Take a look here for some alternatives:

https://dessalines.github.io/essays/why_not_signal.html#good-alternatives

• Matrix
• XMPP
• Briar
• SimpleX

Also just because there are no alternatives doesn’t mean your default position should be we just have to trust whatever exists now because it’s good enough. Or that we can’t criticize it ruthlessly, distrust it. Call it out and as a result of that build perhaps the desire for something better, a fix as it were.

The evidence and history clearly points towards Signal being very suspicious and likely in bed with the feds. This is not conspiracy thinking. Conspiracy thinking is thinking that the country/empire that gave away old German engima machines whose code they’d cracked to developing countries without telling them they’d cracked it in the late 40s/early 50s, that went on to establish a crypto company just to subvert its encryption. That’s done everything Snowden revealed has in fact changed suddenly for the first time in half a century for no particular reason and not to its own benefit. That’s fanciful thinking. That’s a leap of logic away from the proven trends, the pattern of behavior, and indeed the incentivizes to continue using their dominant position to maintain dominance and power. They didn’t back down on the clipper chip because they just gave up and decided to let people have privacy and rights. They gave up on it because they found better ways of achieving the same results with plausible deniability.

Also why is everything “tankies” with you people. Privacy advocates point out the obvious and suddenly it’s a communist conspiracy. LOL

Who? When no one else learns the lesson why should Turkey be singled out for going a step further and shrugging the whole thing off? Admitting to crimes does zero good if you continue committing them and aiding others in doing so while showing no remorse for new acts.

Germany which genocided Jews now defends the rights of a subset of extremists (though they’re not a subset in the occupation zone, the majority there are unhinged racists according to opinion polls) to genocide others.

One of them is doing the right thing now about this though for transparently insincere and politically expedient domestic political reasons while the other is doubling down on criminalizing support for victims of an illegal occupation, genocide, and state.

Turkey’s denial cannot change what happened bad as it is.

And clearly Germany’s admission that they did commit genocide hasn’t made them a better country for it as they’re happy to enable it again (and still refuse to pay reparations to other non-Jewish victims).

So admitting to genocide is clearly not a given sign that a country is good or will help stop one in future or has learned any lessons at all.

In other words things are complex. This is good thing done for likely cynical reasons but it’s still good. Even if it likely won’t impact the situation on the ground immediately it could lay part of the groundwork for eventually causing “israel” to fall as apartheid South Africa did.

That they should abolish (or at the least push for drastic, dramatic reforms, not promises of gradual reform maybe someday during election season but a mass movement, amendments, political action, pressure groups, etc) such a system rather than participate and kick the can down along the road.

Also that their rights will be taken away regardless if they’re going to lose them.

Biden has done nothing to reverse what Trump has done, he postures, he does a few meaningless policies but at the back of it all he doesn’t value the lives of those people you claim to care about because he won’t stack the Supreme Court, because he and Kamala and the rest of the Democratic party are not interested in actually fighting the Republicans. Their theatrics that Trump is Hitler 2.0 shows them to be either people who want to enable Hitler 2.0 because they obviously aren’t fighting tooth and nail and are quick to condemn someone trying to kill him (when let’s be honest, most of us wouldn’t condemn a person who shot at Hitler) OR people who don’t truly believe that but know it’s good branding. Either way they’re not a party worth voting for, worth endorsing or worth considering as a real option to protect the vulnerable in this country or any other.

Fact is Republicans do the dirty deeds, Democrats put some peace paint and pride symbols on things but don’t undo those dirty deeds. During Trump’s term pundits and the Democratic party sobbed and wailed about “kids in cages” on the border and yet when Biden continued it? Nothing but silence. And Kamala’s campaign is ramping up and leaning into that border racism by the way.

That seems like a real problem given they are a people being actively subjected to genocide which is being censored and distorted by western media, who have their land stolen, their existence denied, and been subjected to apartheid sponsored by the most powerful nation in the world (the US no less) in flagrant violation of international law for over half a century. Abuses and genocide carried out by a regime so powerful, so important to US interests that there are multiple states in the US where you can lose your job or your business contract for simply voicing support for boycotting and divesting from the apartheid regime that is an illegal colonization and occupation of stolen land by radical far-right reactionary ethno-fascists operating under the cloak of religion. Most major western media are some degree of complicit in giving one-sided pro-apartheid state slants, omitting key details, and using dishonest framing to attempt to deceive the public and manufacture apathy and complicity.

It doesn’t fucking censor swear words. You can say shit and ass and damn. It censors slurs and offensive terms to historically marginalized groups only. It’s just some of them are still so prevalent in our language that people take umbrage to this.

The problem with this is you just know after they pass it they’ll amend it to expand the definition from social media platforms to any platform of a certain size on the internet. Suddenly the whole internet is subject to censorship, review, lawsuits, banning encryption, age-gating and ID demands.

This is just a foot in the door move around kids to get the framework in then later change it to do all the stuff they really want to do like censor and chill speech, clamp down on encryption, mandate log-keeping for VPNs, implement age-gating that requires submitting IDs for anything even vaguely adult, etc, etc. In other words the beginning of an all-out attack on the open internet.

“Killing Hope” was written by former intelligence officer Bill Blum (think that was the name) and details such operations (though not limited to socialist countries).

I’ll try to find some links on the subject and edit my reply to include them but it may be a day or two.

No one but genocide loving zionists wants to hear the lying screeds of a genocidal, racist, apartheid regime. I care as much to read that as a copy of the latest “Jewish crimes” written by Nazi magazines in the 1930s.

Lot of cope and denial in these threads. Yes the same-day is probably a rosy estimate based off people using 6 digit codes or something easy to crack, doesn’t mean it’s false or that they can’t hypothetically target longer alpha-numeric passwords. For all we know they might not even be brute-forcing and could be conducting some sort of exploit that over time reveals the encryption keys themselves in some way.

I’m still very curious about the nature of the mechanisms of action. I assume they manage to bypass the basic lock-out against entering too many passcodes too quickly somehow which is what enables this. If throttling could be properly enforced (to say nothing of something like 10 attempts and it refuses all future attempts and erases the key type of thing) this type of attack wouldn’t be practical for anyone using anything above a 6 digit numerical passcode in any reasonable timeframe. I wonder if they exploit wireless radios including cellular, wifi, bluetooth and force some code on the phones via these usually-on chips that enables this via exploiting problems in their architecture. Perhaps something that locks up, prevents functioning or resets certain checks via flooding parts of the hardware/software from these points of access. Or if it really is purely phy/log access to the lightning/usb-c port.

Still do. Aid bills regularly include billions for the zionist colony on stolen Palestinian land, mostly to be used to purchase American weapons systems. So we give them money that they mostly use to enrich US arms manufacturers who donate to domestic political campaigns and call that foreign aid. This has been going on for decades. It’s not a new thing but something so regular it doesn’t even get mentioned most years.

I mean combined with any kind of function, even a trivial kind. A salt derived from some machine state data (a random install id generated on install, a hash of computer name, etc) plus a rot13 or something would still be better than leaving it plaintext.

If the computers have any value it would be better to just buy a new quality modern ATX power supply of the right size for the case (take dimensions for fit and ensure it’s at least as many watts as the old one though it can be more) and do a drop-in replacement. Just make sure the power supply comes with some molex adapters and the maker usually sells additional cables if it’s a semi or fully modular design so you could buy more molex plugs if the 3-8 they give you aren’t enough.

That said power supplies can of course be repaired by anyone with soldering skills and sufficient electrical engineering knowledge and experience. They shouldn’t be repaired by amateurs because they can store enough power to kill or maim a person who doesn’t know what they’re doing. It would be cheaper though to just replace the power supplies unless having all original/period equipment in the machines is important.

Yes but the real risk there is likely from individuals trying to dox you who can notice the obvious pattern and put 2 and 2 together to link things and build a profile.

There is just no excuse for not even salting or SOMETHING to keep the secrets out of plaintext. The reason you don’t store in plaintext is because it can lead to even incidental collection. Say you have some software, perhaps spyware, perhaps it’s made by a major corporation so doesn’t get called that and it crawls around and happens to upload a copy of a full or portion of the file containing this info, now it’s been uploaded and compromised potentially not even by a malicious actor successfully gaining access to a machine but by poor practices.

No it can’t stop a sophisticated malware specifically targeting Signal to steal credentials and gain access but it does mean casual malware that hasn’t taken the time out to write a module to do that is out of luck and increases the burden on attackers. No it won’t stop the NSA but it’s still something that it stops someone’s 17 year old niece who knows a little bit about computers but is no malware author from gaining access to your signal messages and account because she could watch a youtube video and follow along with simple tools.

The claims Signal is an op or the runner is under a national security letter order to compromise it look more and more plausible in light of weird bad basic practices like this and their general hostility. I’ll still use it and it’s far from the worst looking thing out there but there’s something unshakably weird about the lead dev, their behavior and practices that can’t be written off as being merely a bit quirky.

I wish they would just push all the big mainstream porn sites to remove the most abusive misogynistic content rather than slapping these checks on everything.

Also this will never be okay until there is a zero knowledge version that means neither the government, nor the sites, nor any other party can establish a given person’s habits which is probably not something they’ll ever do because tracking is probably part of the point.

I’m not a fan of the easy access to porn that kids have or the proliferation of the industry in general but I am worried that as part of this harmless things like erotic roleplaying websites will be swept up as part of it and well I use those. And their point is not porn though some people host and share porn as part of it (which is why it’d get swept up with it eventually probably), it’s about writing, smutty, erotic writing. And I’d rather not have to tie my identity to my desires to roleplay out an elf who ends up making “friends” with the wolf-men tribe to my real life identity (I’m not claiming that’s something I do there but it’s an example of something that would be kind of embarrassing for others to know and it’s far from the weirdest stuff that goes on in places like that).

Government having credits for how often I could say log in and continue a long-term erotic writing campaign with someone is just weird but that’s the end point of this kind of thing. Having credits seems not helpful anyways, the true porn addicts are just going to download stuff then share it in private forums, discords, p2p, etc. If the point is to stop kids from accessing this the credits thing seems odd.

Hamas is a legitimate resistance group exercising their legitimate, legal right under international law to violently resist unlawful colonization, occupation, land-theft, and genocide. They have every right to exist, they have every right to use violence against settlers who should leave and give back the stolen land.

If you want more moderate types, know that the zionists intentionally crushed them and propped up Hamas to create just this kind of argument and by spouting it you’re carrying water for them. Only the end of the occupation and the formation of a full Palestinian state will result in the breathing room for the creation of moderate groups and opinions.

Did you reply to the wrong person or do you just have reading comprehension issues?

It should be considered illegal if it was used to harm/sexually abuse a child which in this case it was.

Whether it should be classed as CSAM or something separate, I tend to think probably something separate as a revenge porn type law that still allows for distinguishing between this and say a girl whose uncle groomed and sexually abused her while filming it as while this is awful it can (and often does seem) be the product of foolish youth rather than the offender and those involved all being very sick, dangerous, and actually violent offending adult pedophiles victimizing children.

Consider the following:

1. Underage girl takes a picture of her own genitals, unfortunately classified as the unhelpful and harmful term “child porn” and she can be charged and registered as a sex offender but it’s not CSAM and -shouldn’t- be considered illegal material or a crime (though it is because the west has a vile fixation on puritanism which hurts survivors of childhood sexual trauma as well as adults).

2. Underage girl takes a picture of her genitals and sends it to her boyfriend, again /shouldn’t/ be CSAM (unfortunately may be charged similarly), she consented and we can assume there wasn’t any unreasonable level of coercion. What it is unfortunately is bound by certain notions of puritanism that are very American.

3. From 2, boyfriend shares it with other boys, now it’s potentially CSAM or at the least revenge porn of a child as she didn’t consent and it could be used to harm her but punishment has to be modulated with the fact the offender is likely a child himself and not fully able to comprehend his actions.

4. Underage boy cuts out photo of underage girl he likes, only her face and head, glues it atop a picture of a naked porn actress, maybe a petite one and uses it for his own purposes in private. Not something I think should be classed as CSAM.

5. Underage boy uses AI to do the same as above but more believably, again I think it’s kind of creepy but if he keeps it to himself and doesn’t show anyone or spread it around it’s just youthful weirdness though really he probably shouldn’t have easy access to those tools.

6. Underage boy uses AI to do same as 4-5 but this time he spread it around, defaming the girl, she/her friends find out, people say mean things about her, she has to go to school with a bunch of people who are looking and pleasuring themselves to fake but realistic images of herself against her consent which is violating and makes one feel unsafe. Worse probably being bullied for it, mean things, called the s-word, etc.

Kids are weird and do dumb things though unfortunately boys especially in our culture have a propensity to do things that hurt girls far more than the inverse to the point it’s not even really worth talking about girls being creepy or sexually abusive towards peer-aged boys in adolescence and young adulthood. To address this though you need to address patriarchy and misogyny on a cultural level, teach boys empathy and respect for girls and women and frankly do away with all this abusive pornography that’s super prevalent and popular which encourages and perpetuates abusive actions and mentalities towards women and girls, this will never happen in the US however because it’s structurally opposed to being able to do such a thing. Also couldn’t hurt to peel back the stigma and shame around sexuality and nudity in the US which stems from its reactionary Christian culture but again I don’t think that will ever happen in the US as it exists, not this century anyways.

Obviously not getting into adults here as that doesn’t need to be discussed, it’s wrong plain and simple.

Bottom line I think is companies need to be strongly compelled to quickly remove revenge-porn type stuff (regardless of the age of the victim though children can’t deal with this kind of thing as well as adults so the risk of suicide or other self-harm is much higher so it should be treated as higher priority) which this definitely is. It’s abusive and unacceptable and they should fear the credit card companies coming down on them hard and destroying them if they don’t aggressively remove it and ban it and report those sharing it. It should be driven off the clear-web once reported, there should be an image-hash data-set like that used for CSAM (but separate) for such things and major services should use it to stop the spread.

So first it’s client-side scanning for CSAM. Not without some nobility. But the problem is once you wedge open that door it’s technically possible to do it for other things and so you become compelled to.

It’ll move from just CSAM to stopping and tracking “propaganda” as deemed by them which will be narrow-ish at first (anything pro-Russia, RT links, etc) but gradually expand over time to anything outside the mainstream branded as extremist (and guess what, privacy advocates will definitely fall within that label). And once that’s in place the private stake-holders, copyright holders will come knocking, they’ll say rightly so “hey you have the capability right now, we demand you implement client-side scanning to detect copyright violations” and then that will be ordered by a court, further enshrined by a law and oh look now you can no longer send political thought that the ruling regime disagrees with, can no longer surf the high seas, and so on and so forth. Congratulations and please enjoy living in the “garden” of Europe.

Yes. Though I wouldn’t want to know the exact day if I could help that. Knowing the year or month would be enough to plan. To have a will. To say the things I want to say to those I care about. To make peace with the end. To do what I can of a bucket list and to feel a bit more secure up to that point not worrying about death.