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Signal Says It Can't Allow Australian Government Access to Users' Chats

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

MrPlow writes:

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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Original Submission

• Never overestimate political stupidity Never overestimate political stupidity (Score: 5, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Friday December 14 2018, @11:24PM (1 child)

  by fyngyrz (6567) on Friday December 14 2018, @11:24PM (#774599) Journal

  Given that the code is easily available, we are all waiting for Australia to declare math illegal in order to catch Bad People.

  Well, here in the good 'ol USA, Texas declared some glassware only legal with a permit [crscientific.com] when when they didn't like what some uses of chemistry could accomplish. Despite the fact that you can make glassware pretty easily in your garage, even pretty fancy and broadly-temperature-tolerant glassware.

  And then there are plants that are illegal here. You know: dirt, seed, water. Complex stuff!

  You think politicians aren't willing to declare some kinds of software illegal along the same lines as these other natural and somewhat inevitable things?

  --
    Government: Designed to provide you with "service" and...
  ...the Media: Designed to provide you with Vaseline.

  Parent

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		+4
  Insightful=3, Underrated=1, Total=4
  Extra 'Insightful' Modifier		0
  Karma-Bonus Modifier		+1
  Total Score:		5

• Re:Never overestimate political stupidity (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 15 2018, @11:59AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 15 2018, @11:59AM (#774744)

  I thought (not really, but still) Texas was all about Small Government. How could this be!?

  Parent