alt Hacker NewsFBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE
Comments
This is one of the reasons it's crucial that the next set of secure messaging systems does away with tying real phone numbers to accounts.
One phone gets compromised and the whole network is identified with their phone numbers.
With all the predatory tech Palantir has produced, it won't take more than a few minutes for FBI to start taking actions, IF they had anything tangible.
This is just an intimidation tactic to stop people talking (chatting)
A wise man told me, you know signal works because its banned in Russia. I also find it incredibly ironic that they have a problem with this, when the DoD is flagrantly using signal for classified communications.
I don't know signal very well but when I have spoken to others about it they mention that the phone number is the only metadata they will have access to.
This seems like a good example of that being enough metadata to be a big problem.
i suppose what he means is that the phones of protestors which have signal chat will be investigated.
Assuming they dont have disappearing messages activated, and assuming any protestors willingly unlock their phones.
I have seen anti-Signal FUD all over the place since it was discovered that protesters have been coordinating on Signal.
Here’s the facts:
- Protesters have been coordinating using Signal
- Breaches of private Signal groups by journalists and counter protesters were due to poor opsec and vetting
- If the feds have an eye into those groups, it’s likely that they gained access in the same way as well as through informants (which are common)
- Signal is still known to be secure
- In terms of potential compromise, it’s much more likely for feds to use spyware like Pegasus to compromise the endpoint than for them to be able to break Signal. If NSA has a Signal vulnerability they will probably use it very sparingly and on high profile foreign targets.
- The fact that even casual third parties can break into these groups because of opsec issues shows that encryption is not a panacea. People will always make mistakes, so the fact that secure platforms exist is not a threat in itself, and legal backdoors are not needed.
> Patel said he got the idea for the investigation from Higby.
This is confirmation that this wasn't being investigated until just now. This is surprising, I would have thought that "how are these people organizing" would have been an obvious thing to look into.
Yeah Cam Higby & friends have "infiltrated" the Signal groups. It's not that hard frankly, and most of the chats emphasize that 1) they're unvetted, 2) don't do anything illegal, anywhere, including taking a right on red if the sign is there saying not to 3) don't write anything you don't want read back to you in a court of law. Higby and friends do have "How do you do, Fellow Kids?" energy in those chats.
Here's what I'm interested in: anyone know what Penlink's tools' capabilities actually are? Tangles and WebLoc. Are they as useful as advertised?
Don't want to spoil the fun here. But easy:
Don't write anything that you don't want LEO to read.
The FBI should investigate the murders done by ICE and until done with that, remain silent.
Interesting, this may result in showing how secure signal really is.
It should be clear at this point that the FBI is not a law enforcement agency, it's a tool of authoritarian suppression. Unfortunately many of the 2A people are on board with this anti-democratic putsch, and have forgotten their 2A principles.
> “You cannot create a scenario that illegally entraps and puts law enforcement in harm’s way”
Remember when words, at least usually, meant things?
How many rights can Trump trample in one year? This is a big deal. I realize most of the problems started with the patriot act (most members of congress are culpable for that). We should all have zero tolerance for the erosion of our rights, zero tolerance for fake emergencies!
Oh wow this article contains “ICE” in the title and isn’t flagged yet!
Three letter agencies do three letter agency things
Its really sad to see what kind of bottomless pit has the usa gotten into after that lunatic got into presidency. Years of effort burned by one fsb agent
- Don't join giant group chats unless you're Whiskey Pete inviting journalists into a "clean" opsec group.
- Know others very personally or not at all.
- Don't take a phone to any event without it being in a proven good RF blocking bag.. I wished they made a bag that allowed taking pictures and video with audio.
- New people can potentially be liabilities such as crazy, stupid, undercover cops or adversaries, and/or destructive without a care.
- Avoid people who think violence is "the way" because there's rarely a positive or politically-acceptable offramp for it.
- Destruction of property can be effective non-violent resistance in limited circumstances, e.g., The Boston Tea Party, but that's becoming a criminal in the eyes of the current regime and 95% of rebellions fail.
The FBI should investigate the first item in the Bill of Rights.
Couple of minor nits:
1. Some rando on X saying "OMG! I infiltrated a lefty signal group" doesn't mean said rando actually did infiltrate a signal group.
2. Signal was not the app Hegseth, et al. used. They used TM SGNL, which is a fork of Signal. But that's a minor nit.
3. Encryption is not the same thing as authentication. And authentication is somewhat meaningless if you let everyone into your encrypted group chat.
They're going to give this more scrutiny than they did to Hegseth leaking sensitive government information.
I’ve never seen a set of voluntary fall guys like Noem, Patel and Miller. (And Hegseth for when a military operation fails.)
good.
I’d be curious to know what they plan to charge people with.
https://www.phreeli.com/ lets people use phones without revealing identity.
Tracking the murderers who executed citizens in the street and then fled the scene of the crime and any sort of trial or investigation? That ICE and Immigration and Border Patrol? I wonder why. And since when is tracking public officials operating in public in the capacity of their government jobs illegal?
These federal goons need to be tracked and observed to record their crimes. That much is indisputable.
I suspect they're going to find it challenging to turn protected speech into something prosecutable like obstruction - assuming activists exercise even a modicum of care in their wording. Seems like just another intimidation tactic but in doing that, they've also given a heads-up to their targets.
Just a reminder that we're dealing with propagandists here.
As many have already stated, Signal is overwhelmingly secure. More secure than any other alternative with similar viability here.
If the feds were actually concerned about that, publicly "investigating" Signal chats is a great way to drive activists to less secure alternatives, while also benefiting from scattering activist comms.
I'm convinced all this talk around Signal, including Hegseths fuckup, is to discourage "normies" (for lack of a better term) from using it. Even in this very HN thread, where you'd expect technical nuance, there are people spreading FUD around the phone number requirement as if that'd be your downfall... a timestamp and a phone number? How would that get someone convicted in court?
So more nonsense. How about tracking down the murderer first.
Perspective from Central Europe (Austria): I can tell you that essentially nobody here has any doubt that bad faith is at play.
Our mainstream news outlets are openly calling the "official" versions from the Trump administration what they are – lies. The video evidence is clear to anyone watching: this was murder. No amount of spin changes what the footage shows.
As citizens of a country that knows firsthand how fascism begins, we recognize the patterns: the brazen lying in the face of obvious evidence, the dehumanization, the paramilitarized enforcement without accountability. We've seen this playbook before.
What Americans might not fully grasp is how catastrophically the US has damaged its standing abroad. The sentiment here has shifted from "trusted ally" to "unreliable partner we need to become independent from as quickly as possible." The only thing most Europeans still find relevant about the US at this point is Wall Street.
The fact that the FBI is investigating citizens documenting government violence rather than the government agents committing violence tells you everything about where this is heading.
Url changed from https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/kash-patel-..., which points to this.
[dead]
[dead]
[dead]
Why? That's unequivocally constitutionally protected speech. Why is our tax money being wasted on this?
People need to investigate the FBI. They would be shocked at their crimes. The recent Epstein news comes to mind but that is only the smallest tip of it.
Always use encryption for anything. Encrypted messengers are great, but I would never trust Signal. It requires phone numbers to register among other issues, has intelligence funding from places such as the OTF, and their dev asset Rosenfeld is a whole other issue.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/nbc-news/
and what is NBC "news"'s motive/agenda for framing this info the way they are?
"LEFT-CENTER BIAS These media sources have a slight to moderate liberal bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by appeals to emotion or stereotypes) to favor liberal causes. These sources are generally trustworthy for information but may require further investigation
NBC News is what some call a mainstream media source. They typically publish/report factual news that uses moderately loaded words in headlines such as this: 'Trump threatens border security shutdown, GOP cool to idea.'
Story selection tends to favor the left through both wording and bias by omission, where they underreport some news stories that are favorable to the right. NBC always sources its information to credible sources that are either low biased or high for factual reporting.
A 2014 Pew Research Survey found that 42% of NBC News’ audience is consistently or primarily liberal, 39% Mixed, and 19% consistently or mostly conservative. A more liberal audience prefers NBC. Further, a Reuters institute survey found that 46% of respondents trust their news coverage and 35% do not, ranking them #5 in trust of the major USA news providers."
There seems to be wild speculation about freedom of speech rights or hacking Signal.
The FBI simply joined groupchats and read them. This is trivial stuff.