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posted by takyon on Friday December 14 2018, @10:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the can't-find-the-signal dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Signal says it can't allow government access to users' chats

Last week, the Australian government passed the country's controversial Access and Assistance Bill 2018 into law, legislation that allows government agencies to demand access to encrypted communications. Companies that don't comply with the new law could face fines of up to AU$10 million ($7.3 million). A number of companies that stand to be affected have spoken out about the legislation, and Signal has now joined in, explaining that it won't be able to fulfill such requests if asked.

"By design, Signal does not have a record of your contacts, social graph, conversation list, location, user avatar, user profile name, group memberships, group titles or group avatars," Signal's Joshua Lund wrote in a blog post. "The end-to-end encrypted contents of every message and voice/video call are protected by keys that are entirely inaccessible to us." Lund added that Signal is open source, meaning anyone can "verify or examine the code for each release." "People often use Signal to share secrets with their friends, but we can't hide secrets in our software," he wrote. "We can't include a backdoor in Signal."


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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday December 15 2018, @12:10AM (5 children)

    by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Saturday December 15 2018, @12:10AM (#774618) Homepage Journal

    Cell Phone used to be very simple. DynaTAC. Does anyone remember DynaTAC? We loved that one. Greatest thing since the Tic Tac. You dial the number. You push the Send button and your call goes. And it was so amazing because here you are in the back of your limo, there's traffic all around, maybe you have some "sexy" girls in there, possibly you have your "whatever" out and those wonderful girls are saying "hello" to it in their very special way -- but you're on the phone. Making a phone call from the car, just an incredible thing. You talk, you push the End button when you're done. They called it End and it did exactly that. Special button that would hang up the phone. And we made some tremendous phone calls on that one.

    Now the Cell Phone is full of cyber. All the modern cyber with the security cyber. The PIN. And you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out. Big problem for our Law Enforcement. Because who heard of Albert Einstein going after Crooks? You didn't hear about that one. And neither did I.

    Australia, they have the right idea. They got rid of Malcolm -- very smart move. And they're taking out all that complicated cyber. To make the Cell Phone very simple again. To make it Great Again. Great for Law Enforcement and great for everyone. By the way, folks, if you ever get a phone call and it says TURNBULL MALCOLM on the Caller ID, don't take that call. Because it will be the worst call of your entire life. The absolute worst. HORRIFIC!!!

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  • (Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday December 15 2018, @12:31AM (1 child)

    by driverless (4770) on Saturday December 15 2018, @12:31AM (#774623)

    maybe you have some "sexy" girls in there, possibly you have your "whatever" out

    Is this the "whatever" that's smaller than average, and with a huge mushroom head, like a toadstool?

  • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday December 15 2018, @01:16AM (2 children)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday December 15 2018, @01:16AM (#774634) Homepage

    My favorite stupid human trick is to be having sex with my girlfriend while she's making a phone call to somebody, preferably her ex or somebody important. Having dated a few women over the years, I discovered that this is a surprisingly common fetish.

    • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 15 2018, @10:24AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 15 2018, @10:24AM (#774723)

      Sounds to me like they just want to imagine that they're having sex with someone who isn't you.