China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at a micro level

Re:China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at... by FabHK on Thursday January 12, 2017 @07:38AM (#13381728)

With Signal, you can verify fingerprints. So, what you're saying is:

#4 if some agency "takes over" the Signal servers, they can extract metadata. But only that?

#3 if the binary is not what its supposed to be, then, yes, all bets are off. That's a whole other can of worms, but a) is there any evidence that's ever happened? and b) that much affects any smartphone chat app, so does not help you to decide between Signal and WeChat.

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Re:China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at... by kuschku on Thursday January 12, 2017 @08:56AM (#13382177)

> #4 if some agency "takes over" the Signal servers, they can extract metadata. But only that?

With Signals model, as long as everyone verifies fingerprints, yes.

But, considering XMPP is a thing, XMPP with OMEMO provides all the same guarantees – and you can make it less likely that an agency has taken over the relevant servers (because you can self-host easier).

Signal’s use case is "something as secure as OTR, but easier to use".

I’m not saying you should use something else than Signal, but I’m saying that Signal isn’t ideal if your adversary is a government.

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