
UK Politicos Brexit from Whatsapp to Signal - gnufx
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/20/uk_conservatives_brexit_from_whatsapp_to_signal/
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ttctciyf
TFA says:

> The switch to Signal will also allow the Conservative party to stem the flow
> of leaks emerging from its inner circle.

How will it do that?

> Like WhatsApp, Signal has end-to-end encryption baked in, preventing a
> foreign power or individual from accessing sensitive conversations. In
> addition, it also includes settings, which, when enabled, self-destructs
> messages after a period of time.

> Unfortunately, Signal doesn't allow group moderators to block individuals
> from taking screenshots, which would frustrate the process of leaking a
> conversation to the press.

But if you look at the Buzzfeed stories referred to, they are based on insider
leaks of Whatsapp traffic, often in the form of screenshotted group messages.

So while it's good for the Reg to poke fun at the implied encryption
hypocrisy, they do their readers a disservice by not highlighting the
discrepancy between the claimed cure and the actual disease.

In fact framing the Buzzfeed "whatsapp leak" stories as a security exploit
issue is downright misleading.

If you look a little closer, they are all authored by ex-Breitbart journalist
Alex Wickham and seem to have dried up around the time the previous PM Theresa
May resigned. I think there's an obvious inference, which I will leave to the
reader ;)

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panarky
TFA does not state that Signal is more secure than WhatsApp.

They're switching to Signal because WhatsApp has a hard cap of 250 members per
group, while Signal's group size is unlimited.

With the Conservative Party's recent election win, they now must communicate
with much larger groups. If WhatsApp isn't an option, then Signal is certainly
better able to "stem the flow of leaks" than alternatives like email or Slack.

Naturally, none of these prevent screenshots, so that's irrelevant.

~~~
blackearl
And none of these things will prevent a camera, or someone else with a phone's
camera. It's funny for anyone to insinuate a group of 250+ will ever be safe
from leaking information.

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oarsinsync
Given their views on encryption, it would be remarkable if they led by example
and switched to an unencrypted platform instead.

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secfirstmd
One of the tricky parts about the shift to Signal or e2e in general for
politicians is the data retention FOIA problem. It's not really an issue for
parties but is when government business slips into the inevitable conversation
at some point. With some of the people we work with they've found themselves
having to screenshot and send hundreds of messages.

It's one of the reasons why I think Matrix is going to become more popular for
low level government conversations. As it is recently in France. As far as I
understand they have managed to solve this problem when deployed in such
environments.

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toyg
This is good. Obviously it won't do anything to stop leaks (that's an
unsolvable analog hole called "humans"), but it will help evangelising Signal
("if it's good enough for the scheming knaves in power..."), which provides
superior privacy to the average person than Whatsapp or Telegram.

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manishsharan
Easy to blame tech for leaks when it was a human -- one of their own -- who
has been leaking this information. I look forward to hearing of Brexit Signal
leaks.

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hprotagonist
that’s just good opsec, frankly.

