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This shouldn't surprise anyone. If a company collects info about some user and the government comes to them with a legitimate warrant they have to handover the
by Cody-99 2y ago
This shouldn't surprise anyone. If a company collects info about some user and the government comes to them with a legitimate warrant they have to handover the information about that user (or risk going to jail/other action by the court) . There is a reason other companies like signal go out of their way to collect as little as possible.
- lostlogin 2y agoUser data is a liability, not an asset. However this is untrue when breaches, leaks and misuse aren’t prosecuted. It’s a shame we have ended up here.
- bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago> User data is a liability, not an asset. Yeah Google and Facebook are all losing money in those liabilities. No theyre not, they're printing money because user data is an asset. Stop repeating silly sound bytes.
- sonofhans 2y agoUser data is only an asset if your business model demands it, like Google and Facebook. If you don’t have, and won’t create, a way to monetize it then yes, it’s strictly a liability.
- idle_zealot 2y agoIt's not that it is a liability, it's that it should be. Likewise, it currently is an asset, but shouldn't be monetizable.
- lostlogin 2y agoWhen you quote part of my comment, it give a different message. Clever!
- BadHumans 2y agoThis is only true if the cost of storing user data is greater than the profits it generates. When companies are allowed to sell out users and punishment for data leaks are just seen as the cost of doing business then why would you not store whatever data you can get your hands on?
- molticrystal 2y ago>the government comes to them with a legitimate warrant Which government, such as the French government for all Russian users, the Russian government for all Ukraine users, or the USA government for all users? Whose standard for warrants, and how much use of coercion and force are they allowed to use for enforcement. Can the USA kidnap the owners for non-compliance, can the Russians?
- cpa 2y agoSo what? Legitimate warrants cannot exist? Companies exist somewhere, and they follow the rules that can be enforced on them. I'll take warrents by imperfect democracies over autocracies and dictatorship any day.
- Cody-99 2y agoWhere ever they want to do business at. If they expect to be allowed to operate in France/the EU they will have to comply with legitimate French/EU warrants. No one is saying they can't fight it if there is a reason to. >Can the USA kidnap the owners for non-compliance, can the Russians? Jailing someone/holding a company in contempt that does business in your country for ignoring legal warrants isn't kidnapping. Trying to frame it that way is pretty silly and disingenuous.
- Ajedi32 2y agoWhat does it mean to "operate" in a country though? If I operate a service in the US and have no servers in Iran, no employees in Iran, no physical presence in Iran whatsoever, but Iranians are communicating with me over the global public internet, does that mean I have to comply with Iranian law? What about if its France and not Iran? What if these French/Iranian users are not only communicating with me, but also sending me money and/or cryptocurrency in exchange for that communication?
- Ajedi32 2y agoPersonally I would contend that none of that counts as "operating" in France or Iran. You're operating entirely in the US, and it would be ridiculous for Iran or France to try to subject you to their laws just because people who live in their country are communicating with you or sending you money. (Though obviously those people are still subject to the laws of their respective countries in what they're allowed to do when interacting with you, just as you are subject to US law in your interactions with them.) Of course, the fact that something is ridiculous doesn't prevent a sovereign country from trying to do it anyway. Iran can threaten to assassinate you for communicating with their citizens, and France can threaten to jail you if you ever travel to France or extradite you. Both of those threats are unjustified in my opinion and should not be supported or condoned by other countries (particularly not the US), but like I said; they're sovereign countries so we can't do much to stop them if they want to be unreasonable.
- beefnugs 2y agoyep, and reading the news lately "legitimate warrant" means things like "has a harris poster on their lawn"
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- krick 2y agoEvery time someone brings up Signal in these threads I cringe. One can make up stories about spam protection as much as he wants, but given how little (basically none) control one has over him phone number, no messenger strictly requiring a phone number can be considered "privacy-oriented" by any sane person.
- maxwell 2y agoWhat do you advocate for an alternative identifier and how do you combat spam without verifying a phone number?
- pier25 2y agono IDs, only connect to the users you choose to connect with SimpleX comes to mind https://simplex.chat/ https://simplex.chat/
- fragmede 2y agothey have usernames now
- inquirerGeneral 2y ago[dead]
- zuhsetaqi 2y agoYou still can’t create an account without a phone number
- Cody-99 2y agoHuh? I think you are confusing "privacy-oriented" and anonymous! Signal is pretty privacy oriented since it has E2EE by default (and so does Whatsapp). Telegram would be much more privacy oriented if it had E2EE by default.
- upofadown 2y agoThe incentive is to claim to collect as little as possible. What a company actually collects is between them and any influential state actor that can manage to make use of the data in secret. A company can't support the needs of such an actor and law enforcement at the same time.
- slt2021 2y agoyou care confusing collecting data with persisting user data. it is easy to prove what your app collects from OS's permission model and web traffic. People are less interested in whether you store it for future use or discard it immediately after receiving. Even if you claim you don't persist any of user data, you would still be collecting it
- whycome 2y ago"Legitimate warrant" is a flexible and fluctuating idea. When a new government takes over, they may want information on all potential opposition.
- chemmail 2y agoBut my crypto bro friends said they would only communicate by Telegram because it is 1000% secure!