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Comment by jchw | Hacker News Reader

There’s some serious dishonesty going on here, trying to portray end to end crypto as some kind of horrible thing only criminals use. Yet I’d imagine the combined userbases of WhatsApp, Signal and Apple iMessage make up the majority of all message traffic worldwide, excluding countries that restrict internet traffic significantly. For example, you can’t subpoena to get the messages in any of these... this is the same for all E2E chats.

It is not a bug that police and governments can not access and hear all of your “offline” communications. It is likewise not a bug that police and governments can not access and see all of your online communications.

This could be an interesting story if half of it wasn’t just unabashed fearmongering.

I look forward to going to prison some day for dual booting my computer because some criminals did it on phones once!

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I think you are projecting on to the story. The other way to read this is that with privacy such a rare feature of mobile phones, it's almost inevitable that criminals would end up becoming purveyors of privacy conscious phones.

I think you could argue that the great charge against privacy is causing this problem.

In other words, if we make privacy illegal then only criminals will have privacy?

Well, more like if we make privacy illegal than the enterprises providing privacy will necessarily be criminal.

The point remains: most people have E2E chat, this article misrepresents that badly.

It's nice that you believe that. ;-) Even nicer that you might think that E2E chat provides privacy for your communications.

Not have as in "are actually using it".

Whatsapp is popular outside of usa and China

Imessage is default messenger for ios

American android users become the excluded

I dunno, WhatsApp is probably used more than SMS.

It's ironic because many journalists usually rely on end-to-end encryption heavily to protect their own security in places hostile to them. VICE is a disgrace.

Er, this very article talks about how sources contacted the journalist over E2E messaging to protect their anonymity. The journalist lists his Signal contact info on Twitter. It's not like he's unaware of what E2E messaging is or who uses it....

Yeah, since the journalist uses something like signal, it's not like he's saying it has no use.

Nothing dishonest here. A criminal enterprise purposely creating a phone with hidden OS to cater to the criminal market. No privacy conscious person buys a black box $1200 phone that costs $700 every six months. This doesn't mean all encryption is for criminals, rather the story is about for product being for criminals.

OK, an exercise for you - how would you write the story, describing what he company is doing, with its concentration on security?

I expected better reporting from Vice

Expect nothing from VICE. Sensationalism is their specialty.

Serious question. Why?

Vices absolute bottom of the barrel journalism. They do you have some funny articles though.

Surely this is sarcastic?

I'd put Telegram up there, probably in front of Signal.

Telegram is not encrypted for for group or direct chats unless the user creates a secret chat. So although telegram is probably above signal in usage, I would guess encrypted chats are not

IIRC they also invented their own algorithm, so not properly reviewed.

They also shipped a really obvious backdoor https://habr.com/en/post/206900/

Dude, it is Vice.

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