The New Yorker October 26, 2020|Profiles|PRIVACY SETTINGS|”The rise of encrypted messaging and on cryptographer’s plan to resist mass surveillance.” By ANNA WEBER
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2244 remains interested in internet privacy and found this profile of Moxie Marlinspike, CEO of Signal, “the end-to-end encrypted messaging service” enlightening. Read the article for details on Moxie and the evolution and ongoing challenges for Signal.
Summary of the Article
· “end-to-end encryption, the content of every communication-a text message, a video chat, a voice call, an emoji reaction-is intelligible only to the sender and the recipient”
· If hacked the encrypted message appears as “nonsensical snarl of letters and numbers”
· Signal is a non-profit so it can’t be bought by any firm, was funded $50M by a start-up founder-Brian Action (a founder of What’s App) and donations from users. Metrics are hard to come by but “late in 2016 Marlinspike told the Times that then number of downloads had grown by four hundred percent since the election of Donald Trump.” Reportedly this summer added several million new users.
· Recommended by The Wall Street Journal, users include the DNC, the US Senate, the European Commission and law enforcement agencies.
· Marlinspike interests are varied but far-from-formulaic his success is built on some training, lots of experience in tech, high motivation, focus, hard work, multiple competencies and leading-by-doing. He’s quoted as saying “The only secret is to begin.” “If you want to get good at something or do something, you just do it, and you figure it out along the way.”
· With respect to Signal, Moxie commented “In a sense, I feel like Signal is just trying to bring normality to the internet.” “A lot of what we’re trying to do is just square the actual technology with people’s intent.” Much like have a private home life, people want a way to privately communicate without their musings being recorded, distributed and click information sold to corporations and other organizations.
Unintended consequence of course is that the uses span the gamut as any private communication channel would including; coordinating protests, conducting affairs, unionizing workers, exchanging sensitive financial information, selling drugs and communicating between sources and journalists.”
A search warrant to Signal would reveal the subscribers offered phone number, account creation date and last connection date-no other information is gathered and saved. This in contrast to the likes of Google or Facebook that do customarily share subscriber names, credit card numbers, I.P. addresses, activity logs, e-mails, and chat transcripts etc. when challenged with a search warrant.
Unlike other platforms, although Signal is open-source, there is no backdoor key that Signal or anyone else can tap to circumvent privacy.
· Governments don’t like the lack of backdoor citing potential use by “foreign adversaries, terrorist, and hackers”…”hiding terrorist plots, child sexual exploitation and other criminal activities.” “China, Iran and Russia have banned various messaging apps and services that provide end-to-end encryption.” U.K. in 2016 “authorized the government to compel communications providers to remove ‘electronic protection’” and “2019, Australia” passed similar laws. “Earlier this year, Attorney General William Barr praised a new bill in Congress, the Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act” with similar goals.
· Like anything Signal has critics that; don’t like having to sign-up with a phone number, don’t like centralized-server control, can’t guarantee that apps adopting Signal contain the original code among others. Marlinspike realizes that unlike art, software exists in a moving ecosystem and that updating is necessary.
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