On Privacy versus Freedom

XMPP was supposed to solve all those problems when it came out in the early 2000s. But then all the big tech companies who build "ecosystems" decided to push their own applications, all incompatible with one another. So here we are again with this proliferation of programs that really only do one thing: communication. It's like the 90s / early 2000s with the proliferation of instant messengers: ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, MSN, and on and on and on. The players are different, but the game is still the same. I suspect that twenty years from now, when the players have all changed yet again, there will still be one reliable method of reaching me: IRC.

If the Googles and Whatsapps and Facebooks of the world had been around in the early 90s, you'd have one email client from Facebook for mailing Joe and Fred, an email client from Google for mailing Mary and Jane, and an email client from Whatsapp for mailing Alice and Bob. Thankfully, email became entrenched before that could happen.

I want messaging to be like email, where I use one and exactly one program to communicate with all of my contacts, regardless of what server they use. People say that federation is more complicated than centralization. I'm sure that's true for developers, but in fact, federation can be vastly simplifying for an end user. I'm a fundamentally lazy person. Having to learn all these different messaging tools is frankly a waste of my time. All I want is a federated protocol and an open system, be it Matrix, XMPP, or something else.

As a final aside, you know what else that bugs me? The word "ecosystem". I worked for a big tech company for a while, and the only people I ever heard use that word were people out to build a walled garden.

People should think harder about how to replicate that experience, instead of how to appropriate it and then abandon it.

You can see it in his choices, and you can see how they want to eventually deliver improvements like no phone numbers, with them working on things like secure value recovery.

I kind of wish he spelled it out fully for the nit picky peanut gallery out there, so he can just reference it instead of wasting energy on them. You can just feel the exasperation when you read his writing and see him speak about this.

It has been "moving" from the times of Compuserve and AOL trying to prevent e-mail federation. Good thing they failed then! Kudos to Matrix for pushing against such movement in IMs. Someone has to push against it, instead of looking for excuses to proliferate walled gardens.

> If users don’t trust their app provider, they can always go switch apps, which gives them freedom.

Sounds like Moxie meant it's a downside. It's a huge benefit! Forcing one to use something that's not trusted is horrendous.

No 3rd party clients, mandatory updates, mandatory google play services, and mobile only are all deal breakers.

All these years later Matrix only has... The ambition to some day try to offer the core privacy features Signal already delivered back then. Some of the most basic stuff is, you believe, almost kinda sorta done.

This is, to be clear, much better than just sitting back insisting you were right but not lifting a finger. But for an actual user who needed privacy and security any time between then and now - and for future users who need it between now and whenever you get this stuff working in the real world, it was Signal that delivered. Moxie was right so far.

I'll stay with XMPP until they take it from my cold, dead hands.

The way they defend WhatsApp is heart-breaking. It's cute to see them saying there is no backdoor when it can't be proven to be the case, since it's all proprietary. They can't show the server side wasn't tampered with. Same with Skype.

It may sound flippant or unrelated, but I think this extreme projection of his argument makes it evident how silly it is. This is one of the reasons I switched away from using Signal, as much as I'd like better privacy on my text messages it's not worth handing that much control over to someone I shouldn't have to put my trust in. Instead I do my text messages over Jabber/XMPP with jmp.chat now and for others who have a proper XMPP address I use that (which gives me the option of OMEMO encryption which is basically the XMPP version of the signal double ratchet).

For the average user, installing conversations.im and hitting "create account" or whatever and calling it a day is good enough, so it's not even significantly harder than dealing with Signal.

I've used Signal on few occasions in the past but his talk made me uninstall it. I simply do not trust him after hearing his opinions. I do not support centralization and other ideals he's now pushing (including the use of a phone number as Signal's primary ID).

The talk was mirrored on few channels on YT [2] and you can still see it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdM-XTRyC9c (it's a private video now)

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj3YFprqAr8 (working link, who knows for how long so mirror it).

Second, both signal and matrix collect too much metadata. signal means you're completely screwed by their dependency on phone numbers. I expect little metadata privacy from signal because to me, it is practically the same as using my SSN or fingerprint as my user name,same for all my contacts, this key field is used by everyone and their mother to track everything we do like 1984 was target practice. For matrix, it's the defaults and how easy it is for others to fingerprint you using your specific device (equivalent of a user-agent seen by everyone iirc?) and other profile details ,but none of this is easy to correlate and answer questions like "which social network demographic micro-group does this user belong to so we can perform targeted infiltration of their device?" or "Hey, let's use this phone number to look perform the equivalent of a background check on this person who is sending us a message because we now have their phone number". Oh and the best part is, you can't just get a burner to use for registration, and to link a signal desktop,you need the mobile app. Matrix has none of these issues.

Third, consider your threat models carefully. As an individual, is it better if you have infrasructure diversity and protocol interoperability or is it better to put all your eggs in signal's basket. I never liked their use of google infra at the begining for example because I consider google more of a threat to me than most other parties. I can see the argument both ways. I personally consider the set of parties that have the most to benefit from targeting me as an individual plus those who have the most to benefit from dragnet surveillance where I reside. To me, matrix is more flexible to adopt to various threat models by for example self hosting compared to using a popular matrix server. Signal is better than the competition, if your fear is being exposed to unpatched vulnerabilities and/or if you are worried about metadata snooping (but you trust signal's infra provider, still google??) Then Signal makes more sense. For dragnet, I think matrix is better for me because implementation vulns only apply to a few users,making reliable dragnet attacks less likely. For anyone that might target me, my mobile phone is completely defenseless, so my concern is someone identifying my specific device for targeted attacks, with matrix they need to compromise the matrix server and even then they might need to do a lot more work to correlate which matrix user is me (real life "target worthy" identity). Where as with signal,they can easily micro target a group ,find out everyone's phone numbers (e.g.: hk protesters) and target their device for further exploitation via signal or any other pwnable app that is known to present on a device associated with that phone number.Practically, I am more worried about how each app fits in with everything else I do and matrix wins the security round for me.

Last but not least, I use signal for 98% of my comms because the phone number usage by Signal means I can easily connect to and invite people who don't have signal. If there is a Matrix client app that can be used as an sms client and can discover contacts' matrix account/server over sms without communicating or collecting phone number/name details of the contact, I think i might jump ship. The way I envision this to work is: the matrix client would have an invite button for non-matrix contacts and it will have an option to initiate discovery of contacts. Both options would do a challenge-response with each contact and instead of associating with a phone number they would ask to create a new martrix only contact.

Just going to point out that if agreeing on spec is six time slower, that's just the first car of traffic jam slowing down. The next car has to slow down more: The feature needs to move into SDKs. Then the next car, the client vendors need to actually implement and test their implementation of the feature and write documentation. That's even more slow.

"HOWEVER: all of this completely ignores one critical thing - the value of freedom."

I really value freedom. To me freedom means a non-technical dissident doesn't have to sit in jail when their messages weren't E2EE. It doesn't mean I can choose a value from a list of servers and have faceless entity #1, #2 or #3, or worse, Mike - the creepy IT guy from my peers - observe my metadata with everybody, and content with Karen who refuses to switch to Matrix client that supports E2EE.

"Freedom to run your own server (perhaps invisibly in your app, in a P2P world)."

Now this is something I can get behind. Which is why I've spent the last eight years working on P2P messaging system. Perhaps Matrix should move their efforts into being the change they want to see in the world instead of defending a bad solution of decentralization by saying they're thinking about implementing a better solution of P2P.

"Freedom to pick which country your server runs in"

Which you can't do if you're running P2P server on your device. I think every faceless service provider from Signal to any XMPP server has the same guarantee of privacy in practice. The only difference is Signal has to abide by the GDPR, independent users hosting servers don't. Before anyone screams about PRISM, I will point out that coercing insertion of a backdoor is the same as compelled speech, which would violate the constitution.

"Freedom to select how much metadata and history to keep."

We have precedence of Signal keeping none of that. With Matrix servers the server has access to all metadata by default, the server program doesn't attempt to hide anything, there's no sealed sender etc. Your only hope is to run your own server, somehow convince your peers you're the one they should trust with their metadata (there's a third party on every decentralized server with more than two users), and hope you don't grow enough to get hacked by nation state actors or criminals.

"Freedom to choose which apps to use - while still having the freedom to talk to anyone you like. Freedom to connect your own functionality - bots, bridges, integrations etc"

A nice idea, but everyone needs to have same features for it to work, so what you get is differences in UI, implementation language, and platform support. What matters most here is the programming language: Matrix client written in Rust is more secure that one written in C. But unless everyone uses the Rust version, the group chat is as secure as the weakest link. Same goes with bridges. You'll never have security because of this guy who likes to re-live their youth through irssi: https://xkcd.com/1782/

Also, what happens when Facebook implements their own Matrix client that steals your metadata from the endpoint, and what happens when they start bundling their app on every Samsung smartphone? Perhaps it's not your idealistic Riot client that's the problem, perhaps it's the bundled spyware on every peers' device used by people who just, don't care. I'm not saying Signal fixes the problem of user laziness, I'm saying it's better to know what's on the receiving end.

"Freedom to select which identifiers (if any) to use to register your account."

Which is kind of pointless considering the IP-address still leaks to the server by default. And the UUID means all your metadata can be tied together. The social graph is revealed to the server so unless everyone keeps rolling their IDs and exchanging them over some other channel, it's pretty much impossible to hide metadata from a malicious server running statistical analysis. Even if you're not malicious, there's no way to know if your server has been compromised. Or, if you somehow can harden your server against the NSAs of this world, please, go work for the Freedom of The Press Foundation or something.

"Freedom to extend the protocol."

When the protocol fails to mandate BASIC security features like E2EE, it's kind of pointless to talk about the possibilities of extendability. There's always going to be maintainers and theyneed to prioritize, so there's always going to be someone who decides whether something will be implemented by them. Signal doesn't forbid pull-requests if you want something done. The nice thing is, it's at least six times faster to do it for Signal.

"Freedom to write your own client, or build whole new as-yet-unimagined systems on top."

So it's the freedom of the developer we're talking about. Reminds me of BSD vs GPL (BSD says developer has freedom to fuck over users with proprietary fork, GPL says user has right to not be abused like that, and that developers have the obligation to not do that). It's the rights of the users that matter. That is, human rights. You can merge as-yet-unimagined systems to Signal. You might face initial criticism because it needs to be secure by default. But it's not like Moxie will show you the finger for proposing something before it's discovered or announced. I have first hand experience with this: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/4171

"It’s true that if you’re writing a messaging app optimized for privacy at any cost, Moxie’s approach is one way to do it."

If you consider privacy is a human right, developer freedom isn't, it's easier to see who has their priorities in order.

"you end up thoroughly putting all your eggs in one basket, trusting past, present & future Signal to retain its values, stay up and somehow dodge compromise & censorship… despite probably being the single highest value attack target on the ‘net."

So which one is easier to subvert, community of experts constantly under scrutiny by peer experts trying desperately to make a name for themselves, or open work group on protocol that still isn't secure by default, and that is much more susceptible to stagnation via bike-shedding and mission hijacking. OpenPGP work group still hasn't agreed on v5 fingerprint, the SHAppening happened five years ago. I'm going to have to disagree and say I don't have faith in unnecessarily large organizations.

I'm just going to say this FUD is worth being pointed out, but that it's not worthy of dissection.

"We owe the entire success of the Internet (let alone the Web) to openness, interoperability and decentralization."

A thought that was denounced in the 36c3 talk whether you watched the stream or not.

"To declare that openness, interoperability and decentralization is ‘too hard’ and not worth the effort when building a messaging solution is to throw away all the potential of the vibrancy, creativity and innovation that comes from an open network"

The worth was not addressed by this writing in any way, and the practical problems that far outweigh the idealistic goals were discussed by Moxie because what matters is the human rights to privacy of the users of the tool, not whether the infrastructure is based on idealistic ideas that don't offer tangible security benefits in practice.

Like Moxie said, prove that decentralization works by doing the bare necessities of implementing E2EE, then it's worth discussing whether the idealism part matters, and if decentralization has something useful to offer.

"Sure, you may end up with a super-private messaging app - but one that starts to smell alarmingly like a walled garden like Facebook’s Internet.org initiative, or an AOL keyword, or Google’s AMP. "

The negative connotations of these companies are about lack of respecting privacy. It's really weird to essentially say "you end up with super private app that shares other commonalities with privacy invading companies". Walled garden isn't ideal, but for now, it's more secure and that's what matters more to users.

"So, we continue to gladly take up Moxie’s challenge to prove him wrong - to show that it’s both possible and imperative to create an open decentralized messaging platform which (if you use reputable apps and servers) can be as secure and metadata-protecting as Signal…"

That's the attitude we need. Now go out there and use your preferred methods to make the idealistic protocol secure by default! Just don't expect me or anyone else to recommend its use before that happens.

"and indeed more so, given you can run your server off the grid, and don’t need to register with a phone number"

Will you be getting rid of IP-address leak to servers too? Quick jabs in closing notes that aren't thought out too well are not very nice.

"and in future may not even need a server at all."

Also maybe reconsider ending your refutal of criticism towards decentralized architecture by hinting that users should look towards upcoming P2P architecture.

Curious why. Anyway it's there: https://peertube.co.uk/videos/watch/12be5396-2a25-4ec8-a92a-...

https://drewdevault.com/2018/08/08/Signal.html

I still stand by everything I said here, and lots more that goes unsaid in this article. Every single weird decision Signal makes is not because they've reasonably decided to come down on some side of the fence that others haven't - it's because their decisions serve moxie's wants above anyone else.