
Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data - blfr
https://whispersystems.org/bigbrother/eastern-virginia-grand-jury/
======
zeveb
It'd be better, of course, if we didn't rely on Signal not storing all that
metadata and instead used a protocol which made it impossible for anyone to be
in a position to choose whether or not to store it. Unfortunately, the
protocols that enable truly traffic–analysis-resistant messaging (I believe
the Pynchon Gate[1] is currently the best-of-breed) tend to have increased
latency and consume greatly-increased bandwidth.

I don't really know what the solution is, but I'm very uneasy about the
central point of failure Open Whisper Systems is. Moxie's previous points
about the difficulty of upgrading a federated protocol[2] are correct, but I
think that despite the difficulty it's important to do.

[1]
[http://freehaven.net/anonbib/cache/sassaman:wpes2005.pdf](http://freehaven.net/anonbib/cache/sassaman:wpes2005.pdf)

[2] [https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-
moving/](https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/)

~~~
StavrosK
Yeah, but I'm kind of tired of having to fight my own government every step of
the way. I'd prefer a political solution at this point.

~~~
Bartweiss
To me, the big question is what a _trustworthy_ political solution would look
like.

I see this desire raised a lot, in contexts from HN to Valley-mocking pieces
on how encryption is no substitute for advocacy. I completely understand the
instinct, but every incarnation of it seems to struggle with the same
question. Namely: how do you know when you've won?

Restrictions against collecting data on US citizens didn't produce the
expected results. Testimony to Congress didn't accurately depict what's
collected, even in secret. In the early days, the existence of these agencies
was classified to help go around restrictions on existing agencies. Years ago,
back in the _Puzzle Palace_ days, the DoJ cited systematic criminality but
concluded that they were _unable_ to prosecute it.

So... what does winning look like? What regulation, what testimony, what
promise could possibly convince people that a solution had been reached, even
for the moment?

~~~
ryandrake
You never win. To use a controversial example: Who thinks abortion rights
people "won" with Roe v Wade? Their opponents have been relentlessly chipping
away at that "victory" ever since. When you make something a political issue,
you are guaranteeing that it cannot be won with any kind of finality.

~~~
Bartweiss
I agree, but I'm talking about a scale even shorter than that.

Roe v Wade was a clear and unambiguous advance for abortion rights, and the
battle lines are now arrayed somewhere different than they were before Roe.
The fight isn't over, but it's fairly clear who holds what.

I'm talking about even knowing when you've made progress. If a federal
directive came through tomorrow expansively forbidding the NSA from collecting
data on US citizens, privacy advocates wouldn't even _hope_ that bulk
surveillance of citizens would stop. They know better, because it basically
happened, and the definitions of words got rearranged until the program could
continue unabated.

Political issues aren't settled until they fade into consensus belief, but
it's usually possible to make progress and then defend it. On surveillance and
privacy, there's no law or court decision or whistleblower or even prosecution
that can guarantee things aren't continuing exactly the way you didn't want
them to.

~~~
rtpg
There have been countless times where courts have told three-letter agencies
to stop doing things and _they have stoppped_. The judiciary has the power to
protect us, much more than we give credit for.

There's still rule of law, and the executive mostly listens to what the
judiciary tells it to do. For all its flaws, some of our institutions work
pretty well compared to most places. I cannot think of another country where
judges are able to overtake heads of states in substantial policy outcomes.

~~~
sroussey
They have not stopped. And you can't prove otherwise. Which strikes at the
heart of the matter.

------
joncp
So, when is it going to be considered misconduct for Dana Boente and the (not
so) honorable Theresa Buchanan to tack on gag orders for no good reason? How
do we change that? Calling our representatives in Congress won't help. Signing
petitions is laughable. I'm at a loss for how to change this as a regular
citizen.

~~~
klapinat0r
I'm confused. It seems you have more information than the blog post and
attached documents entail.

Do you know both how long the investigation would be under for? Do you know
the timing?

Stating there's no good reason is not true - it's quite possible that a gag
order is issued to protect the investigation, including identification of
suspects, the number of suspects (at least two in this case), change of
behavior (e.g. switch from Signal to smoke signals, fax, or just lay low for a
while), etc.

What happens when two days after a terrorist attack, OWS publishes a subpoena
for the first time? I for one welcome that they go through the official
channels to get the redacted version approved. Let's not botch investigations
for the sake of pitchforking the "everything should be public" slogans.

~~~
nindalf
I think a middle ground is possible in this specific case. The government
could have said "we're placing a selective gag order, meaning you can't
publish this notice but you can publish the redacted notice that we've
helpfully attached", rather than wait for OWS to file a petition to publish
the redacted version.

------
CiPHPerCoder
I'm not too surprised to see an attempted overreach by federal investigators.
Too bad there's no measure of meaningful accountability here.

Outside the usual "let's ask for more than we're legally entitled" shtick,
there's nothing particularly alarming about this subpoena; it was narrowly
focused on two phone numbers, for which only one was a Signal user.

It's good on OWS to fight so hard for transparency.

------
rurban
Funny that Open Whisper Systems wrote in the last chapter that they
essentially should come back with a court order or search warrant to get more
data, but forgot to include the critical information, that even then the FBI
will not get more information, because Open Whisper Systems has no technical
ability to provide that data at all.

It's volatile data exchanged between the clients only, but not centrally
stored anywhere (contrary to all other secure chat systems out there). The FBI
has probably no idea how Signal works, what is stored and what not.

Even a grand-jury subpoena has no chance to produce more data. But maybe they
can force them to re-implement Signal with a government backdoor (because it's
a police state after all), and that's what Open Whisper Systems is really
objecting to? Or just logging the metadata? (Which btw. duckduckgo does, even
if it slows down their webserver by at least 20%).

Or did they just try to mess with the FBI lawyers?

~~~
stingraycharles
Wouldn't OWS be able to push an update specifically targeted at retrieving the
necessary information to decrypt that specific user's data?

~~~
Programmatic
Or be forced a la Lavabit to install a pen register which would capture the
metadata from that point forward.

~~~
pooper
What is the solution here? The solution that minimizes damage involves
everyone building from source and connecting in a peer to peer fashion that
makes it pretty difficult to push a malicious update if you're looking for
targeted surveillance.

However, even this requires an understanding government that isn't willing to
poison the well in order to get to the target. A government that justifies
dragnet (and whose agencies allegedly buy and sit on a stash of zero days)
isn't something I'd trust to be bothered by the idea of leaving many people
vulnerable in order to catch one bad guy.

I know it sounds trite but technology will not provide a full solution here.
We need a lot of lobbying and a lot of PR to have any chance. Co-ordination
will be very challenging when our goals very so wildly. But I guess we need to
ask ourselves where we stand on this issue. Given we have difficulty getting
almost half of the people to even bother registering and showing up to vote,
this is an uphill task.

~~~
xorcist
The obvious solutions is a federated protocol. There's no reason for Whisper
or Google to be involved in routing messages except to own the system's
concept of identity.

Trust in binaries is a harder problem, but reproducible builds is probably an
important part of it. If several separate entities vouches for the binary, you
have reason to believe what you run corresponds to be published source code.

------
kyledrake
I'm really happy they provided documentation on how to fight an
unconstitutional gag order on a subpoena. They put gag orders on subpoenas
they're not supposed to _all the time_ , and it's good to show people an
"easy" way to fight them.

~~~
Niten
I agree, although my takeaway was that the way to fight them is to respond on
ACLU letterhead.

~~~
kyledrake
I'm not disagreeing with that theory.

------
woah
FYI, Signal has access to all metadata about messages and calls (but not the
content of course). They claim not to store it and I believe them for now but
someone else could be storing it.

They don't have access to group message membership directly. A group appears
as a bunch of one to one messages between the participants, so they might
still be able to infer it.

~~~
yincrash
If they were storing that metadata, they would be lying in the response to
their subpoena.

~~~
CaptSpify
That doesn't prove they don't have it though. I'm skeptical of the suggestion
as well, but people can lie.

~~~
5ersi
Since their client apps are OSS you can check yourself:
[https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-
Android](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android)

~~~
mi100hael
Notably, the source for the voice call server is not available as far as I
know, and there's no guarantee that the text messaging server is running in an
unaltered state on their production servers.

------
ejcx
That's very neat and really glad to see privacy enhancing technologies
working.

I'm curious what type of metadata Facebook would have from the signal
integrations with Whatsapp and Messenger. Is there more, less, or same? Has
anyone looked in to this?

~~~
joantune
Quite recently Whatsapp started to share your phone name and last time you
were on the service with Facebook AFAIK [https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-
stop-whatsapp-from-sharin...](https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-stop-
whatsapp-from-sharing-your-information-with-facebook/)

------
gagabity
I really hate that every messaging app nowadays requires a phone number to
use, sure it makes some things easier but its very difficult to get a phone
number anonymously. They should include an email signup option or even better
just a username/password option although that would cause some issues with
spammers, which can probably be mitigated in other more creative ways.

~~~
CraftThatBlock
Apps that claim "privacy" only actually protect the _security_ , not
_anonymity_ of their users.

------
Fej
I actually trust OWS in this case. They have taken every precaution to make
data seizure (all but) impossible.

Signal is the best shot we have at widespread, usable private communications
at this point. It's about time we get around to supporting it. Be pragmatic.

------
jimktrains2
I love that they gave them the info in unix millis.

A serious question though, how do gag orders work? How do I notify an
attorney?

~~~
bahjoite
At the bottom of the gag order is states that OWS "may disclose the attached
subpoena to an attorney for [OWS] for the purpose of receiving legal advice".

~~~
jimktrains2
Is that required to be there? Is that just a curtesy? It would be
unconstitutional otherwise, but, I don't know. It just seems odd. Is the
attorney now bound by a gag order?

~~~
lerpa
Well maybe they could contact an attorney through an online chat system that
does leak conversations and surprisingly posts those private conversations
about shady things govt wants to their website front page. What a bummer. Some
lawyer needs to create www.gagorderattorney.com

------
ajdlinux
"In the "first half of 2016" (the most specific we're permitted to be)"

I note that the documents use a proportional width font, and there's been
previous research into using the width of blacked-out sections of redacted
documents along with information about the font to work out possible character
combinations that fit appropriately...

------
secfirstmd
Good stuff Moxie and OWS!

~~~
tbrake
And ACLU!

~~~
secfirstmd
Yep and ACLU! :)

------
jwtadvice
Great, that explains the warrant canary disappearance. I hope they put it back
up so they can take it down again.

------
throw2016
Can a privacy service really be built in the US and that too in SFO which is
ground zero for the fantastic new surveillance economy being imagined and
built.

We know freedom loving software engineers after decades of posturing have long
folded and left Snowden holding the baby.

We also know companies here are either closely linked to intelligence agencies
or bending over backwards.

We know the executive branch is in the middle of a full blown identity crisis
of whether they are the good guys or bad guys of the world. Closesly followed
by a legal system that has developed a third world regime like affinity for
blanket gag orders and rubber stamping with 100% approval rates. This is a bit
like tasking the fox to protect the hens.

What stops a goverment friendly company from acquiring whispersystems, or
whisper itself being some sort of a release valve operation?

------
thingexplainer
Moxie says this happened in the first half of 2016, but the censored month
seems have eight characters, ruling out the first six months.

My bet is on December. My hedge is that I counted wrong.

Edit: I counted wrong. <digit><digit><space>[April,March] works just as well.

------
MyMan1
Is it safe to assume then that WhatsApp is not secure? Unless their data has
been subpoena'd as well?

~~~
subliminalpanda
WhatsApp does store metadata in plaintext which makes it susceptible to law
enforcement or 3rd parties. The contents of the messages are still end-to-end
encrypted; that being said WhatsApp does default to backing up chats in the
cloud and those could be subpoenaed by a government.

~~~
joering2
.. and how easy to frame someone... just keep sending them some messages until
they block you.

in the eyes of LE... they have metadata that you spoke with suspected
individual :)

~~~
thingexplainer
And presumably you have a record of those same chats revealing the content
was, "I'm not interested in participating in your conspiracy to commit fraud,
stop talking to me."

If you meant to imply they could abuse this capability to get a warrant, I'll
be concerned about it when they have any trouble getting warrants.

------
ComodoHacker
The good news here is people are using Signal for important things.

------
fatdog
It might be worth considering why authorities think banning or regulating
encryption is tractable.

\- 100+ years of business telecommunications without significant strong
encryption. \- Robust wiretapping and law enforcement access laws and
practices that mean there is NO place or piece of information within US
sovereign territory that is inaccessible to an authorized agent of the state.
\- they have the expectation of total control. Hell, beat cops can shoot you
over minor "comply or die" orders. \- Crypto isn't about your email or even
evidence in a particular case, it is about the completeness and totality of
their authority. \- States around the world routinely decimate their
populations in civil wars and massacres to ensure the same people remain in
power. From the LE perspective, anyone who threatens the sovereignty of the
state is a terrist they would complete for the opportunity to shoot.

Hackers don't get it. If the crypto debate ever gets real, you cannot imagine
how real it will get.

~~~
api
It's already quite "real" in many countries around the world where using
strong crypto in the wrong way can get you imprisoned or killed.

------
mastazi
Same story as covered by the ACLU website: [https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-
future/new-documents-reveal-g...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/new-
documents-reveal-government-effort-impose-secrecy-encryption-company)

------
jweir
If I had $100 to donate - ACLU or EFF or a 50/50 split?

~~~
1123581321
100% to EFF because they specialize in issues important to me more than ACLU,
which has a broader mandate, and because EFF's budget is about 10% of ACLU's.

------
Jarwain
> All message contents are end to end encrypted, so we don't have that
> information either.

The way I'm reading/understanding this is that they have the encrypted
messages, but don't specify whether they are stored. However, since the
messages are encrypted, they don't have the message contents/that information.
Concluding, they may have all the messages saved, albeit in an encrypted
format and with minimal metadata.

Did I come to the right conclusion? Or does Signal not store the encrypted
message data either?

~~~
faktorialas
Considering the way they claim to minimize the metadata stored, I wouldn't
expect them to store encrypted message content after it is delivered to the
client.

It'd be difficult to delete metadata about a message, but still keep the
content. And they are claiming to not retain message metadata.

~~~
Jarwain
That makes sense, but the way they ended up phrasing the sentence was a little
weird/suspicious I guess?

------
1024core
Is there any country where you can set up your servers, so you can be out of
reach of the various US agencies hell bent on undermining our privacy?

------
alanh
At the risk of sounding clueless, how is it possible that Signal can’t say
which account belongs to which phone number when the only concept of a
username on Signal is that of a verified phone number? When I initiate a
conversation, am I not at that moment using a lookup which now people are
saying does not exist!?

------
Keverw
Why do they mean by "upstream and downstream providers"? I would think it'd
mean the ISP associated with the IP address from the logs if they had it? Not
sure why they worded it that way or if they meant somthing else?

------
doorgoo
I don't think that it's Silicon Valley avoided politics.. They literally used
to work solely for the government [http://doorgoo.chat](http://doorgoo.chat)

------
free2rhyme214
If you had to rank encrypted messaging clients, how would you rank them?

The clients you have are Signal, WhatsApp, Messenger and Allo. (all that run
the Signal protocol currently)

~~~
tdkl
Messenger and Allo aren't E2E by default, but optional. Whatsapp shares data
with FB.

Wire is one of those which is E2E by default and uses the similar algorithm as
Signal.

------
throwawayIndian
Worry not, 'Murica! Hillary is considering to drone this guy as well. So that
you can be safe. :-)

~~~
moxie
[http://fortune.com/2016/08/29/clinton-campaign-
signal/](http://fortune.com/2016/08/29/clinton-campaign-signal/)

~~~
dredmorbius
Since GP risks flag death: the implication was that Hillary Clinton would seek
to have Signal shut down, or more specifically: target Moxie directly.

Moxie's link shows her campaign is in fact relying on the service.

~~~
jbmorgado
While the GGP idea was just misinformed and basically outright dumb, it
doesn't mean that just because a politician chooses to use a tool or a person
a a given time then they will protect that person or tool in the future. The
world is full of examples in the contrary.

Bottom line, just because Hilary's campaign is using Signal, it doesn't mean
that in the future her administration won't gag them or make legislation
available in order to use them so spy on their own citizens.

------
tomjen3
In the future please don't blank out the officer's email address, especially
when they (as explained in the reply) overstep their bounds in terms of what
they are allowed to request, thus essentially abusing their position and the
trust we as citizens have provided to them.

~~~
codezero
The redacted letter was provided by the court, so I assume that they weren't
willing to disclose it and revealing it would be a violation of the court
order.

