The article confuses confidentiality with anonymity/pseudonymity.
Signal has always aimed to ensure confidentiality in the simplest way possible.
People forget that there are anonymous systems or systems that do not require a telephone number but they are incredibly painful to set up. You either have to go through physical checks with QR code exchanges to validate participants or have some kind of web of trust (no one has fond memories of PGP key signing parties).
The same goes for decentralization. On paper, everyone wants decentralization. But when it comes to interconnecting hundreds of servers with different rules, moderation and legislation, and protocol versions, it becomes hell and no one wants to have to manage it (e.g. Mastodon).
There are objective reasons why these systems are not popular.
The other problem is that the very use of this type of software becomes a marker. I am convinced that the majority of Olvid users work for the French government, for example.
Iranian activists who are checked at the border or elsewhere with any uncommon communication application have already lost, regardless of the security of the application.
Crypto-punks are a niche group that can accept this type of usage constraint. My grandmother cannot, but she can use Signal and she will be one user among millions.
Precisely. It's a bit like the browser fingerprinting dilemma. The greater lengths to which you go to hide your fingerprint, the more unusual your total profile becomes.
May I humbly suggest the thing I've done for 25 years, when I need to pass sensitive data like a slate of passwords or API keys or confidential business logic... I just PGP encrypt a zip file and attach it to a normal email.
This does nothing to address the anonymity issue, as you point out. But I'm really not sure that any set of measures I could take would truly keep me anonymous at this point in the race between governments and the well-funded organizations trying to evade them. I assume that no matter what I do to hide my identity, someone with enough money and motivation would be able to unmask it. To believe otherwise would be foolish.
A number of people take advantage of this to push unrealistic and inconsistent threat models. ‘I need an anonymous, decentralised solution that can resist the NSA so I can send my shopping list to my wife. I'm not going to consider hardware access or coercion because I'm a law-abiding citizen.’
Some people forget that many things have already been tested. Do you want a file-sharing network and forums that are completely anonymous, decentralised, and resistant to censorship? It exists: Freenet. It's so overrun with paedophiles that even the most fervent advocates of anonymity have fled.
> The article confuses confidentiality with anonymity/pseudonymity.
sure, but let's not pretend that the distinction is lost on Signal and serves to fuel their security theatre.
> My grandmother cannot, but she can use Signal and she will be one user among millions.
And she will not be better-off than on WhatsApp. Even assuming that Signal is a good actor today (and, surprise, it very much is *not*: using a 3rd party client is against their T&C, they have a history of pushing their crypto to your face, their marketing is based on blatant lies, …), she will be back to square one the day inevitably Signal flips.
The case I'm making here is for federation. I skipped the whole Signal stage. My family and friends (including grandmother) are now on XMPP instead. It has all the guarantees you might desire from Signal without the hanging sword of Damocles hanging over your head.
> Perfect for : Trading systems, industrial control, Medical devices, aerospace applications
Regulator, here is some code in an unknown and poorly documented language with no operational experience. The compiler was written using AI and no one has audited it.
Universities and engineering schools (something very French, think STEM specific universities) are free or very low-cost in France. But only for French students, students from the European Union, a few partnerships, etc.
Chinese and Indian students and the children of African diplomats pay ‘international’ fees. This is an international, mobile clientele with considerable means who have a choice. This represents a significant source of income.
In addition, the percentage of foreign students is taken into account in many rankings, prestige, etc. Therefore, public universities are also affected by this phenomenon.
I am French, not British, but more than ten years ago when I was at university, it was accepted that students who get selected for a year of exchange at a Chinese university would not do much, and no one expected much from Chinese students.
To put it simply, there was a principle of reciprocity: if the Chinese students passed their years, the French students would also pass theirs. If it became too difficult or the results were not as expected, it would become difficult for our students.
There were lots of tricks, with special exams in English or Chinese, catch-up work, etc. Who corrected the Chinese assignments in France? No idea.
It was also common knowledge that they had to bring back research documents to China. The lab manager left uninteresting documents lying around everywhere to control the phenomenon.
So nothing new, nothing has changed.
China has been very successful with its university rankings, with everyone scrambling to increase their foreign student numbers and collect tuition fees at the expense of academic results.
All this for the prestige of being ranked by a Chinese university.
I worked on port facilities. Everything corrodes quite quickly, and locks and keys need to be replaced fairly regularly. Once, there was a problem with key management following the replacement of locks on a building containing emergency diesel generators.
The doors were heavy, 45-minute fire-rated security doors, aka "Fucking heavy doors that can cut your fingers just from inertia or wind.".
These doors had to be opened quickly in the middle of the night. There was no locksmith on call, but there were boilermakers. Supports and a chain were welded to the doors, and a T-Rex container mover was used to carefully pull the doors off the building.
The whole operation took less than an hour. Physical security is a matter of time and resources.
He is in the VIP wing of La Santé prison. The part visible from Boulevard Arago is an overcrowded high-security wing, and it is not uncommon to hear screams and shouts in the evening when passing by.
Our politicians are suffocating and under funding the French justice system, so that it takes so long and the majority of white-collar and non-violent crimes slip under the radar.
This is by design and not an unintended consequence.
Justice in this country is only served thanks to the incredible determination of the members of the judiciary.
I'm re-reading The Truth, from Terry Pratchett, and Lord de Worde's definition of criminal is really fitting here: to him, a criminal is a poor person, belonging to the criminal social class. For the elite, justice is to be served if they need it, and when they order it.
It's not a nickname. It's simply because the prison is located on Rue de la Santé (Health Street). Rue de la Santé was named that way because there was a hospital there from the 17th to the 19th century.
Oh no, we hold back when we're here. For example, I didn't mention the possibility that it might simply be an ellipsis. And no one wants to talk about apocope.
He is in the equivalent of the VIP wing of the only prison in Paris Intramuros (within the city walls), the Prison de la Santé.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Sant%C3%A9_Prison
The prison has three main sections: the VIP wing, the night-time incarceration wing (sentence adjustment), and the high-security wing.
As the most serious cases at the national level are often tried in Paris, the high-security wing is filled with drug traffickers, murderers and terrorists, at least for the duration of the proceedings, which can take years in France.
Sarkozy is in the VIP wing with two bodyguards nearby.
These are hardly the conditions one would imagine for isolation.
Signal has always aimed to ensure confidentiality in the simplest way possible. People forget that there are anonymous systems or systems that do not require a telephone number but they are incredibly painful to set up. You either have to go through physical checks with QR code exchanges to validate participants or have some kind of web of trust (no one has fond memories of PGP key signing parties).
The same goes for decentralization. On paper, everyone wants decentralization. But when it comes to interconnecting hundreds of servers with different rules, moderation and legislation, and protocol versions, it becomes hell and no one wants to have to manage it (e.g. Mastodon).
There are objective reasons why these systems are not popular.
The other problem is that the very use of this type of software becomes a marker. I am convinced that the majority of Olvid users work for the French government, for example.
Iranian activists who are checked at the border or elsewhere with any uncommon communication application have already lost, regardless of the security of the application.
Crypto-punks are a niche group that can accept this type of usage constraint. My grandmother cannot, but she can use Signal and she will be one user among millions.
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