this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2024
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As an aside, I'm very much convinced that Signal's primary objective is to gather phone numbers in order to facilitate the US government tracing social networks of people who are already of interest Their main focus isn't on what these people are discussing, they want to know who is talking to whom first and foremost. Signal's subpar user experience is a feature from this perspective. Due to its inconvenience for the average person, those with a strong need or desire to communicate sensitive information are more likely to utilize it.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago

Did everybody just straight up forget about the NSA data collection center in Utah or wherever?

The capability was literally to record the internet. All the data, all the time.

Between that and fusion centers using data they can just straight up buy from everyone they can build a picture of who you are, who you talk to, where you drive, how often you speed, what you're looking for online...

If it is electronically transmissible it is not private and you should assume gmen are reading it.

I work in embedded software, if it has a processor and an antenna you cannot trust it. You must assume that it is either already compromised or could be.

Basically return to nature.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

room 641a still around

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

As an aside, I'm very much convinced that Signal's primary objective is to gather phone numbers in order to facilitate the US government tracing social networks of people who are already of interest Their main focus isn't on what these people are discussing, they want to know who is talking to whom first and foremost. Signal's subpar user experience is a feature from this perspective. Due to its inconvenience for the average person, those with a strong need or desire to communicate sensitive information are more likely to utilize it.

It's so, so much easier just to track iMessage or RCS or SMS (where you can get content as well) than to create a third party app, hide your money trail and create two versions of the source code and maintain both the fake (with sealed sender) and the real, harvesting one all while avoiding your own subpoenas and paying off countless auditors.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Think of it like the Nigerian email scheme, Signal by its nature selects for people you might care about, which drastically reduces the number of people you need to track. Meanwhile, all the tracking is done server-side, which already openly collects phone numbers, you don't really need to do much additional work there to harvest these numbers. However, speaking of the source code, it's worth noting that Signal won't even make reproducible builds.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

There are so many easier ways of doing that. Especially when your monitor all sms traffic.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

I'm pretty sure they like having as much data as they can. The policy seems to be is to trove everything and to figure out what to do with it later.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (4 children)

idk about Signal but Matrix is 100% a metadata harvesting op and it always disappoints me when people recommend it

incubated at a Canadian telco that's a known Mossad metadata harvesting front, that just happens to notoriously leak metadata when federated.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Got any sources about matrix being sketchy? Or alternates? Was interested in setting up a matrix server but maybe not...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think if you ran a server and didn't federate you'd be fine. So it depends what you were planning to use it for. Being able to centralize all your various IM apps is pretty sweet.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Ya maybe. I just want secure coms between me and my friends. This definitely indicates atleast a need to deeply research

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Hmm this is disappointing to discover. What alternatives are their realistically?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

xmpp. truly sensitive comms shouldn't be digital.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

as long as you're not using it for politics/organizing stuff you're probably fine