It’s like encashing on the trust of Signal protocol, app while breaking its security model so that someone else can search through all messages.
What am I missing here?
OK, say you're a bank. The SEC states you need to keep archives of every discussion your traders have with anyone at any time (I'm simplifying things but you get the point). You keep getting massive fines because traders were whatsapping about deals
So now you've got several options - you can use MS Teams, which of course offers archival, compliance monitoring etc. But that means trusting MSFT, and making sure your traders only use Teams and nothing else. You can use a dedicated application for the financial industry, like Symphony or ICE Chat or Bloomberg, but they're clunkier than B2C apps.
And then the Smarsh (owners of Telemessage) salesman calls you, and says "your users can keep using the apps they love - WhatsApp, Signal - but we make it compliant". And everyone loves it (as long as no-one in your Security or Legal teams are looking too hard at the implications of distributing a cracked version of WhatsApp through your MDM...)
Edit: here's the install document for their cracked WhatsApp binary https://smarsh.my.salesforce.com/sfc/p/#30000001FgxH/a/Pb000...
The whole "everyone thinks like us" delusion bought with the surplus of a good times window distributed all around and its still willing to return to this delusional state of affairs.
The obvious plot-holes they reveal when it comes to we do not discuss nature (the bugs in the human mind are all fixable with education) and we do not discuss nurture (all cultures are equal, and equally capable - disregard the evidence before your eyes).
You don't get to juggle and drop so many balls and do not massively loose confidence!
The rule of (finger in ears) "La-La-La" is over - the problem is- the right is a reactionary mess, that has no solutions, analysis and tools to exploit these weaknesses.
You don't get to run all this circus if you don't intend to run it only as a circus. It's time to stop kidding ourselves that anybody mainstream is sincere and smart enough to move anywhere different from where they all are told to go.
These records are encrypted in storage.
What other ways are there that don't involve WhatsApp's Google Drive backup feature or scraping the web interface?
EDIT: There was another post calling them divas, alot of them act that way.
For devices the company controls they can of course use the API the above poster mentioned though
The goal of signal is trusted end-to-end encrypted communication. Device/Message security on either end is not in scope for Signals threat model.
If you don't trust the people in your chat, they shouldn't be in your chat.
I assure you, none of these people trust each other. Backstabbing is normal.
They're also likely using it to talk to foreign counterparts. Again, most of whom they don't trust a bit.
Encryption isn't just about "do I trust the recipient".
The trust level required with Signal is, "do I trust the people in this chat not to share the specific communications I am sending to them with some other party whom I do not want to have a copy".
There are many many situations where this level of trust applies that "trust" in the general sense does not apply. It is a useful property.
And if you don't have that level of trust, don't put it in writing.
TM SGNL changes the trust required to, "do I also trust this 3rd party not to share the contents of any of my communications, possibly inadvertently due to poor security practices".
This is a categorical and demonstrably material difference in security model. I do not understand why so many are claiming it is not.
Because all it takes is one user to decide they trust the third party.
Right now you actually have to do more than trust everyone, you have to trust everyone they trust with their chat history. Which already can include this sort of third party.
That's the same level of trust really. Signal provides a guarantee that message bearer (i.e. Signal) can't see the contents, but end users may do whatever.
You can't really assume that counterparty's device isn't rooted by their company or they are themselves required by law to provide written transcripts to the archive at the end of each day. In fact, it's publicly known and mandated by law to do so for your counterparty that happens to be US government official.
The people who assume that they are talking with one of the government officials and expect records not to be kept are probably doing (borderline) illegal, like talking treason and bribes.
No, this is not a "nothing to hide argument", because those people aren't sending dickpics in their private capacity.
This allows Apple (and the US intelligence community, including FBI/DHS) to surveil approximately 100% of all non-China iMessages in close to realtime (in the usual case where it’s set to backup cross-device iMessage sync keys).
(China, cleverly, requires Apple to not only store all the Chinese iCloud data in China, but also requires that it happen on machines owned and operated by a joint venture with a Chinese-government-controlled entity, keeping them from having to negotiate continued access to the data the way the FBI did.)
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...
Yet Apple can still legitimately claim that iMessage is e2ee, even though the plaintext is being backed up in a way that is readable to them. It’s a backdoor by another name.
Everyone wins: Apple gets to say E2EE, the state gets to surveil the texts of everyone in the whole country without a warrant thanks to FISA.
But outside of that scenario, is there any advantage to iMessage using e2ee instead of just regular TLS?
Edit: Apparently it's up to you whether you want your iCloud backups to use e2ee. There's an account setting: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651. Standard protection is a sensible default for regular who aren't tech-savvy, as with e2ee they're at risk of losing all their iCloud data if they lose their key.
Again, Apple gets to say “we have e2ee, any user who wants it can turn it on” and the FBI gets to read 100% of the texts in the country unimpeded.
If Apple really wanted to promote privacy, they’d have deployed the so-called “trust circle” system they designed and implemented which allowed a quorum of trusted contacts to use their own keys to allow you to recover your account e2ee keys without Apple being able to access it, rolled that out, and then slowly migrated their entire user base over to e2ee backups.
They have not, and they will not, because that will compromise the surveillance backdoor, and get them regulated upon, or worse. The current administration has already shown that they are willing to impose insanely steep tariffs on the iPhone.
You can’t fight city hall, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, etc. The US intelligence community has a heart attack gun. Tim Apple does not.
Separately it is an interesting aside that Apple’s 1A rights are being violated here by the presumptive retaliation should they publish such a migration feature (software code being protected speech).
If you are the only person out of all the people you correspond with who has ADP enabled, then everyone you correspond with is uploading the plaintext of your messages to Apple.
Effectively nobody has it on. 99%+ of users aren’t even aware of the feature’s existence.
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/12/05/icloud-advanced...
You have to remember that there are something like a billion+ iOS users out there. 100 million people have not written down their 27 character alphanumeric account recovery key.
Makes sense. But still debatable if the compliance requirements are acting against the security model or perhaps there are biggest concerns here than just secure communication.
Journalist? Taliban negotiator? Ex-wife?
And then the Smarsh (owners of Telemessage) salesman calls you, and says "your users can keep using the apps they love - WhatsApp, Signal - but we archive the self-deleting messages somewhere you can hide from the SEC if they happen to change their mind". And everyone loves it (you already fired all the Security or Legal teams).
I’ve worked for non-Federal government. Your work product is not your own, and the public interest, as expressed by the law requires that your communications and decisions can be reviewed by the government you serve.
The US government created the dark web to enable espionage — its pretty obvious why they need to read their employees mail.
You want to talk to people who want to use Signal, but you yourself don't care about E2E
You trust Telemedia, but not Telegram, or Meta. And you want convenient archiving.
A chat participant bot would also be handy if you wanted to feed everything through your Ai bot at the same time.