Comment by SR2Z
21 hours ago
Unless they compel people at gunpoint (which prevents the government from bringing a case), they will probably not have much luck with this. As soon as a user sets up a passcode or other lock on their phone, it is beyond the ability of even most parts of the US government to look inside.
It's much more likely that the government convinces one member of the group chat to turn on the other members and give up their phone numbers.
> which prevents the government from bringing a case
Genuinely, from outside, it seems like your government doesn't give a damn on what they are and aren't allowed to do.
Yes, but I’m not going to unlock my phone with a passcode, and unlike biometric unlock they have no way to force me to unlock my phone.
The district courts will eventually back me up on this. Our country has fallen a long way, but the district courts have remained good, and my case is unlikely to be one that goes up to appellate courts, where things get much worse.
There’s an important distinction: the government doesn’t care about what it is allowed to do, but it is still limited by what it is not capable of doing. It’s important to understand that they still do have many constraints they operate under, and that we need to find and exploit those constraints as much as possible while we fight them
They are capable of putting you in prison until you unlock your phone, or simply executing you.
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Looks that way from the inside as well.
Yes and all of the credulous rubes still whinging about how they "can't imagine" how it's gotten this bad or how much worse it can get, or how "this is not who we are" at some point should no longer be taken as suckers in good faith, and at some point must rightly be viewed as either willfully complicit bad faith interlocuters, or useful idiots.
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You have to remember that "the government" is not a monolith. Evidence goes before a judge who is (supposed to be) independent, and cases are tried in front of a jury of citizens. In the future that system may fall but for now it's working properly. Except for the Supreme Court... which is a giant wrench in the idea the system still works, but that doesn't mean a lower court judge won't jettison evidence obtained by gunpoint.
Evidence goes before a judge
What evidence went before a judge prior to the two latest executions in Minneapolis?
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The courts may (still) be independent, but it feels like they are pointless because the government just wholesale ignores them anyway. If the executive branch doesn't enforce, or selectively enforces court judgements, you may as well shutter the courts.
They haven't for a long time, just that most of the time they were doing things we thought was for good (EPA, civil rights act, controlled substance act, etc) and we thereby entered a post-constitutional world to let that stuff slide by despite the 10th amendment limiting the federal powers to enumerated powers.
Eventually we got used to letting the feds slide on all the good things to the point everything was just operating on slick ice, and people like Trump just pushed it to the next logical step which is to also use the post-constitutional world to his own personal advantage and for gross tyranny against the populace.
The civil rights acts had firm constitutional grounding in the 14th and 15th amendments.
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If civil rights are unconstitutional, you don't have a country.
They'll just threaten to throw the book at you if you don't unlock your phone, and if you aren't rich, your lawyer will tell you to take the plea deal they offer because it beats sitting in prison until you die.
All they have to do is pretend to be a concerned neighbor who wants to help give mutual aid and hope that someone in the group chat takes the bait and adds them in. No further convincing is needed.
social engineering for the win.
If you aren't saving people's phone numbers in your own contacts, signal isn't storing them in group chats (and even if you are, it doesn't say which number, just that you have a contact with them).
Signal doesn't share numbers by default and hasn't for a few years now. And you can toggle a setting to remove your number from contact discovery/lookup entirely if you are so inclined.
> it is beyond the ability of even most parts of the US government to look inside.
I'm sure the Israeli spyware companies can help with that.
Although then they'd have to start burning their zero days to just go after protestors, which I doubt they're willing to do. I imagine they like to save those for bigger targets.
Cellebrite can break into every phone except GrapheneOS.
There are multiple companies that can get different amounts of information off of locked phones including iPhones, and they work with LE.
I’m also curious what they could get off of cloud backups. Thinking in terms of auth, keys, etc. For SMS it’s almost as good as phone access, but I am not sure for apps.
or convince one member of a group chat to show their group chat...
I'm confident the people executing non-complaint people in the street would be capable of compelling a citizen.
Or just let the guy to enter the country after unlocking her phone.
https://xkcd.com/538/
This is accurate, but the important point is that threatening people with wrenches isn’t scalable in the way mass surveillance is.
The problem with mass surveillance is the “mass” part: warrantless fishing expeditions.
hunh. we haven't even started talking about stingray, tracking radios and so forth.
it is difficult to wrench someone when you do not know who they are
Someone knows who they are and they can bash different skulls until one of them gives them what they're looking for.
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I mean they have a lot of tools to figure out who you are if they catch you at a rally or something like that. Cameras and facial identification, cell phone location tracking and more. What they also want is the list of people you're coordinating with that aren't there.
Which is just a redux of what I find myself saying constantly: privacy usually isn't even the problem. The problem is the people kicking in your door.
If you're willing to kick in doors to suppress legal rights, then having accurate information isn't necessary at all.
If your resistance plan is to chat about stuff privately, then by definition you're also not doing much resisting to you know, the door kicking.