Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data

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  • ToolAA

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Jun 17, 2016
    10,500
    God's Country
    For those of you who have used Signal I think this Press Release is really some clever marketing. Basically reinforcing the claim that their servers or systems do not log any identifying user information or communications.

    Here is a quote from the Article.

    A Californian grand jury wants Signal to hand over the details of a user involved in a criminal investigation.
    The IM platform responded by saying they have nothing to share except for account connection timestamps.
    The submitted subpoena requests third-party and data-routing details for reasons unclear.
    Signal has received a subpoena coming from the United States Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California, asking the end-to-end encrypted IM platform to hand over user data that was determined to be relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation conducted by Homeland Security Investigations.

    The subpoena requires that a custodian of records from Signal appears before the grand jury and produces the following:

    User name, address, and date and time of the account creation.
    Date and time of Signal app download as well as all app access records.
    Identification of all possible third parties that are involved in the activation of Signal accounts.
    All user correspondence associated with the given phone number.
    In addition to the above, the subpoena requests the Signal team to clarify what information travels outside the State of California when a user based there creates an account or when two users based there communicate. This sounds like a weird question to ask, but it’s probably relevant to jurisdiction – and possibly also requested as a way to point the legal pressure elsewhere.

    Signal Released their own statement with copies of the actual Subpoena https://signal.org/bigbrother/central-california-grand-jury/.

    Here is Signal's formal response to the Subpoena.
    Because everything in Signal is end-to-end encrypted by default, the broad set of personal information that is typically easy to retrieve in other apps simply doesn’t exist on Signal’s servers. The subpoena requested a wide variety of information that fell into this nonexistent category, including the addresses of the users, their correspondence, and the name associated with each account.

    Just like last time, we couldn’t provide any of that. It’s impossible to turn over data that we never had access to in the first place. Signal doesn’t have access to your messages; your chat list; your groups; your contacts; your stickers; your profile name or avatar; or even the GIFs you search for. As a result, our response to the subpoena will look familiar. It’s the same set of “Account and Subscriber Information” that we provided in 2016: Unix timestamps for when each account was created and the date that each account last connected to the Signal service.

    For now I'm encouraged by this. It's basically a big Middle Finger to the California Grand Jury, and I'm sure they are not accustomed to not getting the information that they request.
     

    whistlersmother

    Peace through strength
    Jan 29, 2013
    8,949
    Fulton, MD
    By definition, they are getting the information they requested...

    If you ask for an egg from the guy who only has oranges, you get your answer about the egg.

    Its just sweetness that no one else has eggs.
     

    Alan3413

    Ultimate Member
    Mar 4, 2013
    16,929
    Isn't WhatsApp supposed to be like this? Not sure if it's still like that after Facebook bought them.
     

    ToolAA

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Jun 17, 2016
    10,500
    God's Country
    In my opinion once an app like signal is linked up with a cryptocurrency like Monero which is also anonymous we’ll actually have a very useful tool.
     

    ToolAA

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Jun 17, 2016
    10,500
    God's Country
    Signal was cracked a few months go. I guess they might have fixed it?


    No I don’t think it was cracked. I know it was posted bere but IIRC the FBI cracked something specific to an iPhone which allowed them ti ready communication between a specific user abd and his Signal contacts.
     

    smokey

    2A TEACHER
    Jan 31, 2008
    31,412
    I dunno, I still feel like unless you bought a machine cash secondhand, tossed tails onto it, use tor and a good vpn... basically all your stuff is recorded and accessible somewhere if need be.
     

    Crazytrain

    Certified Grump
    MDS Supporter
    Jul 8, 2007
    1,641
    Sparks, MD
    In my opinion once an app like signal is linked up with a cryptocurrency like Monero which is also anonymous we’ll actually have a very useful tool.

    Maybe we have that already. I'm still looking into it, but while doing my crypto currency research I came across a coin/app called SYLO. I think it might even use the same encryption methods as Signal. In any case, it is encrypted text and video messaging, tied in with a crypto wallet that allows people to store, send, stake and do whatever other things wallets do. I do not know if the SYLO token or the SYLO ticket (different, apparently) is a privacy token or not.

    I think the app has been around a few years, apparently originally intended to let attorneys securely talk to their clients. It seem the currency aspect is fairly new. They seem competent. I'm early in the research stage, though I bought 100,000 tokens or so (not as impressive as it sounds as each token is currently under a penny). It's one of my moonshot cryptos, but kinda timely given your comment.
     

    ToolAA

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Jun 17, 2016
    10,500
    God's Country
    Maybe we have that already. I'm still looking into it, but while doing my crypto currency research I came across a coin/app called SYLO. I think it might even use the same encryption methods as Signal. In any case, it is encrypted text and video messaging, tied in with a crypto wallet that allows people to store, send, stake and do whatever other things wallets do. I do not know if the SYLO token or the SYLO ticket (different, apparently) is a privacy token or not.

    I think the app has been around a few years, apparently originally intended to let attorneys securely talk to their clients. It seem the currency aspect is fairly new. They seem competent. I'm early in the research stage, though I bought 100,000 tokens or so (not as impressive as it sounds as each token is currently under a penny). It's one of my moonshot cryptos, but kinda timely given your comment.


    Good to know. I’ll check out SYLO.
     

    Crazytrain

    Certified Grump
    MDS Supporter
    Jul 8, 2007
    1,641
    Sparks, MD
    I dunno, I still feel like unless you bought a machine cash secondhand, tossed tails onto it, use tor and a good vpn... basically all your stuff is recorded and accessible somewhere if need be.

    Maybe. Maybe. There are ways to make it difficult, though. Encryption is slowly becoming more common. Files. Instant messages/texts. Email encryption has been around for decades, though hardly anyone uses it. Tracking is harder to deal with. VPNs help. Tor helps. Brave helps. Anything to change a computer's fingerprint. Social Media is a privacy disaster (and an authoritarian's dream). To really mask yourself is a lot of work.
     

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