Privacy

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[SWE] Swedish government wants a back door in Signal (www.svt.se)

submitted 1 day ago by Wolfie@lemm.ee to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

91 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Swedish government wants a back door in signal for police and 'Säpo' (Swedish federation that checks for spies)

Let's say that this becomes a law and Signal decides to withdraw from Sweden as they clearly state that they won't implement a back door; would a citizen within the country still be able to use and access Signals services? Assuming that google play services probably would remove the Signal app within Sweden (which I also don't use)

I just want the government to go f*ck themselves, y'know?

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[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 38 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Governments have long wanted backdoors on secure private communication, and so long as we have an ownership class, they always will.

And backdoors will always be more useful to hackers, industrial spies and terrorists than they are these departments of state looking to ensure national security (or watch for proletariat unrest. We're already pissed.)

And the private sector will always route around these backdoors, possibly by modding the client or offering new services that are still secure.

States should get used to disappointment. Investigation bureaus should prepare for going dark. Once upon a time they had to rely on detective work rather than asking Google whose phones were near the incident or what web-surfers were asking questions about the circumstances pre-hoc.

[–] icmpecho@lemmy.ml 1 points 47 minutes ago

it always bugs me how governments who demand backdoors continuously fail to realize that even if they backdoor the encryption of Signal: PGP, or more similarly to Signal, Pidgin+OTR and/or OMEMO all still exist, are well maintained and are designed to work on top of insecure channels. This isn't gonna be the way to catch actual bad actors, they'll all just get SimpleX or Pidgin or any other number of things and continue communicating and "going dark".

...not to mention that Signal's source code is open, so even if they compromise the Signal client, you can just switch to Molly or build an older version - or if the server is compromised, you can run your own with the backdoor disabled or stripped out. This is a zero-sum-game all the way down.