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US Subpoena Tests Privacy Promise of Encrypted Messaging App

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

AnonTechie writes:

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

 
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  • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday October 05 2016, @03:15AM

    by NotSanguine (285) <{NotSanguine} {at} {SoylentNews.Org}> on Wednesday October 05 2016, @03:15AM (#410485) Homepage Journal

    This is a lie. OWS cannot read the messages, so much is true, and the software they write may well be secure when used correctly. But OWS only works on compromised operating systems/platforms.

    That may well be true. However, it's really irrelevant. Your dystopian view isn't nearly bleak enough. Any communication is suspect. Full stop.

    If you want to keep a secret, don't tell anyone. As Benjamin Franklin is purported to have said, "Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead."

    If your concern is secrecy/privacy, then keep your thoughts to yourself. If there's anyone you actually trust (big mistake), then have a conversation inside an enclosure that has shielding to block the entire range of EM radiation and is additionally shielded to block vibrations (sound).

    Otherwise, you're practically begging to be spied upon. Don't like it? Blame human nature and the laws of physics.

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by melikamp on Wednesday October 05 2016, @03:45AM

    by melikamp (1886) on Wednesday October 05 2016, @03:45AM (#410489) Journal
    Oh no it's worse than that. Full information about everything you do propagates with the speed of light as light & gravity, and beyond that the quantum information is passed across wormholes in entangled particles instantly across the entire universe: all space and all time, even the "unobservable" part.