[barrysteve]

I don't understand. In the case of a national security incident, the US gov/military would have popular apps cracked open ASAP.

We live under a global survelliance network and somehow the gentlemen's agreement on keeping end-to-end encryption in place, is the only thing keeping our chat apps private?

One would hope for a concrete privacy that doesn't depend on multi-national corps and nation-states to agree that it should be kept private.

Something else has to be going on here, because nobody could commit to keeping dangerous secrets on whatsapp, after assange and snowden.. right?

[red-iron-pine]

> I don't understand. In the case of a national security incident, the US gov/military would have popular apps cracked open ASAP.

Except that didn't happen. For example, there was a terrorisim-related mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, and they got the shooters phone.

Apple refused to decrypt it.

The Feds later bought a 0-day off of a foreign firm, thought to be Israeli or maybe Australian, and got into that way, but Apple stood their ground.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_d...

[mikrl]

>In the case of a national security incident, the US gov/military would have popular apps cracked open ASAP

But it just doesn’t work like many people think: the policeman says ‘open it’ and it gets opened by the company.

Imagine a bank vault containing something security critical. If the US government needs it but the key isn’t available, it will move heaven and earth to get the best vault breachers and experts of circumventing bank security, regardless of the cost.

You can think of it as a one-off job, at a high price tag, without the guarantee of success. But phones are easier to breach (more points of failure) than a bank vault.

[dreamcompiler]

Whatsapp can be assumed insecure because it's owned by Meta. Signal and the Apple apps are another story.

In the case of a national security incident, these companies don't cooperate with the government because they have no ability to do so. On occasions where the government has broken Apple encryption, they've done so by buying the software or services of companies who collect zero-day exploits, which Apple then fixes when they become known.

Governments hate basing a policing policy on the hope that a zero-day will exist when they need one. They much prefer a dependable backdoor that they can access which nobody else can, and that's the magic unicorn that cannot be built.

[klooney]

None of them are secure against the global surveillance apparatus. In the event of 9/11 2, the NSA will send goons to sit with the devs, make a special build that forwards data to a special data center if you're on a list, and then they'll go to Apple and Google to secretly force push the special build.

[rf15]

> We live under a global survelliance network

But we don't, right? Neither every word nor every move you make is recorded. Not to mention not globally shared, of all things.

[barrysteve]

Uhh.. London has a CCTV network that doesn't prevent theft.

My parking lots used to be tech-free and all now have poles with cameras and government signs on them.

Face camera tech in all retail outlets. Every second or third home is plastered in cameras, some beaming their data back to some US corp.

Phone tracks everything you do, to hundreds of app providers, who then sell it on to data aggregators.

Refuse covid vax? No access to public services.

My IT friends have admitted the whole point since the 80s was the spying.

Watergate and Cyberdyne (nixon) started the end of secret keeping.

It is no different to Oceangate and Teledyne (sub imploding) starting the end of physical freedom.

Snowden, Assange, basic facts about GCHQ and google offshoring domestic data in the UK so they can classify it as 'foreign spying' and legally dissect it all, when they re-import it.

Deanonymizing online activity is statisically trivial.

All the 9/11 stuff destroying liberty and adding excessive security at airport gates and body scanners that were never needed before. ect.

Euthanisia has been legalized.

Some of us, do in fact, pay attention.

Writing's on the (digital) wall. Every man will be a 'slave' to tech run by harvard-types, by the end of the 2030s.

While we're "working from home", the gov and tech companies destroyed the physical infrastructure that allowed freedom and replaced it with tyranny.

People are fleeing cities to live in the countryside. I. Wonder. Why.

Here I am remembering and telling the truth. As if that mattered.

I'm watching this in real time without the means to change my living circumnstances, and it's a big old brain melter.

I'm supposedly responsible for my actions as a person, yet the gov and tech companies, really are indicating it doesn't think I should be allowed to exercise free will.

....

[CapitalistCartr]

Every word sent across the Internet is; every move accompanied by a mobile is; every move in an automobile with a tag is; every purchase made with a credit or debit card is.

[permo-w]

that's a pretty low bar