Comment by colanderman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by colanderman | Hacker News Reader

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You are conflating levels of trust.

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.

>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".

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.

If your counterparty is compromised, that still only leaks your communication with that counterparty, but not other, unrelated conversations.

> 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.

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