cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/35909566
SMH @ activists using techno-fascist platforms for communications during an operation subject to state-actor level interference. I thought we recognised and acknowledged this problem 15-20 years ago already.
https://xcancel.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/1965431513320927706
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
I'm surprised they were using WhatsApp in the first place. Surely there are better options for something like this
Several people in the comments suggest Telegram, which doesn't even encrypt group chats. Signal is likely the best option if the group is under 1000 members.
Oh, I thought Telegram does encrypt chats, just that you have to enable it rather than it being on be default. Is encryption only available for one-on-one messages?
Oh well, I can't get my friends and family to use Signal anyway...
EDIT: My family only uses iMessage + RCS to chat with me (a Pixel), and my school clubs/friends are all on Discord or GroupMe. We don't use Telegram at all. I've been begging my mom to consider switching to Signal since they complain so much about the issues with messaging me, but it's yet to happen. I think I'm whittling her down tho ๐
It's only available for 1-to-1, yes. But why would you rely on a service that hides the option to E2E encryption so well? Next step is to silently remove it.
Signal is private by default.
Telegram is owned by Russian Elon Musk and the FSB. Avoid it if you can.
If you fight against USrael, russia seems like a good idea. Worked for Snowden.
They're both shitty imperialist countries responsible for wars and genocide.
I'll take neither, thanks.
Ah, just looked the guy up on Wiki. Yeah, Russian Elon musk seems about right.
We don't use Telegram and I never plan to.
Yeah, 100+ kids is fucking wild.
Durov only founded Telegram after he left Russia over Maidan. He was, however, recently arrested by the French, so...
He left it performatively. Since then, he's secretly visited Russia, one time just around its unblocking in Russia, while pretending to be a fugitive.
Edit: Here's an article on that.
It does not have the option to encrypt group chats last I checked, and even the one-to-one encryption is not particularly well-liked among security experts.
This isn't about casual chats with friends and family, but political activism against the actions of a country. People doing that should be willing to put at least a trivial amount of effort into security.
Oh yeah, I know they're dogshit and that the activists should've been using Signal, I just didn't realize that Telegram doesn't encrypt group chats.
Signal is sUS. Cia will read and genocide
Generally, the issue is that services want to blend the data into a single stream, otherwise you end up with having to make a separate connection to and from each client, each at full bandwidth called full mesh. It becomes easier to just have the encryption to the server, then decrypt all the streams from all the participating clients, and merge them into a single stream outbound. Adjust and re-encrypt that single stream and send it. That also allows for more control to make low bandwidth or dynamically changing bandwidth clients work better as you can adjust one stream rather than hundreds of outbound to each client. But that means the server has access to unencrypted streams to analyze and record. This is called server mixing.
Previous software generally only supported one or the other of those options. Signal is one of the few that have developed the technology to allow for selective forwarding which is the third option. Their website details how this works and it's open source so some others have adopted it or have come up with similar approaches.