Re: today's behind the news

[robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

 > From: Noelle <noelle>
 > Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2018 12:51:49 -0800 (PST)
 >
 > we probably should not use Signal, it flags you as suspicious by the 
 > government

I wouldn't say that that's the reason not to use it.  I mean, just because
I send PGP-encrypted emails, I'm probably already flagged.

The main reason not to use it (and wasn't mentioned in the show) was that,
although it does a fantastic job at end-to-end encryption, it doesn't
protect the "ends" themselves.  And, this is a far more difficult problem
to solve -- probably involving air-gapped computers reading screens from
afar.  Which almost nobody is going to do.

The other reason not to use it is one of the reasons mentioned on the
program: that your IP address can be traced and they can get a general
location of where you are located.  I suspect that privacy advocates are
probably finding ways around this, which would probably involve Tor or
something Tor-like.

I'm not sure I buy the concept that all these technologies shouldn't be
trusted simply because they were developed by the government.  As long as
the source code is available and has been reviewed by scholars to be
secure, I think it can be trusted.

The big problem is that the internet as it was originally conceived was to
not be private or respect privacy.  So, all these hacks to get around that
flaw will themselves be flawed.  (IPv6 has the IPSec protocol, which
should help with this, but it mostly deals with security not privacy,
unfortunately.)

As usual, it always comes down to who you trust the most and the least.