4 ms·

Concrete case: you are the owner of an encrypted chat app, let's say "WhatsSignalGram". Tomorrow, the government is asking you to capture messages of some user

by rvnx 4y ago

Concrete case: you are the owner of an encrypted chat app, let's say "WhatsSignalGram". Tomorrow, the government is asking you to capture messages of some users that are planning a terrorist attack. By default your app is not capturing these messages, but technically you could do it with a specific update. The lawyers already challenged the decision, they confirmed the request cannot be avoided. You end up pushing a backdoor targeting specific users ("a law enforcement custom update"). Court is explicitly asking you to not disclose the existence of this special update. As a business owner, why would you reveal it ? You'll go to jail (or struggle in court at least) for few years, have a horrible reputation and end up poor because your company is going to lose all its user base :/ This sounds like an insane decision. The users, upon learning you got backdoored are going to go away, because the competitors "Telegram", "WhatsApp", etc, they will not have removed their canary or they will simply not have claimed anything :) Perhaps on paper the law cannot force you, but if you don't comply you are cutting the branch you are sitting on. The alternative is just to leave the warrant canary and live happily after. Perhaps you even made the world better after all and actually prevented an attack.

alex_sf 4y ago
The sort of banana republic that can generate a court order for you to do that is the same kind that would simply put a gun to your head instead. In the US, no court would order that type of equitable relief. But, pretending that's not the case: > As a business owner, why would you reveal it ? Because you have principles? Backed up with at least a little bit of spine? > You'll go to jail (or struggle in court at least) for few years, have a horrible reputation and end up poor because your company is going to lose all its user base ? It's not clear that you would go to jail. You can simply shutdown[1]. For those that actually care about privacy, your reputation would only increase. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/08/lavabit-email-shut-down-edward-snowden https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/08/lavabit-e...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- steve_taylor 4y ago
  Australia is that banana republic. https://youtu.be/eW-OMR-iWOE https://youtu.be/eW-OMR-iWOE
  - rvnx 4y ago
    Not a single doubt that the authorities (everywhere in the world!) have plenty of ways to coerce businesses and their owners to collaborate if the cause is important enough.
  - alex_sf 4y ago
    I don't disagree.
antisocialist 4y ago
- Don't use WhatsSignalGram if it's incorporated in a country where this is possible - Don't create a platform where arbitrary changes can be made - Don't use a platform which can make arbitrary changes that decrease privacy
- rvnx 4y ago
  Sounds difficult to find a computer or phone to use then :/
  - antisocialist 4y ago
    Yes. Blockchain-based OSS regularly gets negative comments here on HN, but they do implement such workarounds (personally I think xx Network is well-protected), as do non-blockchain based Open Source projects. The problem for the latter is no funding for devs and independent, decentralized infrastructure.
dane-pgp 4y ago
> The alternative is just to leave the warrant canary and live happily after. Another alternative would be to implement Binary Transparency, and make the app only download updates whose hashes appear in an independently-run jurisdictionally-decentralized append-only log. (Rolling out such a change might take too long to help the target of the current NSL, but it would protect future users, and announcing such a feature would itself be sending quite an important message). I suppose if your business relies on keeping its source code secret, then you could just put an "if userName == the_target_mentioned_in_the_NSL" branch into the code, so that all your users receive the same update, but hopefully someone out there would be able to reverse engineer that code (perhaps after an anonymous tip-off). Perhaps the government would be willing to pay for a software engineer to obfuscate the code enough that this malicious branch won't be detected in time, but I think that would put selective pressure on software companies to not distribute obfuscated binaries.
jtolds 4y ago
I'm late to add to this conversation, but one of the reasons Storj is open source is so that our customers can audit our code and end-to-end encryption to confirm that no backdoors exist.

by rvnx 4y ago

alex_sf 4y ago

The sort of banana republic that can generate a court order for you to do that is the same kind that would simply put a gun to your head instead. In the US, no court would order that type of equitable relief. But, pretending that's not the case: > As a business owner, why would you reveal it ? Because you have principles? Backed up with at least a little bit of spine? > You'll go to jail (or struggle in court at least) for few years, have a horrible reputation and end up poor because your company is going to lose all its user base ? It's not clear that you would go to jail. You can simply shutdown[1]. For those that actually care about privacy, your reputation would only increase. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/08/lavabit-email-shut-down-edward-snowden https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/08/lavabit-e...

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
steve_taylor 4y ago
Australia is that banana republic. https://youtu.be/eW-OMR-iWOE https://youtu.be/eW-OMR-iWOE
- rvnx 4y ago
  Not a single doubt that the authorities (everywhere in the world!) have plenty of ways to coerce businesses and their owners to collaborate if the cause is important enough.
- alex_sf 4y ago
  I don't disagree.

antisocialist 4y ago

- Don't use WhatsSignalGram if it's incorporated in a country where this is possible - Don't create a platform where arbitrary changes can be made - Don't use a platform which can make arbitrary changes that decrease privacy

rvnx 4y ago
Sounds difficult to find a computer or phone to use then :/
- antisocialist 4y ago
  Yes. Blockchain-based OSS regularly gets negative comments here on HN, but they do implement such workarounds (personally I think xx Network is well-protected), as do non-blockchain based Open Source projects. The problem for the latter is no funding for devs and independent, decentralized infrastructure.

dane-pgp 4y ago

> The alternative is just to leave the warrant canary and live happily after. Another alternative would be to implement Binary Transparency, and make the app only download updates whose hashes appear in an independently-run jurisdictionally-decentralized append-only log. (Rolling out such a change might take too long to help the target of the current NSL, but it would protect future users, and announcing such a feature would itself be sending quite an important message). I suppose if your business relies on keeping its source code secret, then you could just put an "if userName == the_target_mentioned_in_the_NSL" branch into the code, so that all your users receive the same update, but hopefully someone out there would be able to reverse engineer that code (perhaps after an anonymous tip-off). Perhaps the government would be willing to pay for a software engineer to obfuscate the code enough that this malicious branch won't be detected in time, but I think that would put selective pressure on software companies to not distribute obfuscated binaries.

jtolds 4y ago

I'm late to add to this conversation, but one of the reasons Storj is open source is so that our customers can audit our code and end-to-end encryption to confirm that no backdoors exist.