Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Tuesday October 04 2016, @07:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the but-I'd-have-to-shoot-you dept.

The company whose message-scrambling software is being adopted across Silicon Valley has had a first legal test of its commitment to privacy.

Open Whisper Systems—whose Signal app pioneered the end-to-end encryption technique now used by a swathe of messaging services—was subpoenaed for information about one of its users earlier this year, according to legal correspondence released Tuesday.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented Open Whisper Systems, says the company didn't produce the user's name, address, call logs or other details requested by the government.

"That's not because Signal chose not to provide logs of information," ACLU lawyer Brett Kaufman said in a telephone interview. "It's just that it couldn't." Created by anarchist yachtsman Moxie Marlinspike and a crew of surf-happy developers, Signal has evolved from a niche app used by dissidents and protest leaders into the foundation stone for the encryption of huge tranches of the world's communications data.

http://phys.org/news/2016-10-subpoena-privacy-encrypted-messaging-app.html

[More Details At]: New Documents Reveal Government Effort to Impose Secrecy on Encryption Company

[Also Covered By]:
The Washington Post
ABC News

[Legal Correspondence]: Legal correspondence released by the ACLU:


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 04 2016, @09:42PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 04 2016, @09:42PM (#410351)

    The crypto nut:

    "My data is safe behind six layers of symmetric and public-key algorithms."
    "What data is it?"
    "Mostly me emailing with people about cryptography."

    https://www.xkcd.com/1269/ [xkcd.com]

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +1  
       Insightful=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   1  
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2016, @07:26AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2016, @07:26AM (#410522)

    The more people do it for no reason other than “because I can” the better.