3 ms·

Lavabit was able to be compelled because they weren’t E2E. Meanwhile Signal, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and FB Messenger amongst other US based apps all exist in oppo

Lavabit was able to be compelled because they weren’t E2E. Meanwhile Signal, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and FB Messenger amongst other US based apps all exist in opposition to your belief.

autoexec 2y ago
> Meanwhile Signal, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and FB Messenger amongst other US based apps all exist in opposition to your belief. I can't really speak to snapchat. I mostly forgot that they even exist (although i did notice this: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68056421.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68056421.amp) but I'm pretty sure the government is balls deep in everything facebook and I strongly suspect that signal has been compromised for a long time now. At least ever since they started collecting and permanently keeping user's data in the cloud. I take the fact that the very first line of their privacy policy is a lie to be a giant dead canary. There have been multiple requests for them to update their privacy policy to reflect the data they are collecting but they refuse. Instead, signal seems to have done everything they could to warn people away without saying as much directly. They introduced crypto features nobody asked for, killed off the single most popular feature they had (the ability to get secure and unsecured messages in a single application) and then of course insisted on collecting data on users and storing it insecure ways which drew criticism from experts (https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkyzek/signal-new-pin-feature-worries-cybersecurity-experts https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkyzek/signal-new-pin-featur...) and users (https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-security-pins-are-too-easy-to-brute-force-sgx-is-not-reliable-enough/15096 https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-secu...) all while being extremely misleading and evasive in their communication to the public (https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disabling_pins_will_now_upload_nothing_to_the/fyjy7a5/ https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disablin...). Maybe they've done the best they can do to warn people while under a gag order. If signal hasn't been compromised we'd have to accept that they're marketing their service to protestors, whistleblowers, and civil rights activists - people whose freedom and/or lives are often at risk - while also lying to them about the risks of using their product by not disclosing the data collection in their policies and by their misleading communication. I'm constantly running into signal users who have no idea at all that signal is keeping any data in the cloud. Until it was pointed out to them, they believed the lie that that no data is ever collected, and that's pretty damning. Any secure communications tool that advertises itself to such vulnerable people should, at a minimum, be making it extremely clear exactly what data is being collected and how so that users can make informed choices.

Lavabit was able to be compelled because they weren’t E2E. Meanwhile Signal, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and FB Messenger amongst other US based apps all exist in opposition to your belief.

autoexec 2y ago

> Meanwhile Signal, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and FB Messenger amongst other US based apps all exist in opposition to your belief. I can't really speak to snapchat. I mostly forgot that they even exist (although i did notice this: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68056421.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68056421.amp) but I'm pretty sure the government is balls deep in everything facebook and I strongly suspect that signal has been compromised for a long time now. At least ever since they started collecting and permanently keeping user's data in the cloud. I take the fact that the very first line of their privacy policy is a lie to be a giant dead canary. There have been multiple requests for them to update their privacy policy to reflect the data they are collecting but they refuse. Instead, signal seems to have done everything they could to warn people away without saying as much directly. They introduced crypto features nobody asked for, killed off the single most popular feature they had (the ability to get secure and unsecured messages in a single application) and then of course insisted on collecting data on users and storing it insecure ways which drew criticism from experts (https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkyzek/signal-new-pin-feature-worries-cybersecurity-experts https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkyzek/signal-new-pin-featur...) and users (https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-security-pins-are-too-easy-to-brute-force-sgx-is-not-reliable-enough/15096 https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-secu...) all while being extremely misleading and evasive in their communication to the public (https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disabling_pins_will_now_upload_nothing_to_the/fyjy7a5/ https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disablin...). Maybe they've done the best they can do to warn people while under a gag order. If signal hasn't been compromised we'd have to accept that they're marketing their service to protestors, whistleblowers, and civil rights activists - people whose freedom and/or lives are often at risk - while also lying to them about the risks of using their product by not disclosing the data collection in their policies and by their misleading communication. I'm constantly running into signal users who have no idea at all that signal is keeping any data in the cloud. Until it was pointed out to them, they believed the lie that that no data is ever collected, and that's pretty damning. Any secure communications tool that advertises itself to such vulnerable people should, at a minimum, be making it extremely clear exactly what data is being collected and how so that users can make informed choices.