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The argument being made is that Google execs switched over to Signal when they wanted to discuss the crimes they were committing. They weren't always using Sig

by smt88 2y ago

The argument being made is that Google execs switched over to Signal when they wanted to discuss the crimes they were committing. They weren't always using Signal. They had many thousands of emails and other communications that were preserved and used as evidence.

cornel_io 2y ago
I use Signal by default for every piece of communication that I can. Am I somehow held to a different standard just because I was paranoid about surveillance from the start? That seems wrong.
- ikiris 2y ago
  If you're telling a judge "I specifically hide all written communication that I'm legally required to hold and produce so that you can't see it" you're gonna have a bad time.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- zarzavat 2y ago
  > Am I somehow held to a different standard just because I was paranoid about surveillance from the start? Yes, how else could it work? For example if you have a policy to destroy CCTV footage at the end of the day then it’s not illegal to do that. If you have a policy to keep CCTV footage but when the police come and ask you some questions you delete it because you know that it contains evidence of a crime, that’s destruction of evidence. It’s not illegal to delete things, otherwise the world would run out of storage, it’s illegal to delete things to knowingly impede an investigation.
  - cornel_io 2y ago
    Fair enough. I'm never talking to anyone over insecure channels again.
    - yau8edq12i 2y ago
      How is technical nature of your communication with others at all relevant? The court can order you to hand over the encryption keys, and if you destroy them, then it's the same thing as destroying the communication.
    - ikiris 2y ago
      It's always weird when some tech nerds think they have some magic wand which avoids legal controls. A judge would just smack you down hard if this ever came to court, and your argument of well I special exception here due to technical barriers will just end up with you getting an adverse judgement or contempt charge depending on how flagrant it and if you had prior legal orders to the contrary.
    - smt88 2y ago
      > I'm never talking to anyone over insecure channels again. You can and should do this. No one will punish you for it in court unless you refuse to give them evidence that they have legally obtained. I'm not sure why this is so complicated for you. Let's say you murder someone with a knife, and you keep that bloody knife in a safe labeled, "Potential Evidence of Murder". A judge orders you to open the safe, and instead you incinerate it and everything inside it. You wouldn't be punished for keeping your jewels in other safes. You'd be punished for committing a crime and then preventing a court from getting the evidence.
dyauspitr 2y ago
So what? Everyone everywhere does that about sensitive stuff. How many times have you heard- call me about it I don’t want to put it in writing.
- smt88 2y ago
  So you believe our legal system should not punish executives of a company that is: - publicly traded - more powerful than many entire countries - committing crimes ...when those executives explicitly switched to disappearing messaging in order to cover up those crimes? Context matters. I don't want to live in a world where people can avoid prosecution just by deleting evidence.
  - ETH_start 2y ago
    Punishing them solely for their success is unfair. If power accumulated through capturing natural monopolies is the issue, then we need to address that directly with public funding of open source and decentralized alternatives that can become the market standard. Not punish people who fill the gaps the public left, by effectively providing essential services.
    - ameister14 2y ago
      So this wasn't a natural monopoly because the high cost of entry isn't the sole or even arguably primary barrier to competition, and that's not the issue.
    - seankurtz 2y ago
      I think you really ought to justify your use of the terminology "natural monopoly". To the extent that such a thing exists, is this not exactly what we have anti-trust laws to prevent? It seems to me that we can, have, and should punish people for success if that success is likely to lead to well known kinds of market failure, and that such a policy is generally non-controversial outside of the most extreme forms of libertarian political philosophies (which unfortunately, are disproportionately prevalent in big tech and likely to get the whole industry in serious hot water). Certainly, you could make the same "natural monopoly" argument against just about every serious anti-trust action that has taken place in the past. It didn't work then and I don't think its going to work now. Pretending that closed platforms that exist on computer networks (and are not themselves networks) somehow makes this all different is not very convincing. Network effects, as we've come to understand the term, are not new, and have existed before computer networks. To the extent they exist, it's evidence of need for intervention because of a clear failure of a market to self regulate (what some may call a "natural" or just a regular monopoly) and maintain a competitive market, not evidence that everything is okay. I also seriously take issue with the idea that Google provides an "essential service". Power, food, water, and you could make an argument for computer and communications infrastructure, are "essential". Google search is not. If it disappeared, society would soldier on and we would all be fine. At worst it would be a minor inconvenience for users and a headache for IT departments and developers.
orangepanda 2y ago
Maybe the execs got tired of having to install yet another messenger, when the previous one gets deprecated?
- pquki4 2y ago
  I assume this is a joke pointing to Google's chat app situation, but regardless here is my serious answer: I don't think the executives need to do anything themselves at a company like Google -- whether it is their (managed) phone or laptop, likely the IT would install and set up these things and everything would be ready to use. If not they have assistants who can do the chores.
busterarm 2y ago
Wouldn't be surprised. One startup I worked at launched their entire own separate private chat app/company and all of the execs and early employees used exclusively that software to communicate with each other, rather than email or the company slack.
- svnt 2y ago
  If it was anything like the one I was at that did this, it’s because they had a weekly meeting where they reviewed the most salient points from the conversations taking place in slack and email.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
Fair enough. The bar for intent should be high, though. I use FaceTime Audio frequently for calls. Once I was asked to testify in respect of an investment fraud I prompted my firm to report. I got grilled for not being able to provide complete call logs. My concern is criminalising incomplete records creates the precedent of requiring them at all times.
- aspenmayer 2y ago
  In my experience, FaceTime Audio has time, date, and duration of calls, the same as for cellular calls. Neither cellular calls nor FaceTime calls have transcripts or recording functionality standalone on iOS or macOS, so your context is unclear, and your inability to provide complete call logs would definitely raise some questions in my opinion, although isn’t a red flag in and of itself.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > FaceTime Audio has time, date, and duration of calls If you know how to access these records from a year ago, I’M genuinely curious for the answer, because I couldn’t for the life of me figure that out.
    - aspenmayer 2y ago
      The Phone app’s Recents tab on iOS, as well as the FaceTime app on macOS should have call log options. If you have iCloud backups enabled, Phone and FaceTime syncing is enabled by default, and if so, you can likely also get the info on iCloud.com unless you have the “Access iCloud Data on the Web” option disabled under Settings app -> Apple ID -> iCloud. For what it’s worth anecdotally, I have info in my call log going back to 2022. If you have local backups via iTunes and/or Files app, you may also be able to find call logs. Apps such as iMazing Phone Evidence and other tools from that company are able to explore local backups and physically connected devices.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
codedokode 2y ago
So you want to say that everyone (including individuals) should keep all their communications saved so that it will be easier to prosecute them?
- soared 2y ago
  Everyone should get in trouble if they are instructed by a court to not hide evidence, and then explicitly take action to hide evidence.

by smt88 2y ago

cornel_io 2y ago

I use Signal by default for every piece of communication that I can. Am I somehow held to a different standard just because I was paranoid about surveillance from the start? That seems wrong.

ikiris 2y ago
If you're telling a judge "I specifically hide all written communication that I'm legally required to hold and produce so that you can't see it" you're gonna have a bad time.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
zarzavat 2y ago
> Am I somehow held to a different standard just because I was paranoid about surveillance from the start? Yes, how else could it work? For example if you have a policy to destroy CCTV footage at the end of the day then it’s not illegal to do that. If you have a policy to keep CCTV footage but when the police come and ask you some questions you delete it because you know that it contains evidence of a crime, that’s destruction of evidence. It’s not illegal to delete things, otherwise the world would run out of storage, it’s illegal to delete things to knowingly impede an investigation.
- cornel_io 2y ago
  Fair enough. I'm never talking to anyone over insecure channels again.
  - yau8edq12i 2y ago
    How is technical nature of your communication with others at all relevant? The court can order you to hand over the encryption keys, and if you destroy them, then it's the same thing as destroying the communication.
  - ikiris 2y ago
    It's always weird when some tech nerds think they have some magic wand which avoids legal controls. A judge would just smack you down hard if this ever came to court, and your argument of well I special exception here due to technical barriers will just end up with you getting an adverse judgement or contempt charge depending on how flagrant it and if you had prior legal orders to the contrary.
  - smt88 2y ago
    > I'm never talking to anyone over insecure channels again. You can and should do this. No one will punish you for it in court unless you refuse to give them evidence that they have legally obtained. I'm not sure why this is so complicated for you. Let's say you murder someone with a knife, and you keep that bloody knife in a safe labeled, "Potential Evidence of Murder". A judge orders you to open the safe, and instead you incinerate it and everything inside it. You wouldn't be punished for keeping your jewels in other safes. You'd be punished for committing a crime and then preventing a court from getting the evidence.

dyauspitr 2y ago

So what? Everyone everywhere does that about sensitive stuff. How many times have you heard- call me about it I don’t want to put it in writing.

smt88 2y ago
So you believe our legal system should not punish executives of a company that is: - publicly traded - more powerful than many entire countries - committing crimes ...when those executives explicitly switched to disappearing messaging in order to cover up those crimes? Context matters. I don't want to live in a world where people can avoid prosecution just by deleting evidence.
- ETH_start 2y ago
  Punishing them solely for their success is unfair. If power accumulated through capturing natural monopolies is the issue, then we need to address that directly with public funding of open source and decentralized alternatives that can become the market standard. Not punish people who fill the gaps the public left, by effectively providing essential services.
  - ameister14 2y ago
    So this wasn't a natural monopoly because the high cost of entry isn't the sole or even arguably primary barrier to competition, and that's not the issue.
  - seankurtz 2y ago
    I think you really ought to justify your use of the terminology "natural monopoly". To the extent that such a thing exists, is this not exactly what we have anti-trust laws to prevent? It seems to me that we can, have, and should punish people for success if that success is likely to lead to well known kinds of market failure, and that such a policy is generally non-controversial outside of the most extreme forms of libertarian political philosophies (which unfortunately, are disproportionately prevalent in big tech and likely to get the whole industry in serious hot water). Certainly, you could make the same "natural monopoly" argument against just about every serious anti-trust action that has taken place in the past. It didn't work then and I don't think its going to work now. Pretending that closed platforms that exist on computer networks (and are not themselves networks) somehow makes this all different is not very convincing. Network effects, as we've come to understand the term, are not new, and have existed before computer networks. To the extent they exist, it's evidence of need for intervention because of a clear failure of a market to self regulate (what some may call a "natural" or just a regular monopoly) and maintain a competitive market, not evidence that everything is okay. I also seriously take issue with the idea that Google provides an "essential service". Power, food, water, and you could make an argument for computer and communications infrastructure, are "essential". Google search is not. If it disappeared, society would soldier on and we would all be fine. At worst it would be a minor inconvenience for users and a headache for IT departments and developers.

orangepanda 2y ago

Maybe the execs got tired of having to install yet another messenger, when the previous one gets deprecated?

pquki4 2y ago
I assume this is a joke pointing to Google's chat app situation, but regardless here is my serious answer: I don't think the executives need to do anything themselves at a company like Google -- whether it is their (managed) phone or laptop, likely the IT would install and set up these things and everything would be ready to use. If not they have assistants who can do the chores.

busterarm 2y ago

Wouldn't be surprised. One startup I worked at launched their entire own separate private chat app/company and all of the execs and early employees used exclusively that software to communicate with each other, rather than email or the company slack.

svnt 2y ago
If it was anything like the one I was at that did this, it’s because they had a weekly meeting where they reviewed the most salient points from the conversations taking place in slack and email.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

Fair enough. The bar for intent should be high, though. I use FaceTime Audio frequently for calls. Once I was asked to testify in respect of an investment fraud I prompted my firm to report. I got grilled for not being able to provide complete call logs. My concern is criminalising incomplete records creates the precedent of requiring them at all times.

aspenmayer 2y ago
In my experience, FaceTime Audio has time, date, and duration of calls, the same as for cellular calls. Neither cellular calls nor FaceTime calls have transcripts or recording functionality standalone on iOS or macOS, so your context is unclear, and your inability to provide complete call logs would definitely raise some questions in my opinion, although isn’t a red flag in and of itself.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > FaceTime Audio has time, date, and duration of calls If you know how to access these records from a year ago, I’M genuinely curious for the answer, because I couldn’t for the life of me figure that out.
  - aspenmayer 2y ago
    The Phone app’s Recents tab on iOS, as well as the FaceTime app on macOS should have call log options. If you have iCloud backups enabled, Phone and FaceTime syncing is enabled by default, and if so, you can likely also get the info on iCloud.com unless you have the “Access iCloud Data on the Web” option disabled under Settings app -> Apple ID -> iCloud. For what it’s worth anecdotally, I have info in my call log going back to 2022. If you have local backups via iTunes and/or Files app, you may also be able to find call logs. Apps such as iMazing Phone Evidence and other tools from that company are able to explore local backups and physically connected devices.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago

codedokode 2y ago

So you want to say that everyone (including individuals) should keep all their communications saved so that it will be easier to prosecute them?

soared 2y ago
Everyone should get in trouble if they are instructed by a court to not hide evidence, and then explicitly take action to hide evidence.