the outlet publish such a piece otherwise
    - matthewdgreen 4y ago
      I’m so tired of this nonsense. Pre-Elon Twitter did an enormous amount to fight back against government data requests [1]. “Did” as in: actually brought suit against the government repeatedly, both to fight requests on behalf of its users and to expose them. Elon talked a big game about speech and privacy and then proceeded to fire the world class privacy team that did this work. That’s the reality of the situation, and it’s a disaster. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/14/twitter-fights-for-disclosure-of-national-security-letters/amp/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/14/twitter-fights-for-disclos...
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
He absolutely hits the nail on the head, wrt the reasons we can't have any type of backdoor -ever. Hate to be the one to tell the global law enforcement community this, but, apparently, they seem to be entirely ignorant of it. People have been having untapped correspondence between each other since the dawn of language. That's THOUSANDS OF YEARS. Long before Signal. All they do, is meet, or drop communications, in any of ten thousand different ways, to each other. It could be a thumb drive, or it could be two people, idly scratching the dirt (one of the stories behind the Christian "fish").
- DavideNL 4y ago
  > "People have been having untapped correspondence between each other since the dawn of language. That's THOUSANDS OF YEARS." Well, not from Amsterdam to New York with less than a second delay, or to an audience of billions of people. (I'm not judging about whether the creation of backdoors is good or bad, just saying that's a bad argument.)
  - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
    Be nice. It’s not a “bad argument,” at all. Like most of these things, it’s simply a matter of degree and scale. “Less than a second” is just a fairly “fuzzy” quantitative statement, that can have many meanings, and can be scoped to encompass many datasets. For example, in the early 1900s, the telegraph system allowed people to send “BLACK COW NOW” across thousands of miles. If the two parties involved, have decided that this means “The President is a Jackass,” then, congratulations, we’ve used cryptographic communication to send subversive, anti-government messages. The telegraph system may take an hour or so (allowing for morse code translation), which is far less than the several months/weeks than it would take, via Pony Express. Amsterdam to New York, might actually take a half a second, depending on latency, and whatnot. Amsterdam to the moon, might take an order of magnitude more. If we had quantum communications working, then that might be truly instantaneous. Where’s the threshold? At what point do we decide that “the rules have changed?” Was Pheidippides an encrypted communication packet, when he delivered the news of the victory at Marathon in a few hours (he was certainly a “read-only” packet, as he dropped dead, after delivering the news)? What about the Enigma machine? That was combined with radio communications, to allow highly encrypted data exchange. Even with Turing, et al, what really gave us Enigma, was capturing a functioning unit on a German sub. It was a really tight system. It should be noted that hundreds of people died, during the war, because we did not want to give away the fact that Enigma was cracked, and allowed several attacks to proceed without interception. That's because we knew that, if the bad guys were aware that their communication medium was compromised, they would simply use another one, that we had not cracked (like the Navajo Code Talkers, on our side). Sound familiar? It’s really all just a numbers game. There's nothing new, here.
ls15 4y ago
[flagged]
- waboremo 4y ago
  I suppose the following group counts as idiots, but a lot of them are naive rather than actively malicious. You'll see people argue of things like oh who cares about privacy, I post online all the time and nothing happens. Completely oblivious to cases such as people using airtags to stalk people. Or people using location data from dating apps to assault their targets. Or widespread cases of people fearing their medical data could easily be accessed by law enforcement in a post Dobbs vs Jackson United States. This group is probably the most difficult to reason with because they refuse to empathize with others in these cases. To them, the idea of being targeted is something that happens to other people, and even if they were targeted nothing would happen besides maybe a nude leaking or whatever they consider "sensitive but worthless". It's this combination of lack of empathy mixed with a particular kind of data, not tech, illiteracy.
  - deleted 4y ago
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- deleted 4y ago
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furyofantares 4y ago
I'm in agreement with the conclusion but not sold by this explainer. How do you sort jurisdiction, and how do you ensure Signal employees can't snoop are problems, but if I was intent on trying to find a solution to allow governmental snooping I would not just throw my hands up at them. It's not actually fundamentally impossible to make compromises here. First, "how do you sort out jurisdiction?" isn't really a fundamental argument, it just sounds hard. And "Signal employees would necessarily be able to snoop" is plain wrong, a snoopable copy of each message could be encrypted such that it requires cooperation between parties to snoop: Signal itself plus sender's local and/or federal authority. Sender's rough location or origin is compromised here, but Signal employees can't snoop. You could also require multiple agencies with potential jurisdiction to cooperate in order to decrypt. If a federal agency claims jurisdiction they would need to convince both Signal and the local authority to unlock a message that the federal authority can then decrypt. I have lots of concerns with such a scheme and I hate it a lot! But I think it I would not be at all convinced by this explainer if I felt we should strive for snoopabilty.
- ilyt 4y ago
  The problem is that if it is snoopable, someone that should not have access to the messages can get it. There is no perfect security but adding a backdoor on purpose makes it oh so much harder.
  - furyofantares 4y ago
    I agree with you, but if you're trying to convince someone who strongly feels governments should be able to snoop, you're not going to convince them by imagining the worst version of the backdoor that allows that and arguing against it.
masterof0 4y ago
The feds have been working hard to push the "freedom isn't free" agenda in order to persuade the public that Chinese style is acceptable if we are the ones doing it. You can see the effort on YouTube(through major podcasts and channels), TikTok, now the New York Times, among other places (for example, the ex-CIA guy that trended in YT for a while, who claims the government needs to surveil us to "keep us safe", and the CIA is "good", Snowden is a traitor, and all the deep state talking points, etc...). Straight propaganda, such as the one coming from Tass or XinHua news, is insane.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  I really need to cancel my NY Times subscription They haven't really had much variation in content since the invasion of Ukraine, and the only variation are these random WTF-who-paid-for-this articles
- Nicksil 4y ago
  > [...] now the New York Times [...] Also this: (Note: This is under the opinion section, however.) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34176590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34176590
- deleted 4y ago
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nix23 4y ago
And also: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2015/03/30/Maoris https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2015/03/30/Maoris Beautiful art...but i had a 5 minutes giggle about the comment at the end of the page...gosh sometimes i still love the internet's....backflash to the 2000's.
eointierney 4y ago
Privacy is a fundamental Human Right. Only as the Law and all practices comply do they obtain our legitimacy. All else is nonsense
nhchris 4y ago
An unaddressed point: These things are usually framed as a change - communications are "going dark", law-enforcement is powerless, radical privacy-first ideology, etc... But it's not a change - conversations were private-by-default back when they mostly happened offline (yes, a govt. agent could have been eavesdropping, just as they can still plant a bug or an infiltrator today), and encryption is just restoring what we used to have before conversations moved online and became vulnerable to cheap, bulk, covert surveillance.
- hashstring 4y ago
  I agree but I think that one important aspect that did change is the fact that the strain to transfer information privately did become less. Now it’s possible to set up an encrypted channel across the globe in an instant.
bdominy 4y ago
Most people are just learning that their online conversations are not as private as they believed, but the real-life consequences for that lapse is almost zero which is why there is not more demand for secure solutions. What does affect you, however, is the harvesting of your contact info as spam, robocalls, identity theft, and a multitude of scams all begin with the gathering of those details. E2EE is gaining ground with the public and my hope is for all channels between individuals online to eventually be protected.
Waterluvian 4y ago
“…dangerous because bad people could use it to plan nefarious activities…” My interpretation of the spirit of legislation like the U.S. First Amendment is that “bad people” is impossible to objectively define, so the price for freedom of speech is that sometimes there are “bad people,” and you just have to live with it. I’m not sure I’ve really come to understand what is going through the minds of those who do want to police speech (and communications and association). Are they fools who cannot see where this leads? Do they believe that it will favour their interests? Are they just so easily frightened that they aren’t sold on liberty anymore?
- nine_k 4y ago
  The history of mankind is full of regimes we'd find now oppressive which did reasonably well. Britain ruled the waves and advanced the technology without a lot of free speech protections. Genoa, Florence, and Venice dominated trade, arts, and technology of the time without the idea of free speech. Even the totalitarian Soviet Union has been a formidable force while having a powerful reality distortion propaganda field and censorship inside, and China rose to be and remains a powerhouse with the Great Firewall and tons of censorship. Those people who prefer to err on the side of overdoing it while "rooting out evil" and stifling free exchange of opinion just care more about power. They don't mind a bit of oppression, because, you know, it's always against the bad guys, not them; they plan to always follow the party line (or even set it, the bolder of them).
Barrin92 4y ago
I didn't like the original post that much but I tink this one is worse because it's almost entirely emotional. Statements like this: "When you say “law enforcement”, who exactly do you mean? Employees of the United States? Of Oregon? Of Crow Wing County, MN? Of Italy? Of China? How are you going to sort out the jurisdictional disputes, and how are you going to ensure that only “good” law-enforcement organizations get to snoop?" are just knee-jerk. You sort it out the same way you do any issue of public authority. Legislation, regulation, courts, etc. Privacy is not binary. Technically it's perfectly possible to design differentiated systems that can be adjusted and provide transparent access when needed. And that's probably what we need the most, not just when it comes to crime but also user choice. Way too often these days you have extreme solutions on one end that result in users opting for unsafe choices just due to usability. There needs to be much more debate about how systems are designed so that they give authority access when needed in a way that has checks built in and protects users as much as possible. Authority has legitimate interest in preventing crime, this has wide public support in many cases, and individuals have legitimate interest in privacy, but neither is limitless. Any system designed for communication ought to reflect that or else we're just wasting resources on ideological debates.
college_physics 4y ago
Privacy is more than ok. Can there be democracy without privacy? Can there be enterprize without privacy (commercial secrecy) That we have tolerated the "privacy is dead" mantra for so long shows how weakened the reflexes of society, how lacking its immune system. The bad guys will find ways to evade the rule of law no matter what. Compromising the foundations of digital society with that pretext might be too high a price to pay
fnordpiglet 4y ago
An important aspect of mutually authenticated encryption is that while your conversations are private they’re also verifiably yours. When law enforcement gets access to bad guys devices (or good guys and neutral guys, see US customs dragnet cloning of devices at the border) they know for a very high certainty you did in fact have those conversations and can verify cryptographically who you had them with. Layer on pervasive biometric authentication the story of chain of custody for a communication is even tighter. Again as you point out the math doesn’t care if this is good or bad, it just is. It’s a tool that works in your favor, you know with a very high degree of certainty that the other party is in fact who you think it is. But so does everyone who has access to your conversation know for a high degree of certainty you said those things. I used to work for a company who advised you always apply the Wall Street journal test to what you write down in a communication - as you can never be certain it won’t be on the front page attributed to you. With mutually authenticated E2E encryption that’s doubly true.
- hiq 4y ago
  According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Protocol#Properties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Protocol#Properties, the Signal protocol provides message repudiation, so what you described doesn't apply to Signal, and probably not to WhatsApp either.
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    Except I specified the original devices are accessed, not that a third party intercepts.
    - groby_b 4y ago
      That still only proves your side of the communication. (Which has nothing to do with the encryption scheme, just with posession) The other side is identified by a phone number. "Don't use your own phone number" is fairly good advice if you engage in interactions that are high-value enough that anybody would both physically obtain a device and deidentify a phone number. It certainly doesn't make you magically more identifiable than other message exchange mechanisms.
privacyrealist 4y ago
Equating privacy in physical world with physical constraints with unconstrained digital world is a massive mistake. Sadly threads like these attract individuals who believe that government is singular rather than plural and have cult like following for SV bros like Moxie, Jack and Meredith. Fair Democratically elected governments are the most robust protection we have, sadly it will take another crazy event like Jan 6th spreading like wildfire over signal for people to realize folly of crypto/privacy solutionism. There have already been public lynching based on false Whatsapp forward rumors about child abductors and groomer but no one is willing to acknowledge that the same situations will be repeated in USA over Signal. Until then we will just be seranaded by meaningless plumbum like this blogpost
alphanullmeric 4y ago
I love how you can instantly tell who's European by who is willing to exclude financial privacy from discussions of privacy and/or criticize absolute privacy altogether.
- ilyt 4y ago
  I'd imagine by your lack of geography knowledge and thinking every European country is super similar you're American then ? But to the point, when you think about it, "financial privacy" in various forms of compelling to not discuss earnings has been by far most often used by corporations to underpay workers.
  - alphanullmeric 4y ago
    I’m glad we agree you oppose my privacy.
    - alexiaa 4y ago
      how exactly does it violate your privacy to be merely allowed (not forced) to discuss your salary?
      - alphanullmeric 4y ago
        Because you’re already allowed. Nobody comes knocking for an arrest when you tell your friend how much you make.
        IIsi50MHz 4y ago
        But…it seems people have been fired for disclosing how much they're paid? Some places, the employers have language in the contract banning it, and some of those some-places have courts that allow it.
        alphanullmeric 4y ago
AJRF 4y ago
Imagine the reach that article has, and the vast majority of those readers won't be searching out counter points - they will now have a mental note made that Signal == Shady. You have to wonder if it's incompetence or there is an agenda being pushed when things so flagrantly wrong/bad like this get published.
dancemethis 4y ago
You drop this at Discord HQ and the individuals there will catch fire instantly.
uconnectlol 4y ago
[dead]
janalsncm 4y ago
This essay needs to be submitted to the NYT opinion section as well. Nonsense reasoning should not go unchallenged. It was heartening to read the comments were almost universally disagreeing with Blackman’s piece.
Teamteam16 4y ago
Global Stored Entered
lebaux 4y ago
privacy is where we should start, if we want to fix this world, leave me alone faith

We have far more to fear from those that peddle fear than from those we are told to be fearful of.

thomassmith65 4y ago
If a technology enables criminals to coordinate without any hope of detection that seems worthy of some fear to me.
- zirgs 4y ago
  That's the price you have to pay if you want to live in a free country.
  - thomassmith65 4y ago
    The point of the original article is that it's not black and white. There is no, and never can be any, entirely free country. I want to be free enough to have good privacy, but not so free as to allow a crime ring to take over my town.
    - DocTomoe 4y ago
      Some people say that already has happened, and the crime ring is called "the government".
      - p0pcult 4y ago
        >Some people Other people think those first people are complete nutjobs.
    - philippejara 4y ago
      if you are in a position a crime ring can take over your town, no amount of surveillance will help, it will most likely make the crime ring stronger by giving them access to it, there's a joke here about the government being already the crime ring I guess.
- sabellito 4y ago
  Anyone can host an e2e chat solution, trying to take Signal down doesn't change anything for serious organised crime.
- tmpburning 4y ago
  [flagged]
- tensor 4y ago
  This has always been true. The old fashion way of doing it was called "getting together in person someplace private." Yes Signal makes it a bit easier, but also general technology makes it harder too.
- ilyt 4y ago
  They can do that. The cat is out of the bag. Worst case they can just use GPG/PGP, S/MIME or a bunch of other ways. Backdooring a communication medium just means they won't use it in the first place.
weakfortress 4y ago
[flagged]
- timbray 4y ago
  You're not allowed to drive at twice the speed limit, nor to smoke in enclosed public spaces, and, in certain pandemic situations, you shouldn't be allowed to breathe unobstructedly on strangers. Where's the privacy dimension?!
  - base698 4y ago
    What level of risk do you believe allows massive corporations to loot the government? 1 in 100,000? 1 in 10,000?
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  > To me, it's a binary choice. You are either for privacy or you are not. This is called black and white thinking and it's generally a intellectual dead end. Applying wanton black and white thinking is a sign of a mind incapable of nuance, and rich, deep thought.
  - spritefs 4y ago
    > Applying wanton black and white thinking is a sign of a mind incapable of nuance, and rich, deep thought. Can't think of one instance where a group was able to politically accomplish something on the basis of "nuance" If someone is making an appeal to "nuance", they're losing
    - kelseyfrog 4y ago
      Right, so what most people do when faced with a lack of knowledge is go out looking for it or maintain weakly held beliefs. To conclude that something isn't possible because one doesn't know of it is thought-limiting. This is the political version of claiming, "I don't know how to sew and I've never seen someone sew. Therefore sewing is impossible." It's stunningly wrong. I can't seriously believe someone would think this way.
deleted 4y ago
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The 'government' is responsible for a couple orders of magnitude more harm than 'criminals'. We're talking hundreds of millions deaths worldwide over the last century. I'm much less concerned about the government knowing what the 'criminals' are talking about (there are plenty of other ways to track them) than I am with the government knowing what the citizens are planning on standing up for/against.

theCrowing 4y ago
He is right but I hate people talking about the government like it's some random entity. You are able to vote, you can decide who is the government AND here comes to the kicker you can even be IN the government. You just prefer to not be, you prefer to build artificial stuff to circumvent what your elected government does. It's so counterintuitive.
- newZWhoDis 4y ago
  How do I vote out the FBI/CIA/NSA/ATF? The politicians change and they all stay the same or get more powerful
  - theCrowing 4y ago
    Well, get elected write a bill and find allies. That's how.
    - z3c0 4y ago
      Who would have thought it could be so simple?
      - theCrowing 4y ago
        Nobody said it is easy and that's why you don't do it and prefer to write sarcastic comments on the internet.

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grammers 4y ago

Totally agree with this. Yes, with privacy it's hard to 'eavesdrop' on the bad guys, but isn't it allowed to whisper? Why should having privacy be ok in real life, but not when you communicate digitally? So far no one has offered an honest explanation why we must monitor everything online, usually it's about protecting kids or defending against terrorists, but is this really it? It doesn't convince me. I'm happy using apps like Signal and Tutanota, and I believe everyone should do the same.

clucas 4y ago
I'm totally against mandated backdoors, and I am pro-privacy. But we should acknowledge that the communication environment we live in now is materially different than it has been in the past. The past ~15 years is the first time in human history it's been possible for humans to communicate (1) instantly, (2) across any distance, (3) with no possibility of eavesdropping (given the right software), and (4) via devices that are cheap and ordinary (i.e. expected to be owned and carried by just about anyone). Again, I think the harm of mandating backdoors far outweighs the benefit, but imagine your job is to make sure people aren't organizing mass terror attacks. I think you can take a look at the above environment and get a little worried, in a way you wouldn't be about people just whispering to each other in-person. When we say "no backdoors," we are truly making a tradeoff.
- ls15 4y ago
  > Again, I think the harm of mandating backdoors far outweighs the benefit, but imagine your job is to make sure people aren't organizing mass terror attacks. I think you can take a look at the above environment and get a little worried, in a way you wouldn't be about people just whispering to each other in-person. When we say "no backdoors," we are truly making a tradeoff. I don't see the tradeoff, but just a very bad trade. Those who organize mass terror attacks will just find ways to evade the surveillance, while the masses will have lost their privacy. On top of that, terrorists could also benefit from a general lack of privacy. Recently the CCC found a device on ebay that contains biometric details of Afghans. Conveniently, the Taliban already has compatible devices that the U.S. military left in Afghanistan. The entire population of Afghanistan was biometrically catalogued without ensuring that the data, as well as the devices cannot be abused by Terrorists. The population has lost their privacy and on top of that, the Taliban now has tools that allow them to terrorize the population more efficiently. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34146283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34146283

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jagged-chisel 4y ago

> Blackman says “The company’s proposition that if anyone has access to data, then many unauthorized people probably will have access to that data is false.” What on earth makes him think that?! This is exactly the answer I want, too.

WaitWaitWha 4y ago

History has shown us time and time again that when privacy is given away because "bad people can use it", without fail turns out to be detrimental to the law abiding citizens, with little to no impact to criminals. In many cases it further pushed the government into a dictatorial, even totalitarian regimes. This has happened with speech, journalism, gatherings, associating with people, religion, self defense, and many more. The very definition of a criminal is someone who ignores some laws, performs illegal (not legal) acts, including the laws that supposed to correct them. People need to stop voting on purely emotion, and vote more with logic and ethics. edit: add qualifier of "purely" & "more", as to acknowledge the responses and the nuanced problem around the overall topic.

Xeoncross 4y ago
Who's logic and ethics? I think that is the heart of the issue. Hard for all of us to stand together apart.
whakim 4y ago
I don't think blanket statements like this are true, and I don't think they're a healthy way to frame the debate. To take a non-trivial example, requiring cars to bear license plates - something almost everyone accepts, at least in the United States - has a lot of upsides like enforcement of traffic laws. Sure, perhaps traffic cameras aid totalitarian states in tracking the movements of citizens, but I think most people agree that license plates are a good societal tradeoff in terms of privacy. This is a long way of saying that, even as a strong privacy advocate, it's worth noting that the tradeoff is real and the terms of debate ought to be over whether the tradeoff is a good one or not. In the case of encryption, this is a difficult question for us to answer because we're essentially asking how many crimes might have been prevented or might have gone unpunished had the perpetrators used encrypted communications. That being said, I think the security state would be hitting us over the head with these statistics if they could actually make a coherent case - the fact that Reid Blackman is instead making a fallacious comparison between encryption and the nuclear launch codes suggests that the figures don't add up.
- FigmentEngine 4y ago

spritefs 4y ago

Whether or not privacy is "OK" according to some random closet authoritarian NYT columnist is completely irrelevant If X columnist thinks encryption is a problem, they should be willing to live with the consequence that the Texas govt would be able to see the communications of women seeking out of state abortions There is no way to eliminate privacy for "bad" actors only but preserve it for "good" actors

nuancebydefault 4y ago
> There is no way to eliminate privacy for "bad" actors only but preserve it for "good" actors Exactly columnist's point.
zirgs 4y ago
And there's no way to ensure that only "good" actors will be able to use the backdoor. If there's a backdoor then "bad" actors will find a way to exploit it.

newaccount2021 4y ago

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guilhas 4y ago

Not for serving politicians, companies with public money contracts, listed companies CEOs, NGOs and charitable organizations receiving or giving a relevant number of millions in donations These people are far too corrupt to be left wandering by themselves

schappim 4y ago

For those who haven't read the post, the summary of Tim's Post is: Reid Blackman's article in the NYTimes argues that Signal App is dangerous because bad people could use it to plan nefarious activities and the legal authorities wouldn't be able to eavesdrop on them. However, it is impossible to address the downside of the app without completely shattering the upside of protected privacy. Blackman's claims about Signal's ideology are irrelevant because the math doesn't care - people are justified in wanting privacy, and there have been no credible proposals for taking away just the bad people's privacy. Signal is not the only end-to-end encrypted way to communicate, but it is a great piece of software and privacy is good. I'm really torn on this issue, as I understand both sides of the privacy debate. I am both a strong proponent of privacy, but I'm also an ecommerce business owner. Unfortunately, the same tools I use personally (VPNs, disposable email addresses, parcel lockers, etc.) are also utilized by fraudsters to make fraudulent orders. At this time, crypto payments appear to be the only viable way I can guarantee my customers' privacy and protect my business; however, the real-world market penetration for crypto is too low, and there are numerous other issues. This puts me in the sad position where "[complete] Privacy is NOT OK" for my business. I am currently exploring 3D Secure 2, what other options do I have?

sabellito 4y ago
How would having a backdoor to Signal help with your fraud issue? Are you sure you're a strong proponent of privacy?
- schappim 4y ago
  I am attempting (poorly) to emphasize that this conversation requires more nuance. It is possible to be pro-privacy while simultaneously understanding why it is sometimes necessary to reveal private information.
  - sabellito 4y ago
    I understand what you're saying, and I also would love a middle-ground. However, as the article explains better than I could, there's no way to get the upsides of privacy while mitigating the downsides.

PaulKeeble 4y ago

Even if signal puts in a backdoor to allow wiretapping (and criminals) access the next thing that happens is someone makes another application that doesn't have it. Communication applications based on encryption aren't "hard" in the sense the maths is well established and a root of online business and a leaky system is worthless to businesses and many customers. Those that don't care will carry on with signal, everyone else will leave.

hwestiii 4y ago

Ticking time bomb, 2022 Edition?

philippejara 4y ago

It never fails to amaze me how people are currently ok with effectively wiretapping communication, compared to how it was treated back when wiretapping was a thing. That you have the NYT blatantly publishing something this brazen while ignoring completely the repeated surveillance scandals in the last decade is mind boggling. I know I should be charitable but there's no explanation I can find other than they're trying to create a second "x man bad" with elon for the guaranteed traffic now that trump is effectively neutered and irrelevant. Even during the heyday of the patriot act the mentality didn't seem this bad for americans, granted that could be my memory failing.

Jorengarenar 4y ago
>they're trying to create a second "x man bad" with elon now that trump is effectively neutered and irrelevant. Where did you get that Elon and Trump here from?
- philippejara 4y ago
  elon is making a big stink(for whatever reason) about privacy and surveillance, going quite against the federal agencies that do it at least publically. jack dorsey pledging a million per year to signal in the wake of these revelations is the entire reason the piece this is responding to exists. trump outrage bait(and real things) was probably the single most guaranteed way to get traffic for these outlets idk like I said there is no conceivable way I can think of why would the outlet publish such a piece otherwise
  - matthewdgreen 4y ago
    I’m so tired of this nonsense. Pre-Elon Twitter did an enormous amount to fight back against government data requests [1]. “Did” as in: actually brought suit against the government repeatedly, both to fight requests on behalf of its users and to expose them. Elon talked a big game about speech and privacy and then proceeded to fire the world class privacy team that did this work. That’s the reality of the situation, and it’s a disaster. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/14/twitter-fights-for-disclosure-of-national-security-letters/amp/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/14/twitter-fights-for-disclos...

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

He absolutely hits the nail on the head, wrt the reasons we can't have any type of backdoor -ever. Hate to be the one to tell the global law enforcement community this, but, apparently, they seem to be entirely ignorant of it. People have been having untapped correspondence between each other since the dawn of language. That's THOUSANDS OF YEARS. Long before Signal. All they do, is meet, or drop communications, in any of ten thousand different ways, to each other. It could be a thumb drive, or it could be two people, idly scratching the dirt (one of the stories behind the Christian "fish").

DavideNL 4y ago
> "People have been having untapped correspondence between each other since the dawn of language. That's THOUSANDS OF YEARS." Well, not from Amsterdam to New York with less than a second delay, or to an audience of billions of people. (I'm not judging about whether the creation of backdoors is good or bad, just saying that's a bad argument.)
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  Be nice. It’s not a “bad argument,” at all. Like most of these things, it’s simply a matter of degree and scale. “Less than a second” is just a fairly “fuzzy” quantitative statement, that can have many meanings, and can be scoped to encompass many datasets. For example, in the early 1900s, the telegraph system allowed people to send “BLACK COW NOW” across thousands of miles. If the two parties involved, have decided that this means “The President is a Jackass,” then, congratulations, we’ve used cryptographic communication to send subversive, anti-government messages. The telegraph system may take an hour or so (allowing for morse code translation), which is far less than the several months/weeks than it would take, via Pony Express. Amsterdam to New York, might actually take a half a second, depending on latency, and whatnot. Amsterdam to the moon, might take an order of magnitude more. If we had quantum communications working, then that might be truly instantaneous. Where’s the threshold? At what point do we decide that “the rules have changed?” Was Pheidippides an encrypted communication packet, when he delivered the news of the victory at Marathon in a few hours (he was certainly a “read-only” packet, as he dropped dead, after delivering the news)? What about the Enigma machine? That was combined with radio communications, to allow highly encrypted data exchange. Even with Turing, et al, what really gave us Enigma, was capturing a functioning unit on a German sub. It was a really tight system. It should be noted that hundreds of people died, during the war, because we did not want to give away the fact that Enigma was cracked, and allowed several attacks to proceed without interception. That's because we knew that, if the bad guys were aware that their communication medium was compromised, they would simply use another one, that we had not cracked (like the Navajo Code Talkers, on our side). Sound familiar? It’s really all just a numbers game. There's nothing new, here.

ls15 4y ago

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waboremo 4y ago
I suppose the following group counts as idiots, but a lot of them are naive rather than actively malicious. You'll see people argue of things like oh who cares about privacy, I post online all the time and nothing happens. Completely oblivious to cases such as people using airtags to stalk people. Or people using location data from dating apps to assault their targets. Or widespread cases of people fearing their medical data could easily be accessed by law enforcement in a post Dobbs vs Jackson United States. This group is probably the most difficult to reason with because they refuse to empathize with others in these cases. To them, the idea of being targeted is something that happens to other people, and even if they were targeted nothing would happen besides maybe a nude leaking or whatever they consider "sensitive but worthless". It's this combination of lack of empathy mixed with a particular kind of data, not tech, illiteracy.
- deleted 4y ago
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furyofantares 4y ago

I'm in agreement with the conclusion but not sold by this explainer. How do you sort jurisdiction, and how do you ensure Signal employees can't snoop are problems, but if I was intent on trying to find a solution to allow governmental snooping I would not just throw my hands up at them. It's not actually fundamentally impossible to make compromises here. First, "how do you sort out jurisdiction?" isn't really a fundamental argument, it just sounds hard. And "Signal employees would necessarily be able to snoop" is plain wrong, a snoopable copy of each message could be encrypted such that it requires cooperation between parties to snoop: Signal itself plus sender's local and/or federal authority. Sender's rough location or origin is compromised here, but Signal employees can't snoop. You could also require multiple agencies with potential jurisdiction to cooperate in order to decrypt. If a federal agency claims jurisdiction they would need to convince both Signal and the local authority to unlock a message that the federal authority can then decrypt. I have lots of concerns with such a scheme and I hate it a lot! But I think it I would not be at all convinced by this explainer if I felt we should strive for snoopabilty.

ilyt 4y ago
The problem is that if it is snoopable, someone that should not have access to the messages can get it. There is no perfect security but adding a backdoor on purpose makes it oh so much harder.
- furyofantares 4y ago
  I agree with you, but if you're trying to convince someone who strongly feels governments should be able to snoop, you're not going to convince them by imagining the worst version of the backdoor that allows that and arguing against it.

masterof0 4y ago

The feds have been working hard to push the "freedom isn't free" agenda in order to persuade the public that Chinese style is acceptable if we are the ones doing it. You can see the effort on YouTube(through major podcasts and channels), TikTok, now the New York Times, among other places (for example, the ex-CIA guy that trended in YT for a while, who claims the government needs to surveil us to "keep us safe", and the CIA is "good", Snowden is a traitor, and all the deep state talking points, etc...). Straight propaganda, such as the one coming from Tass or XinHua news, is insane.

yieldcrv 4y ago
I really need to cancel my NY Times subscription They haven't really had much variation in content since the invasion of Ukraine, and the only variation are these random WTF-who-paid-for-this articles
Nicksil 4y ago
> [...] now the New York Times [...] Also this: (Note: This is under the opinion section, however.) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34176590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34176590
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nix23 4y ago

And also: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2015/03/30/Maoris https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2015/03/30/Maoris Beautiful art...but i had a 5 minutes giggle about the comment at the end of the page...gosh sometimes i still love the internet's....backflash to the 2000's.

eointierney 4y ago

Privacy is a fundamental Human Right. Only as the Law and all practices comply do they obtain our legitimacy. All else is nonsense

nhchris 4y ago

An unaddressed point: These things are usually framed as a change - communications are "going dark", law-enforcement is powerless, radical privacy-first ideology, etc... But it's not a change - conversations were private-by-default back when they mostly happened offline (yes, a govt. agent could have been eavesdropping, just as they can still plant a bug or an infiltrator today), and encryption is just restoring what we used to have before conversations moved online and became vulnerable to cheap, bulk, covert surveillance.

hashstring 4y ago
I agree but I think that one important aspect that did change is the fact that the strain to transfer information privately did become less. Now it’s possible to set up an encrypted channel across the globe in an instant.

bdominy 4y ago

Most people are just learning that their online conversations are not as private as they believed, but the real-life consequences for that lapse is almost zero which is why there is not more demand for secure solutions. What does affect you, however, is the harvesting of your contact info as spam, robocalls, identity theft, and a multitude of scams all begin with the gathering of those details. E2EE is gaining ground with the public and my hope is for all channels between individuals online to eventually be protected.

Waterluvian 4y ago

“…dangerous because bad people could use it to plan nefarious activities…” My interpretation of the spirit of legislation like the U.S. First Amendment is that “bad people” is impossible to objectively define, so the price for freedom of speech is that sometimes there are “bad people,” and you just have to live with it. I’m not sure I’ve really come to understand what is going through the minds of those who do want to police speech (and communications and association). Are they fools who cannot see where this leads? Do they believe that it will favour their interests? Are they just so easily frightened that they aren’t sold on liberty anymore?

nine_k 4y ago
The history of mankind is full of regimes we'd find now oppressive which did reasonably well. Britain ruled the waves and advanced the technology without a lot of free speech protections. Genoa, Florence, and Venice dominated trade, arts, and technology of the time without the idea of free speech. Even the totalitarian Soviet Union has been a formidable force while having a powerful reality distortion propaganda field and censorship inside, and China rose to be and remains a powerhouse with the Great Firewall and tons of censorship. Those people who prefer to err on the side of overdoing it while "rooting out evil" and stifling free exchange of opinion just care more about power. They don't mind a bit of oppression, because, you know, it's always against the bad guys, not them; they plan to always follow the party line (or even set it, the bolder of them).

Barrin92 4y ago

I didn't like the original post that much but I tink this one is worse because it's almost entirely emotional. Statements like this: "When you say “law enforcement”, who exactly do you mean? Employees of the United States? Of Oregon? Of Crow Wing County, MN? Of Italy? Of China? How are you going to sort out the jurisdictional disputes, and how are you going to ensure that only “good” law-enforcement organizations get to snoop?" are just knee-jerk. You sort it out the same way you do any issue of public authority. Legislation, regulation, courts, etc. Privacy is not binary. Technically it's perfectly possible to design differentiated systems that can be adjusted and provide transparent access when needed. And that's probably what we need the most, not just when it comes to crime but also user choice. Way too often these days you have extreme solutions on one end that result in users opting for unsafe choices just due to usability. There needs to be much more debate about how systems are designed so that they give authority access when needed in a way that has checks built in and protects users as much as possible. Authority has legitimate interest in preventing crime, this has wide public support in many cases, and individuals have legitimate interest in privacy, but neither is limitless. Any system designed for communication ought to reflect that or else we're just wasting resources on ideological debates.

college_physics 4y ago

Privacy is more than ok. Can there be democracy without privacy? Can there be enterprize without privacy (commercial secrecy) That we have tolerated the "privacy is dead" mantra for so long shows how weakened the reflexes of society, how lacking its immune system. The bad guys will find ways to evade the rule of law no matter what. Compromising the foundations of digital society with that pretext might be too high a price to pay

fnordpiglet 4y ago

An important aspect of mutually authenticated encryption is that while your conversations are private they’re also verifiably yours. When law enforcement gets access to bad guys devices (or good guys and neutral guys, see US customs dragnet cloning of devices at the border) they know for a very high certainty you did in fact have those conversations and can verify cryptographically who you had them with. Layer on pervasive biometric authentication the story of chain of custody for a communication is even tighter. Again as you point out the math doesn’t care if this is good or bad, it just is. It’s a tool that works in your favor, you know with a very high degree of certainty that the other party is in fact who you think it is. But so does everyone who has access to your conversation know for a high degree of certainty you said those things. I used to work for a company who advised you always apply the Wall Street journal test to what you write down in a communication - as you can never be certain it won’t be on the front page attributed to you. With mutually authenticated E2E encryption that’s doubly true.

hiq 4y ago
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Protocol#Properties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Protocol#Properties, the Signal protocol provides message repudiation, so what you described doesn't apply to Signal, and probably not to WhatsApp either.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  Except I specified the original devices are accessed, not that a third party intercepts.
  - groby_b 4y ago
    That still only proves your side of the communication. (Which has nothing to do with the encryption scheme, just with posession) The other side is identified by a phone number. "Don't use your own phone number" is fairly good advice if you engage in interactions that are high-value enough that anybody would both physically obtain a device and deidentify a phone number. It certainly doesn't make you magically more identifiable than other message exchange mechanisms.

privacyrealist 4y ago

Equating privacy in physical world with physical constraints with unconstrained digital world is a massive mistake. Sadly threads like these attract individuals who believe that government is singular rather than plural and have cult like following for SV bros like Moxie, Jack and Meredith. Fair Democratically elected governments are the most robust protection we have, sadly it will take another crazy event like Jan 6th spreading like wildfire over signal for people to realize folly of crypto/privacy solutionism. There have already been public lynching based on false Whatsapp forward rumors about child abductors and groomer but no one is willing to acknowledge that the same situations will be repeated in USA over Signal. Until then we will just be seranaded by meaningless plumbum like this blogpost

alphanullmeric 4y ago

I love how you can instantly tell who's European by who is willing to exclude financial privacy from discussions of privacy and/or criticize absolute privacy altogether.

ilyt 4y ago
I'd imagine by your lack of geography knowledge and thinking every European country is super similar you're American then ? But to the point, when you think about it, "financial privacy" in various forms of compelling to not discuss earnings has been by far most often used by corporations to underpay workers.
- alphanullmeric 4y ago
  I’m glad we agree you oppose my privacy.
  - alexiaa 4y ago
    how exactly does it violate your privacy to be merely allowed (not forced) to discuss your salary?
    - alphanullmeric 4y ago
      Because you’re already allowed. Nobody comes knocking for an arrest when you tell your friend how much you make.
      - IIsi50MHz 4y ago
        But…it seems people have been fired for disclosing how much they're paid? Some places, the employers have language in the contract banning it, and some of those some-places have courts that allow it.
        alphanullmeric 4y ago

AJRF 4y ago

Imagine the reach that article has, and the vast majority of those readers won't be searching out counter points - they will now have a mental note made that Signal == Shady. You have to wonder if it's incompetence or there is an agenda being pushed when things so flagrantly wrong/bad like this get published.

dancemethis 4y ago

You drop this at Discord HQ and the individuals there will catch fire instantly.

uconnectlol 4y ago

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janalsncm 4y ago

This essay needs to be submitted to the NYT opinion section as well. Nonsense reasoning should not go unchallenged. It was heartening to read the comments were almost universally disagreeing with Blackman’s piece.

Teamteam16 4y ago

Global Stored Entered

lebaux 4y ago

privacy is where we should start, if we want to fix this world, leave me alone faith