Privacy

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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Signal Is More Than Encrypted Messaging. Under Meredith Whittaker, It’s Out to Prove Surveillance Capitalism Wrong (www.wired.com)

submitted 2 months ago by minnix@lemux.minnix.dev to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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[–] aspensmonster@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Law enforcement doesn’t request data frequently enough in order to build a social graph. Also they probably don’t need to as Google and Apple likely have your contacts.

They don't need to request data. They have first-class access to the data themselves. Snowden informed us of this over a decade ago.

Saying that it is somehow a tool for mass surveillance is frankly wrong.

Signal per se is not the mass surveillance tool. Its dependence on Google is the mass surveillance tool.

However, phone numbers are great for ease of use and help prevent spam.

And there's nothing wrong with allowing that ease-of-use flow for users that don't need anonymity. The problem is disallowing anonymous users.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Signal is not dependent on Google. Also to my knowledge Signal isn't part of AT&T

[–] aspensmonster@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Signal is not dependent on Google.

It literally is though.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If that were the case Molly FOSS wouldn't exist

[–] aspensmonster@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 2 months ago

If that were the case Molly FOSS wouldn’t exist

I'm not speaking of hard dependence as in "the app can't work without it." I'm speaking to the default behavior of the Signal application:

It connects to Google
It does not make efforts to anonymize traffic
It does makes efforts to prevent anonymous sign-ups

Molly FOSS choosing different defaults doesn't change the fact that the "Signal" client app, which accounts for the vast majority of clients within the network, is dependent on Google.

And in either case -- using Google's Firebase system, or using Signal's websocket system -- the metadata under discussion is still not protected; the NSA doesn't care if they're wired into Google's data centers or Signal's. They'll be snooping the connections either way. And in either case, the requirement of a phone number is still present.

Perhaps I should restate my claim:

Signal per se is not the mass surveillance tool. Its ~~dependence on Google~~ design choices of (1) not forcing an anonymization overlay, and (2) forcing the use of a phone number, is the mass surveillance tool.