How is this anything but concern trolling? Or even borderline extortion: "Nice user growth you have there, Signal. Would be a shame if your employees walked out on you."
The entire value proposition of Signal is that no one in the middle can see what's going across. The vast majority of those things will be benign or even good. A few will be bad or abusive. People use Twitter, Gmail, Facebook Messenger, Apple Messages and whatever Google is calling their chat client today for good, bad and ugly things, too.
I'd have much more respect for Casey Newton (I hope you're reading this) if he disrobed from his pretense and lectured us about Signal being a tool for Orange Man 2.0, rather than this vague whisper campaign about "abuse." And, personally, unless Newton entirely made up his quotes or took them totally out of context, Gregg Bernstein (hope he reads this, too) would have very little shot of making it past a phone screen with me. A former employee trying to stir up my workforce by attacking the core values of my company in the press is not something I look kindly on.
This article is a lot of hot air interleaved with 'concerns' of anonymous people worried that they won't have control over people's speech. It boggles the mind that you could work at Signal and not know that goes with the territory.
More cynically, this is may just be battle space prep for the run up to legislation giving the gov a backdoor into any E2E systems. The pretext being 'something something terrorism'.
Completely agreed. Honestly, I despise the superficially objective and neutral concern troll approach to this. I can't see this article as anything but a dishonest way to say: "what if someone used private communications to do something bad? let's get rid of private communications". Except it doesn't own up to the fact that that's ultimate what it's proposing. It stops at fearmongering.
Also, I commented this above, but there's a different way to solve the problems of polarization and radicalism. It involves solving people's material problems, and the US has been slowly getting worse at this and decaying for a while now. Instead, the political establishment is doubling down on surveillance, the silencing of dissent off of any platform with reach, and ultimately physical repression, through the increased funding and militarization of police.
Right now this is claimed to be targeted at the far right.. but it doesn't take a genius to compare the police reaction to BLM vs the capitol riot to see where it is going.
The CEO agrees, per the article: "Marlinspike’s response, he told me in a conversation last week, was rooted in the idea that because Signal employees cannot see the content on their network, the app does not need a robust content policy."
I'm surprised that none of these comment threads are addressing the scenario posed in TFA:
> During an all-hands meeting, an employee asked Marlinspike how the company would respond if a member of the Proud Boys or another extremist organization posted a Signal group chat link publicly in an effort to recruit members and coordinate violence.
Like it or not, something like this will happen eventually and Signal will become aware of it, if only through the press. It only makes sense to have a policy framework to deal with these things rather than flying by the seat of your pants. Perhaps the policy will be "we won't take down group chats without a court order", or perhaps it will be something else. But to just punt until a link to some folks planning a lynch mob arrives in [email protected] is irresponsible both to the platform and to the society.
> The same way USPS doesn’t go around opening letters and getting rid of whatever they don’t like.
Bad example because the USPS can and does use x-rays, Geiger counters, and sniffing dogs to inspect packages without actually opening them. No analogous tooling exists for encrypted messages.
Disinformation experts are increasingly concerned with misuse of a private platform called Airvibe, known to be used for many extremist activities including the 9/11 attacks and the Columbine killings. “Airvibe lets domestic terrorists communicate without any moderation whatsoever, completely out of the reach of standard, widely accepted, peer-reviewed trust and safety committees” said Vox news correspondent Casey Newton.
However, new tools for combatting abuse on the Airvibe network are being researched, including implantable vocal modulators and persistent environmental smart home microphones. For parents concerned about what their kids are hearing on Airvibe, CBS News recommends substituting Airvibe time with safe platforms monitored for misinformation like Facebook or Youtube.
> So the laser beam of outrage has reached Signal. We knew this day was coming.
Next, I seriously expect Amazon and Google at some point to turn on the microphones on all Echo and Home devices and make sure that nobody ever says anything outrageous in their private homes. Failing that, report them to the authorities, or better, doxx them with social media mobs.
>There are people out there who fundamentally believe that no one should be able to think or speak free from their scrutiny.
I think this is what the Republicans would have you believe, but I think the left extremists are more about simply pursuing people who they believe as toxic to wherever they retreat.
Who says that? People, myself included, don't want specific harmful for society groups to be allowed to speak free, not that nobody's allowed to say anything.
Yes, nazis should not be allowed to speak free. And no ramblings about privacy here on HN will ever change my mind.
In fact, I'd be happy to sacrifice my own privacy if we can root out the evil of racism, nazism, terrorism, and other things that absolutely everybody agrees are bad.
That being said, I think the frameworks used to prevent that at the moment have a lot of potential for abuse, especially from private companies. And it's something that should be improved upon, and normal people should have privacy as much as possible.
Again I lament the falling respect for and understanding of free speech as a principle that helps us all. Only when communication between two willing parties is unhindered is it even possible to build a just world. The power to clamp down on voluntary communication is a power no authority should ever be trusted with, because there are no examples in the history of mankind where that power is only used for good - arguably there can be no such examples, what with power being a vector for corruption.
Back when radio was the only mass medium that you could reach entire populations on, would you have argued that anyone with a POV should be able to broadcast over the air, "because free speech" ?
Back when there were only 3 TV networks that reached the whole of the US, would you have argued that anyone with a POV should be able to get some time (how long?) on one of those networks, "because free speech" ?
Free speech never meant the ability to demand the use of any mechanism or any resource to reach a real or hypothetical audience. Changing the definition because lots of people chat on social media doesn't cut it, I think.
There is no battle, one employee may have left. Also this is completely horrifying. Signal with a content policy?! It’s end to end encrypted. Wtf are people trying to do here.
Right, one guy who isn't even that sure about his own beliefs. I was worried when I read the headline, but the more important thing is that Acton is screening employees to ensure they actually agree with the goals of the organisation. He is clearly able to articulate his own philosophical position on this (focus on bad people, not neutral technologies), and Signal is financially totally dependent on him, which suggests that Signal's philosophy will remain aligned with Acton for the forseeable future.
The primary risk to Signal at the moment seems to come from Google and Apple, not internal employee dissent.
A nonsense FUD article. Bad actors will always find some way to communicate, and the intelligence failed even when they were doing so openly on mainstream networks. Go crack that nut first before breaking everybody's encryption, the consequences of which are far more detrimental for a free society.
Also, it does not hurt to point out that unlike Facebook, which is wired for clicks and "user engagement", Signal does not spread or profit from hate speech and disinformation, which is what got us into recent developments, but rather works like a private chat. So perhaps we have already made some progress by having these people switch over--their recruiting is likely to be severely affected if they rely on Signal for it.
> “The response was: if and when people start abusing Signal or doing things that we think are terrible, we'll say something,” said Bernstein, who was in the meeting, conducted over video chat. “But until something is a reality, Moxie's position is he's not going to deal with it.”
> Bernstein (disclosure: a former colleague of mine at Vox Media), added, “You could see a lot of jaws dropping. That’s not a strategy — that’s just hoping things don’t go bad.”
So what's the alternative, exactly, when you are supposed to keep things encrypted between users? Either you are a conduit or a publisher, you have to choose.
They could put virality limiters on content, for example limiting the number of times a message can be forwarded. WhatsApp is known to have done this. They could also let people report users (and unmask their content) and ban them if they get enough reports. They could also push out clientside hash checking of controversial content once they’ve received reports and stop it from propagating there - just get the database from GIFCT. If group membership can be seen by others in the group, they could also take reports of group membership from NGO or government observers and ban everyone in the group. One does not simply chat online.
There's a chance that a group of people will walk out into the woods and talk about bad stuff without anyone able to hear them. We should make forests illegal.
The fundamental difference being: no human actively created forests hence no one could be held responsible (legally or morally) for what's being done there.
I dumped signal less over the data collection they've started doing and more for the fact that they've been less than transparent about it. Nearly a year ago their forums were filled with objections, security concerns, and questions and for months they went ignored. When they finally made setting a pin optional they were equally unclear that it would just set a random one for you and that this didn't prevent your data from being uploaded to the cloud.
I took it as a sign that they were telling us not to trust them as clearly as they were allowed. For secure communications I'm using Jami now and I've been very impressed. For SMS/MMS in general I'm still looking. I've tried a few alternatives and frankly I'm not really happy with any of them.
In an earlier era (or even today), how would this be different from asking the telephone company to drop calls that are being made by/to "bad actors". Without a warrant compelling them to do so.
One difference is tech companies, including "foundations" like Signal, are not federally regulated in the way that telephone companies are.
The mechanisms used in the earlier era - law, common sense, etc., have gone out of the window now that anyone can weaponize a social media mob into harassing targets into submission.
For change to exist as a possibility in this reality we must have privacy. Freedom of thought, of expression, of association are all predicated on privacy as the space to construct epiphanies into narrative.
Absent privacy, change in our world becomes impossible.
I really can't believe it. I can see any commercial application like What's App or FB or TWTTR being coy about speech and not having the privacy of their users in mind, and bending to prevailing winds --not having fast principles.
But Signal? Signal? Do these idealist engineers not envision the comms that can happen on e-e encrypted systems? They don't think criminals, hooligans, spies, unsavory people, sex criminals, drugs dealers, arms dealers, etc. would use the network?
Oh, but boy, wait, what if people in whose politics we don't believe in use it? Oh, noes. In this case we have to be careful and raise concerns --but those other things, no, that's why we believe in freedom of speech and e-e encryption.
Sigh.
They believe in things, until they don't. Which means they don't truly believe in the principles they said they believed in.
What's that old saw, I believe in freedom of speech for the people I agree with?
Moxie should get up there next time and say: "If you only believe this product should be used by people you agree with, then you took the wrong job".
This was my thinking as well. Their concerns were ridiculous and echoed what we heard a couple years ago when politicians were looking for mandatory back doors. What did they think the point of encryption was other than to allow people to have discussions without interference. I get it, I’m not a fan of the groups they’re discussing by a long shot, but I’m also not working at a non-profit dedicated to providing the world with safe, encrypted, messaging.
I mean, people's views on things should change based on evidence. This isn't 'i disagree with their politics so I need to change the platform to silence them'. There was an insurrection on the US capitol due to extremists and online communication tools were a big part of this (though it was social media mostly). Let's not abstract away what happened to downplay how serious the event was. I don't know what signal should do, but it's strange to be surprised that given a new understanding of the world people would revisit their principles. That's what people should do. People should not be intransigent.
Also, personally I don't think signal should compromise the quality of their product though. E2E is too important.
> During an all-hands meeting, an employee asked Marlinspike how the company would respond if a member of the Proud Boys or another extremist organization posted a Signal group chat link publicly in an effort to recruit members and coordinate violence.
> Oh, but boy, wait, what if people in whose politics we don't believe in use it?
Coordinating violence and recruiting people to participate in that violence isn’t a political stance.
And yet they still have no solution to backup messages, other than running the (Electron!) desktop client 24/7. I don’t want cloud backups, but going as far as force disabling encrypted local iTunes backups is terrible. People expect these to be comprehensive backups and will get a nasty surprise
Privacy should not come at the cost of data ownership
[+] [-] baryphonic|5 years ago|reply
The entire value proposition of Signal is that no one in the middle can see what's going across. The vast majority of those things will be benign or even good. A few will be bad or abusive. People use Twitter, Gmail, Facebook Messenger, Apple Messages and whatever Google is calling their chat client today for good, bad and ugly things, too.
I'd have much more respect for Casey Newton (I hope you're reading this) if he disrobed from his pretense and lectured us about Signal being a tool for Orange Man 2.0, rather than this vague whisper campaign about "abuse." And, personally, unless Newton entirely made up his quotes or took them totally out of context, Gregg Bernstein (hope he reads this, too) would have very little shot of making it past a phone screen with me. A former employee trying to stir up my workforce by attacking the core values of my company in the press is not something I look kindly on.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] avsteele|5 years ago|reply
More cynically, this is may just be battle space prep for the run up to legislation giving the gov a backdoor into any E2E systems. The pretext being 'something something terrorism'.
[+] [-] 0x262d|5 years ago|reply
Also, I commented this above, but there's a different way to solve the problems of polarization and radicalism. It involves solving people's material problems, and the US has been slowly getting worse at this and decaying for a while now. Instead, the political establishment is doubling down on surveillance, the silencing of dissent off of any platform with reach, and ultimately physical repression, through the increased funding and militarization of police.
Right now this is claimed to be targeted at the far right.. but it doesn't take a genius to compare the police reaction to BLM vs the capitol riot to see where it is going.
[+] [-] veeti|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dannyw|5 years ago|reply
The same way USPS doesn’t go around opening letters and getting rid of whatever they don’t like.
[+] [-] ac29|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tdeck|5 years ago|reply
> During an all-hands meeting, an employee asked Marlinspike how the company would respond if a member of the Proud Boys or another extremist organization posted a Signal group chat link publicly in an effort to recruit members and coordinate violence.
Like it or not, something like this will happen eventually and Signal will become aware of it, if only through the press. It only makes sense to have a policy framework to deal with these things rather than flying by the seat of your pants. Perhaps the policy will be "we won't take down group chats without a court order", or perhaps it will be something else. But to just punt until a link to some folks planning a lynch mob arrives in [email protected] is irresponsible both to the platform and to the society.
[+] [-] swirepe|5 years ago|reply
Bad news...
[+] [-] garmaine|5 years ago|reply
Bad example because the USPS can and does use x-rays, Geiger counters, and sniffing dogs to inspect packages without actually opening them. No analogous tooling exists for encrypted messages.
[+] [-] darig|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Merman_Mike|5 years ago|reply
There are people out there who fundamentally believe that no one should be able to think or speak free from their scrutiny.
[+] [-] analyte123|5 years ago|reply
However, new tools for combatting abuse on the Airvibe network are being researched, including implantable vocal modulators and persistent environmental smart home microphones. For parents concerned about what their kids are hearing on Airvibe, CBS News recommends substituting Airvibe time with safe platforms monitored for misinformation like Facebook or Youtube.
[+] [-] ekianjo|5 years ago|reply
Next, I seriously expect Amazon and Google at some point to turn on the microphones on all Echo and Home devices and make sure that nobody ever says anything outrageous in their private homes. Failing that, report them to the authorities, or better, doxx them with social media mobs.
[+] [-] cal5k|5 years ago|reply
The American media is a fantastic machine for manufacturing a bogeyman then discarding it once it is no longer useful for narrative purposes.
[+] [-] na85|5 years ago|reply
I think this is what the Republicans would have you believe, but I think the left extremists are more about simply pursuing people who they believe as toxic to wherever they retreat.
[+] [-] a254613e|5 years ago|reply
Who says that? People, myself included, don't want specific harmful for society groups to be allowed to speak free, not that nobody's allowed to say anything.
Yes, nazis should not be allowed to speak free. And no ramblings about privacy here on HN will ever change my mind.
In fact, I'd be happy to sacrifice my own privacy if we can root out the evil of racism, nazism, terrorism, and other things that absolutely everybody agrees are bad.
That being said, I think the frameworks used to prevent that at the moment have a lot of potential for abuse, especially from private companies. And it's something that should be improved upon, and normal people should have privacy as much as possible.
[+] [-] kr99x|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PaulDavisThe1st|5 years ago|reply
Back when there were only 3 TV networks that reached the whole of the US, would you have argued that anyone with a POV should be able to get some time (how long?) on one of those networks, "because free speech" ?
Free speech never meant the ability to demand the use of any mechanism or any resource to reach a real or hypothetical audience. Changing the definition because lots of people chat on social media doesn't cut it, I think.
[+] [-] rzz3|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thu2111|5 years ago|reply
The primary risk to Signal at the moment seems to come from Google and Apple, not internal employee dissent.
[+] [-] 3gg|5 years ago|reply
Also, it does not hurt to point out that unlike Facebook, which is wired for clicks and "user engagement", Signal does not spread or profit from hate speech and disinformation, which is what got us into recent developments, but rather works like a private chat. So perhaps we have already made some progress by having these people switch over--their recruiting is likely to be severely affected if they rely on Signal for it.
[+] [-] ekianjo|5 years ago|reply
> Bernstein (disclosure: a former colleague of mine at Vox Media), added, “You could see a lot of jaws dropping. That’s not a strategy — that’s just hoping things don’t go bad.”
So what's the alternative, exactly, when you are supposed to keep things encrypted between users? Either you are a conduit or a publisher, you have to choose.
[+] [-] analyte123|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dleslie|5 years ago|reply
Then Signal is no more culpable than any other chat service over which OTR or similar could operate.
[+] [-] ngngngng|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ggrelet|5 years ago|reply
Edit: wording.
[+] [-] followthesmell|5 years ago|reply
I'm glad to see Signal is aiming to just be privacy-oriented law-abiding infrastructure.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] hacknat|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] autoexec|5 years ago|reply
I took it as a sign that they were telling us not to trust them as clearly as they were allowed. For secure communications I'm using Jami now and I've been very impressed. For SMS/MMS in general I'm still looking. I've tried a few alternatives and frankly I'm not really happy with any of them.
[+] [-] rzz3|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1vuio0pswjnm7|5 years ago|reply
One difference is tech companies, including "foundations" like Signal, are not federally regulated in the way that telephone companies are.
[+] [-] notadev|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josh2600|5 years ago|reply
Absent privacy, change in our world becomes impossible.
[+] [-] marketingtech|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mc32|5 years ago|reply
I really can't believe it. I can see any commercial application like What's App or FB or TWTTR being coy about speech and not having the privacy of their users in mind, and bending to prevailing winds --not having fast principles.
But Signal? Signal? Do these idealist engineers not envision the comms that can happen on e-e encrypted systems? They don't think criminals, hooligans, spies, unsavory people, sex criminals, drugs dealers, arms dealers, etc. would use the network?
Oh, but boy, wait, what if people in whose politics we don't believe in use it? Oh, noes. In this case we have to be careful and raise concerns --but those other things, no, that's why we believe in freedom of speech and e-e encryption.
Sigh.
They believe in things, until they don't. Which means they don't truly believe in the principles they said they believed in.
What's that old saw, I believe in freedom of speech for the people I agree with?
Moxie should get up there next time and say: "If you only believe this product should be used by people you agree with, then you took the wrong job".
It's like the Komsomol have come to town.
[+] [-] edgyquant|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ironman1478|5 years ago|reply
Also, personally I don't think signal should compromise the quality of their product though. E2E is too important.
[+] [-] otabdeveloper4|5 years ago|reply
Not really. It's weaponized privacy. Freedom of speech for thee (when it's expedient to my political goals) but not for me.
[+] [-] throwaw4ybio|5 years ago|reply
You don't think this is over-egging the custard a bit?
[+] [-] mrzimmerman|5 years ago|reply
> Oh, but boy, wait, what if people in whose politics we don't believe in use it?
Coordinating violence and recruiting people to participate in that violence isn’t a political stance.
[+] [-] kiririn|5 years ago|reply
Privacy should not come at the cost of data ownership
[+] [-] gcblkjaidfj|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pensatoio|5 years ago|reply