8/21/2023 0 Comments Signal app secureI am a fan of Signal and I use it every day. We have to look structurally at what that organization is, who actually has control over these decisions, and at some of these details that often do not get discussed when we talk about message encryption overall. The choice to remove or enhance the encryption protocols is still in the hands of Facebook. It is not trivial to point out that WhatsApp metadata could easily be joined with Facebook data, and that it could easily reveal extremely intimate information about people. Facebook has a huge amount, just unspeakable volumes, of intimate information about billions of people across the globe. It is particularly powerful-and this is where we have to back out into a structural argument for a company to collect the data that is also owned by Meta/Facebook. WhatsApp, on the other hand, collects the information about your profile, your profile photo, who is talking to whom, who is a group member. It has gone above and beyond to minimize the collection of metadata. We don’t know who you are talking to or who is in the membership of a group. It doesn’t have your profile information and it has introduced group encryption protections. WhatsApp does not protect metadata the way that Signal does. But you can’t just look at that and then stop at message protection. That was absolutely a visionary choice that Brian and his team led back in the day - and big props to them for doing that. WhatsApp uses the Signal encryption protocol to provide encryption for its messages. Long and interesting interview with Signal’s new president, Meredith Whittaker: In short, the Bill poses an unprecedented threat to the privacy, safety and security of every UK citizen and the people with whom they communicate around the world, while emboldening hostile governments who may seek to draft copy-cat laws.īoth Signal and WhatsApp have said that they will cease services in the UK rather than compromise the security of their users worldwide. The Bill provides no explicit protection for encryption, and if implemented as written, could empower OFCOM to try to force the proactive scanning of private messages on end-to-end encrypted communication services-nullifying the purpose of end-to-end encryption as a result and compromising the privacy of all users. In an open letter, seven secure messaging apps-including Signal and WhatsApp-point out that the UK’s Online Safety Bill could destroy end-to-end encryption:Īs currently drafted, the Bill could break end-to-end encryption,opening the door to routine, general and indiscriminate surveillance of personal messages of friends, family members, employees, executives, journalists, human rights activists and even politicians themselves, which would fundamentally undermine everyone’s ability to communicate securely.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |