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Comment by Jerry2 | Hacker News Reader

I saw Moxie Marlinspike's talk when it was posted on CCC's official channel [1] and was disgusted by it. The talk has been now censored and video was made private. It was one of the most defeatist talks I've ever come across when it comes to messaging and privacy. His message was basically that anything you do is pointless and that his and WhatsApp/Facebook's way is the right one.

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).

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I don't particularly like a centralized model either. Federation is much more difficult, but can create ecosystems which can survive longer/better than a single company can.

But on the specific issue of phone numbers as ID, they have been making some substantial progress on a technological solution to address this, specifically without running central servers.

https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/

You were "disgusted" by the talk? The controversial parts were spelled out in a post Moxie wrote 3.5 years ago, with the same title. The only deviations are new privacy-preserving features Signal is building, one of which is intended to address the most common objection to Signal (the use of phone numbers as identifiers).

The talk wasn't "censored"; the conference made a mistake by recording and posting it in the first place.

I think if Moxie had framed this from a perspective of "centralization has some advantages, so how can we make a centralized service as safe as possible" the outcry would be much less. Because signal is genuinely doing some very great stuff in that area. But the framing as a dismissal of decentralized solutions as unworthwhile is very frustrating, especially when it so transparently overlaps with his business interests.

Yea, how can we talk about privacy of a service that I need to register with a phone number (and in my country to register a phone number is obligatory to give your ID and signature, you can't activate a SIM card anonymously)

Centralized services should be avoided for a multitude of reason, the primary one is being dependent on some company that offers you the service and can and probably will shut down one day, with the result of loosing all the things you had on that service.

Look at the past, how many centralized services closed down and we lost all our data? Instead decentralized services are still up and running: email, usenet, IRC, even if unfortunately a bit forgotten these day (with the exception of email, even if most of people uses GMail anyway so it's in fact centralized...)

Wire seemed like a decent alternative where you're not required a number, I think only an email. Also you can delete your account.

I read on a privacy-oriented website that Wire was purchased by an American company not trusted for its record on privacy (or perhaps it was that since the company is American, their data can be read by the US govt.). I can't find it now though. There isn't anything mentioning it on the website of `www.privacytools.io`: https://www.privacytools.io/software/real-time-communication...

I never continued with Wire cause... nobody uses it, even less people use it than Signal. I think Keybase is the next best thing to some extent.

That seems unlikely, since they just raised 8MM a few weeks ago.

It's fine, but you should know that pretty much everything Moxie and Signal talk about contrast sharply with Wire. For instance: last I checked, Wire stores your entire social graph on their servers in a database --- effectively forever, Wire stores a plaintext log of everyone you've communicated with.

To be fair, since there is no remote attestation possible for the Signal servers, and you realistically can't run one yourself, you only have their word that they don't store any of that information.

This is similar guarantees that a lot of other chat and VPN companies offer. Personally I would consider any information given out to a company non-secret, especially to those operating outside my jurisdiction.

The difference is that Signal's competitors are designed in such a way that they have to keep this information, and Signal has delayed key features, like user profiles, until they've managed to create designs that don't have these restrictions.

So the logic you're using here is essentially: "since we have to take Signal's word for some part of this, we might as well use services that promise the exact opposite". I don't find that argument persuasive, but you do you.

There's no reason to caricature anyone's arguments here. Why the antagonism?

Help me understand where I've lapsed into caricature?

Not all Signal alternatives store user information on servers. Threema for example has fully decentralized groups and even decentralized profiles (while Signal uses encrypted-but-centralized profiles, and their new Private Groups system moved from decentralized to encrypted-but-centralized as well).

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to say, but remote attestation is in fact exactly what they're doing with their contact discovery: https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/

SGX is crypto that is already exploited and broken, it offers no real use in this context.

Oh, and I forgot, you do need to essentially blindly trust Intel.

I don't really care and think this is all a red herring, since every other mainstream messenger doesn't protect this information at all, but instead stores it in plaintext databases.

Yes, but it's barely better when reconstructing the social graph is so easy.

Also, Matrix offers a possible alternative.

What makes you believe that?

> You only have their word that they don't store any of that information.

No, we have the fact that they don't collect it in the first place. The whole point of the Signal design, reflected in the published source code, is that the server doesn't need this type of information and so it isn't sent to their server at all.

As Thomas explained this takes a bunch of extra effort in the Signal design, hoop jumping that normal users will never appreciate. Moxie believes this is worth doing, although I think people's constant cynicism is gradually wearing him down or maybe that's just the jetlag.

If you tell me and Alice and Bob your real name, and then it's leaked to the press, I guess I sympathise if you distrust me as a result even though Alice is a famous gossip.

But if you only gave Alice your name, and then you distrust me because she sold it to the press that makes you a crazy person. "It could have been anyone". No, it couldn't, it was Alice. She's the only person you gave it to.

On the other hand, Wire lets you look at their server code, I assume there's nothing stopping you from hosting your own server.

What source code does Wire let you see that Signal doesn't?

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