Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to it could happen here. I am Robert Evans,
Speaker 2: and this is a podcast about things falling apart. Sometimes
Speaker 2: it's about how to make things not fall apart, and
Speaker 2: other times it's more about enduring it. Today is more
Speaker 2: on the endurance side of things. And we're talking about
Speaker 2: a subject that we get a lot of requests about here.
Speaker 2: We've discussed this a year or so ago with one
Speaker 2: of our guests, a great Carl Pasarta. We're talking about
Speaker 2: like security culture, and particularly the aspect of security culture
Speaker 2: that involves digital devices and how to communicate with your friends'
Speaker 2: affinity groups, whomever via your phone essentially or your computer.
Speaker 2: This is a thing where there's a huge amount of
Speaker 2: disinformation as to which apps are safe. What does it
Speaker 2: actually mean to say that an app is encrypted? How
Speaker 2: far does encryption get you? What sort of like cultural
Speaker 2: things come alongside the actual, like physical reality of the
Speaker 2: security of the device in order to kind of make
Speaker 2: a comprehensive security profile. We're gonna be talking about all
Speaker 2: that today and hopefully giving you some good advice on
Speaker 2: what you can trust. Because I am the furthest thing
Speaker 2: in the world from a technical expert. We have two
Speaker 2: actual experts with us today. Carolyn Senders and Cooper Quinton
Speaker 2: have both recently published a paper alongside several other authors
Speaker 2: Leila Wagner, Tim Bernard, Ami Meta, and Justin Hendricks called
Speaker 2: what Is Secure? An Analysis of Popular Messaging Apps, and
Speaker 2: it's it's basically going over what is the actual level
Speaker 2: of security with a number of things like Telegram, you know,
Speaker 2: Telegram's private messaging system, Facebook Messenger, Apple Message, or I Message.
Speaker 2: I guess it's called and obviously signal and kind of
Speaker 2: as a spoiler, signal is your best bet, but that
Speaker 2: also isn't where you should end, right I think we
Speaker 2: want to also talk about kind of like why and
Speaker 2: to what extent that's the case. But anyway, I'm going
Speaker 2: to turn things over to Carolyn and Cooper now because
Speaker 2: I have talked enough about this. Hey guys, welcome to
Speaker 2: the show.
Speaker 3: Hey, Robert, thanks so much for having us on.
Speaker 4: Yeah ah, yeah, thank you so much, A big fan
Speaker 4: of the podcast, so always lovely, really lovely to be here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really lovely to have you both again. Listeners,
Speaker 2: if you want to take a look at this their paper,
Speaker 2: if you just google what is secure and analysis of
Speaker 2: popular messaging apps. You'll find the Tech Policy Press has
Speaker 2: a summary of it that's pretty quick. The full paper
Speaker 2: is eighty six pages or so. I also recommend reading that,
Speaker 2: but if you wanted to give this the summary a
Speaker 2: skin before you continue, that might help. But I kind
Speaker 2: of wanted to start by asking you, guys, what is
Speaker 2: it that makes Signal a good option for people? Right?
Speaker 2: Because I think most folks you describe it as sort
Speaker 2: of security folklore, right, the stuff that you hear about
Speaker 2: security from your friends, and if you're not a technical person,
Speaker 2: you kind of just like trust what the folks around
Speaker 2: you were saying. And that was sort of how I
Speaker 2: got into Signal. Right, I'm not a technical person, but
Speaker 2: people I knew and trusted who were were like, this
Speaker 2: is your best option?
Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 4: That's such a good question, and I think Cooper and
Speaker 4: I probably have similar but also like very different answers
Speaker 4: to it.
Speaker 5: Cooper, I can go first if you want.
Speaker 4: One of the things I love about Signal is it's
Speaker 4: just really easy to use. It's in and encrypted, it's
Speaker 4: a messaging app. There's not a lot of stuff on it,
Speaker 4: but you can do a lot with it, so you
Speaker 4: can do video calls, you can send actually pretty large
Speaker 4: files like PDFs.
Speaker 5: You can have drag and drop stuff.
Speaker 4: It's like such a low threshold for use for users
Speaker 4: because it is a messaging app, but it does so
Speaker 4: many different kinds of things. But then related to that,
Speaker 4: it's also actually quite minimal. So the paper which everyone
Speaker 4: should read and we'll probably get into this later. Different
Speaker 4: apps like Telegram or Facebook's Messenger app, for example, have have.
Speaker 5: This thing we've been calling feature bloat.
Speaker 4: They are messaging services that actually feel a bit more
Speaker 4: like social networks if you look at the amount of
Speaker 4: stuff that's on there, and by stuff, I don't just
Speaker 4: mean like stickers, I mean if you look at there's
Speaker 4: all these sort of specific and strange settings you can
Speaker 4: use to have all different kinds of messages and all
Speaker 4: different kinds of privacy settings, and all privacy settings are
Speaker 4: really really great. Because Telegram and Facebook Messenger are not
Speaker 4: encrypted by default, actually some of those settings can make
Speaker 4: you feel more secure when you're not so. Kind of
Speaker 4: the beauty of Signal is that out of the box,
Speaker 4: it's incredibly secure. It's an inn encrypted They're not holding
Speaker 4: any data about you. I believe the only only day
Speaker 4: they hold is like when you've like when a phone
Speaker 4: number or a profile has downloaded signal, like when you've
Speaker 4: when you've signed up. But again it's it's incredibly easy
Speaker 4: to use. And another thing is, you know, if this
Speaker 4: was a few years ago, we've been looking at wire
Speaker 4: for example.
Speaker 5: One of the nice things about Signal.
Speaker 4: And this might be controversial to some, is that it
Speaker 4: does follow modern design patterns and standards. So if you're
Speaker 4: using an iOS or Android version, like there are buttons
Speaker 4: in places where you expect them to be. Signal is
Speaker 4: not perfectly designed, but it is quite usable. Yeah, So
Speaker 4: for me, that's kind of what I think makes it
Speaker 4: makes it really wonderful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely as much as I love it, and
Speaker 2: it's my like standard messaging app I do every now
Speaker 2: and then run into the thing where like my friends
Speaker 2: will call me through Signal, which is great if you
Speaker 2: need a call to be secure, but it's not nearly
Speaker 2: as good, Like it drops a lot more often than
Speaker 2: a regular phone call, and I'm like, we're just trying
Speaker 2: to meet at the movie theater. It's okay if the
Speaker 2: nsay noes right, Like I've.
Speaker 4: Definitely had that with friends where I'm like, I'm like yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm like, we're just calling to talk about like your dog.
Speaker 5: It's probably fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the FBI can have this stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, please send, please send, please send dog picks through
Speaker 4: all all messaging apps.
Speaker 3: You know. But on that note, it's uh, right, writing
Speaker 3: usable software that is also secure is really hard, right,
Speaker 3: And like as a like as cryptographer, I'm not a cryptographer,
Speaker 3: but like as somebody cryptographer adjacent, we got that wrong
Speaker 3: for a long time, right, Like before Signal the problem,
Speaker 3: you know, there were the the the sort of most
Speaker 3: used encryption methods were probably uh PGP email, which is
Speaker 3: a method for encrypting email, and off the record chats,
Speaker 3: and both of those none of those ever got to
Speaker 3: the sort of level of user base that Signal and
Speaker 3: and certainly not WhatsApp have, right, And and that's largely
Speaker 3: because they were pretty much unusable, like PGP, almost entirely
Speaker 3: unusable even by cryptography professionals, right, even by computer security
Speaker 3: professionals like ourselves. OTR chat total pain in the butt, right,
Speaker 3: like just just a real nightmare to use. So, like Signal,
Speaker 3: there are still some rough edges, and we talked about
Speaker 3: some of those in our paper. But overall, I think
Speaker 3: that the big the big innovation they've had is just
Speaker 3: remembering that what people want to do on a chat
Speaker 3: app is not encrypt things. What people want to do
Speaker 3: on a chat app is they want to they want
Speaker 3: to chat right. And and the second that that that
Speaker 3: the security sort of gets in the way of that,
Speaker 3: people will stop using it and go find something that's
Speaker 3: more usable. And it seems like that's been Signals sort
Speaker 3: of guiding star and it's and they've you know, doing
Speaker 3: the doing the most secure thing that you can will
Speaker 3: still being fun and usable to actually just chat on right.
Speaker 3: And I think that that has served them quite well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's it's it's so important. One of
Speaker 2: I think one of the things that that contributes to
Speaker 2: good overall security is setting yourself up for success, which
Speaker 2: means setting yourself up for a system that can function
Speaker 2: well if you're lazy, which is one of the nice
Speaker 2: things that you know, with Signal, you don't have to
Speaker 2: worry about like opting in and out and like selecting
Speaker 2: a bunch of stuff. It's pretty safe, especially for a
Speaker 2: normal person's uses right out of the box, which is
Speaker 2: huge and kind of in the same line, as that
Speaker 2: is the fact that because Signal doesn't store metadata, you're
Speaker 2: not relying upon them being like committed you know, anti
Speaker 2: state actors or whatever like, because they don't have access
Speaker 2: to the thing that for example, Facebook will hand over
Speaker 2: to the cops if the cops just like breathe in
Speaker 2: their direction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's exactly right, And that's that is that
Speaker 3: is the other really cool thing about Signal. You know, we,
Speaker 3: as Carolyn said, the only data that Signal gives over
Speaker 3: in response to uh A subpoena is the time that
Speaker 3: the phone number signed up for Signal account and the
Speaker 3: last time it connected to the Signal server. And the
Speaker 3: reason we know that is because Signal publishes transparency reports
Speaker 3: with the full text and full response of any subpoena
Speaker 3: that they get, so like we can actually just see
Speaker 3: in the responses that all they've given over is these
Speaker 3: two pieces of information, because that's all they have, and
Speaker 3: they've done some pretty clever things to make that be the.
Speaker 4: Case, right, And that's actually so different than how other
Speaker 4: companies are I think reporting on either subpoenas or any
Speaker 4: kind of.
Speaker 5: Weight that law enforcement puts on them.
Speaker 4: So for our report, I don't remember how much it's
Speaker 4: it's mentioned in the report actually, but we did go
Speaker 4: through and look at Apple Meta and I think Google
Speaker 4: like in their own transparency reports to try to get
Speaker 4: a sense of how how that would stack up in
Speaker 4: comparison to Signals. I think in some cases it's saying
Speaker 4: like they received some kind of like notification, but like no,
Speaker 4: nothing really clear or specific on like what they received
Speaker 4: from law enforcement or government, but rather just that they
Speaker 4: received one. And so that's also the really great thing
Speaker 4: about Signal is you are getting all of this information
Speaker 4: that you're not getting from other companies or PLATF forms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I wanted to kind of in the
Speaker 2: same subject and going back to we kind of opened
Speaker 2: this introducing the concept that y'all introduced me to. I
Speaker 2: guess I was aware of this, but not the terminology
Speaker 2: security folklore, and I wanted to chat a little bit
Speaker 2: about kind of the most recent example of this something
Speaker 2: a lot of folks have probably been wondering about since
Speaker 2: we started talking about Signal, which is that roughly a
Speaker 2: week before y'all and I sat down to talk about this,
Speaker 2: a kind of viral info meme started coming through that
Speaker 2: was like Signal has a zero day exploit, which is
Speaker 2: basically a hole that a hacker found in an Apple program.
Speaker 2: That is that can't expose you. You have to turn off
Speaker 2: link previews, right, which is that when you when someone
Speaker 2: sends you like a link to an article in Signal,
Speaker 2: you get a little preview not dissimilar to how it is.
Speaker 2: And I think to be fair, just based on my
Speaker 2: very limited knowledge, that is, when I think about, like,
Speaker 2: what are potential holes in Signal, I don't think it's
Speaker 2: unreasonable to be concerned about that specific feature. But that
Speaker 2: warning was not what it kind of seemed to be basically,
Speaker 2: or not as accurate as I think a lot of
Speaker 2: people took it as being.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'll let I'll tell I'll turn it over to you, guys.
Speaker 2: I think that's the next thing I want to talk about.
Speaker 4: I'll turn it over to Cooper, who had you had
Speaker 4: a Uh, you have a lot of feels about that.
Speaker 3: I have so many feelings about this. I was working
Speaker 3: on this all weekend.
Speaker 6: So this yeah, so this copy pasta I'm calling this
Speaker 6: like this signal copy pasta yeah, which is a term
Speaker 6: from you know, four Chan and other horrible internet places,
Speaker 6: but some.
Speaker 5: Media audience is probably Internet enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna guess a good half of the people
Speaker 2: listening at least got that message.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah. And it's it's like, first of all, this
Speaker 3: is not if you if you had a zero day
Speaker 3: in Signal, which is it, which is an exploit for
Speaker 3: Signal that has been unpatched but has not been patched
Speaker 3: by the vendor so you can actively exploit it. There
Speaker 3: are no people in the world who would choose to
Speaker 3: quietly leak this over you know, over vague signal texts.
Speaker 3: There are two types of people. One uh, you know,
Speaker 3: people like us that would bring this to Signal immediately
Speaker 3: and get them to patch it to protect the you know,
Speaker 3: millions of high risk users that you signal, or to
Speaker 3: the type of people that would go sell this exploit
Speaker 3: to some horrible company that would use it, you know,
Speaker 3: sell it to to Saudi Arabia or something and use
Speaker 3: it to kill activists. Right, Like there is and there's
Speaker 3: no in between. There's nobody that is going to quietly
Speaker 3: leak this for you know, just for fun with vague details. Right. So,
Speaker 3: so this this message set up red flags immediately, and
Speaker 3: like it's because I really do not like lying previews,
Speaker 3: And in our paper we discussed some of the issues
Speaker 3: that we have with link previews. You know, we think
Speaker 3: that they can they can leak some information about your
Speaker 3: chats to the owner of the website. Right. We think
Speaker 3: it's a kind of a large attack service. It's not
Speaker 3: super necessary.
Speaker 4: Would you mind explaining to actually the audience to like
Speaker 4: a little bit about what what we found when looking
Speaker 4: at link previews.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, the way that link previews work is when
Speaker 3: you the way that they work on Signal and on
Speaker 3: WhatsApp is that when you send a link to somebody,
Speaker 3: the Signal app or WhatsApp goes and like fetches the
Speaker 3: web page that that you know for that link, Right,
Speaker 3: It goes and downloads, you know, downloads the content of
Speaker 3: that link and gets a There are some there's some
Speaker 3: special HTML tags that describe, you know, sort of what
Speaker 3: the page is about, what the title of the page is,
Speaker 3: and like an image for the page. And it gets
Speaker 3: those tags and it puts them all together in this
Speaker 3: little package and then sends that all as part of
Speaker 3: the signal message. So when you put a link in Signal,
Speaker 3: your phone actually goes out and gets that web page,
Speaker 3: and it gets that web page with a what's called
Speaker 3: the user agent, which is like a piece of text
Speaker 3: that's attached to the request that uniquely that that identifies
Speaker 3: it as being a request from Signal and from like
Speaker 3: from signal and from your IP address. Right, So when
Speaker 3: you put a link in, the owner of that website,
Speaker 3: whoever has the logs for that website can know that
Speaker 3: somebody at your IP address is using signal and sending
Speaker 3: this link over signal. What we're what our concern is
Speaker 3: is that if that.
Speaker 7: Link is unique, then anybody else who visits that link
Speaker 7: can be inferred to be somebody that you are talking
Speaker 7: with over.
Speaker 3: Signal, right, And so like this can be this can
Speaker 3: be a good an interesting a source of intelligence for
Speaker 3: website owners, especially for big websites that can easily generate
Speaker 3: unique links with like tracking parameters at the end of
Speaker 3: the right, Like when you share a Instagram post and
Speaker 3: like at the end it's like question mark I G
Speaker 3: S H I D equals you know, a long string
Speaker 3: of numbers and letters, right, or a Twitter post where
Speaker 3: you know T equals a long string of letters and numbers. Right.
Speaker 3: That makes a unique link, and then anybody who visits
Speaker 3: that same link can be determined to be somebody that
Speaker 3: you're speaking with over Signal, so and also WhatsApp and so.
Speaker 8: So for that reason, we we we think that Signal
Speaker 8: and WhatsApp should turn link previews off by by default
Speaker 8: because we think that that's an unncessary information. Link Signal
Speaker 8: and WhatsApps pushed back on that is that link previews
Speaker 8: are a core feature that people demand and if they
Speaker 8: if they were to turn off link previews by default,
Speaker 8: they're worried that people would leave the platform for less
Speaker 8: secure platforms like Telegram.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't want to tell them their business,
Speaker 2: because I'm sure they have data on this, but I've
Speaker 2: never thought about link previews as being a thing that
Speaker 2: I needed.
Speaker 4: It's like, yeah, I think it's I think it's one
Speaker 4: of those things. And you know, we haven't necessarily done
Speaker 4: like extensive general design research in this right, Like we
Speaker 4: haven't surveyed like three thousand people in the US. We
Speaker 4: haven't had like a Pew Research survey across countries and
Speaker 4: be like, what are your thoughts on link previews?
Speaker 5: But I would.
Speaker 4: Probably argue because it is it is included in so
Speaker 4: much of modern messaging.
Speaker 5: Apps that we now assume it's like a core feature.
Speaker 4: One thing I will give Signal that I think is
Speaker 4: amazing that other apps don't do, and this is true
Speaker 4: of WhatsApp is pretty much every feature except for encryption,
Speaker 4: you can there's something you can toggle or turn off. Right,
Speaker 4: So like link preview already was available for people to
Speaker 4: turn off on Signal, WhatsApp does not allow that, and
Speaker 4: it seems like they're making no moves to allow that
Speaker 4: future to be optional to turn on or off.
Speaker 5: But that is I will say.
Speaker 4: One of the things that's really lovely about Signal that
Speaker 4: is so different from modern design and modern like big
Speaker 4: tech platforms and just platforms in general, is that those
Speaker 4: a lot of features are optional, whereas you know, WhatsApp
Speaker 4: in metas sort of stance on design is that a
Speaker 4: lot of things are not optional, that those are things
Speaker 4: users would want. Why would we make foundational elements like
Speaker 4: link previews optional? And you're just like starting like gesturing wildly,
Speaker 4: but like you know, it's like, well, you don't know
Speaker 4: what people want, and I mean, what's the harm in
Speaker 4: turning off some of some of these things?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: You know, like maybe maybe people don't want to receive gifts.
Speaker 4: I don't know, maybe they don't want to receive stickers.
Speaker 4: Why don't you like let them have that option. What's
Speaker 4: the harm that could happen?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Two things I want to say that one is
Speaker 3: one is that and first we should acknowledge that this
Speaker 3: it turns out that there was no zero day, there
Speaker 3: was no vulnerability. Yeah, this was absolutely just something that
Speaker 3: that spread virally out of nowhere. I'd be really interested
Speaker 3: to find out what the origin of this copy of
Speaker 3: past I was, but I haven't. I haven't been able to.
Speaker 3: But it's I'm.
Speaker 5: Curious about that as as well.
Speaker 4: Because I was in another group threw that was like,
Speaker 4: we really need outside auditors to look at these.
Speaker 5: And I was like, we have a whole report that
Speaker 5: we wrote that didn't look at this.
Speaker 2: Speaking of outside auditors, I gotta pause you guys just
Speaker 2: a second, because it is time for an ad break,
Speaker 2: So please spend your money and then come back to
Speaker 2: learn more. Ah and we're back. Okay, sorry about that, Cooper, Carolyn,
Speaker 2: you make continue as you were.
Speaker 3: The other thing I was, I was going to say
Speaker 3: that the idea that anybody would leave WhatsApp because they
Speaker 3: stopped having link previews is completely preposterous to me. Like
Speaker 3: Clownish has over two billion users. They are the you know,
Speaker 3: in a position to set the standard for what people
Speaker 3: expect from a messaging app, and so like they could
Speaker 3: do things like turn on disappearing messages by default and
Speaker 3: change that culture. They could do things like turn off
Speaker 3: link previews by default and change that culture. Like, they
Speaker 3: could do these things, and you know they would you know,
Speaker 3: they would not lose enough users to even notice or
Speaker 3: care about.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they are the only people in the position in
Speaker 3: the world, in the position to decide what the culture
Speaker 3: should be, and this is what they've decided the culture
Speaker 3: should be.
Speaker 5: Totally.
Speaker 4: I hate to break it to you, but if WhatsApp
Speaker 4: just got rid of link previews, I'm just throwing my
Speaker 4: whole phone into the garbage garbage can, getting rid of it.
Speaker 2: Just tossing it back to a landline.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm just.
Speaker 4: Gonna eat it into a river. I feel like I
Speaker 4: don't need this anymore. Actually, I'm going back to carryer pigeons.
Speaker 5: That's how far back I'm going to go.
Speaker 2: I mean that that does kind of lead into the
Speaker 2: next thing I wanted to talk about, which is sort
Speaker 2: of the other wing from security folklore, which is security nihilism.
Speaker 2: And yeah, this is kind of you introduce this when
Speaker 2: talking about sort of if you do try to engage
Speaker 2: somewhat with the technology, or if you wind up just
Speaker 2: kind of in the position I think most lay people are,
Speaker 2: where you know, maybe you have some friends who know more,
Speaker 2: or maybe you have some friends who think they know more,
Speaker 2: and you get all these conflicting things about like this
Speaker 2: is safe, No, it's not. You can't trust signal. The
Speaker 2: FEDS could be running signal all this kind of stuff,
Speaker 2: And to be fair, the FEDS have run security based
Speaker 2: services before. It's not like I don't believe that's happening
Speaker 2: with signal, but it's not like I understand where parent
Speaker 2: like that can can enter into people's calculus, especially if
Speaker 2: you're not technically knowledgeable, and that can lead to this
Speaker 2: sort of state of security nihilism where you're just like,
Speaker 2: you can't communicate it all online. There's no way to
Speaker 2: do it securely, and obviously there's no perfect right you
Speaker 2: never have it, but you don't have one hundred percent
Speaker 2: with like talking in person to somebody. Right there are
Speaker 2: individuals in prison right now who you know somebody they
Speaker 2: loved and trusted rat it on them. There's no one
Speaker 2: hundred percents in this world. But that doesn't mean nihilism
Speaker 2: is the right response to like trying to figure out
Speaker 2: how to set up your communications standards with people right.
Speaker 4: Totally, I mean, I think the approach we take in
Speaker 4: because throughout this report we were also teaching workshops to
Speaker 4: reproductive justice activists across the US and states where abortion
Speaker 4: is banned. I'm from Louisiana, I live half the year there,
Speaker 4: the abortion is banned there, and we were also working
Speaker 4: with journalists in India. So a big big thing for
Speaker 4: us was also teaching threat modeling and different kinds of
Speaker 4: what Matt Mitchell, a security trainer and expert, calls digital hygiene,
Speaker 4: and so a lot of this was recognizing that there
Speaker 4: was certain practices we were picking up on, particularly with
Speaker 4: folks we were working with. So like a lot of
Speaker 4: reproductive justice activists we were working with are new to security,
Speaker 4: they're new to technology, they don't have a background in tech,
Speaker 4: and generally, you know, the American South, the American Deep
Speaker 4: South is super overlooked in terms of tech policy, in
Speaker 4: terms of just I think a general focus when people
Speaker 4: are talking about tech or tech literacy or tech activism,
Speaker 4: and that is like leaving really massive gaps and knowledge
Speaker 4: for people. And so you know, when we were working
Speaker 4: on this security folkal or and security nihilism, we're both
Speaker 4: actually very.
Speaker 5: Almost like I won't say, like a pendulum, but they
Speaker 5: were very connected. And so some of that was.
Speaker 4: People hearing things like oh, I should put my phone
Speaker 4: in a microwave when I'm having a very sensitive conversation, right,
Speaker 4: And so that's where some of that security folklore is
Speaker 4: coming in. It is something that is technically safe, but
Speaker 4: it's like not the thing you necessarily, like totally need
Speaker 4: to do in that moment. And with security nihilism, what
Speaker 4: it kind of came down to, and this is stuff
Speaker 4: we've seen with other groups and other circumstances. A great
Speaker 4: example are are you know Palestinian activists and journalists. Let's say,
Speaker 4: who are you know facing the threat of all different
Speaker 4: kinds of governmental censorship and surveillance of sort of saying like,
Speaker 4: when there's this large threat sort of hanging on us,
Speaker 4: and there's also physical surveillance. And this is true for
Speaker 4: a lot of journalists in other countries like India as well.
Speaker 4: For example, you know, like should everything go through signal
Speaker 4: or does it really matter?
Speaker 5: Like does it really matter?
Speaker 4: And this is also something again we saw with some
Speaker 4: some reproductive justice activists as well, where it's like if
Speaker 4: everything is being monitored, what's safe?
Speaker 5: Like can I send stuff? Like can I even use Google?
Speaker 4: And part of this was, you know, by teaching privacy
Speaker 4: and security workshops, by teaching things like threat modeling, which
Speaker 4: is a framework for just assessing what.
Speaker 5: Are what are threats?
Speaker 4: Like are what are all the potential threats you could
Speaker 4: face and kind of mapping them from like the most
Speaker 4: minor to like the most major, and what you can
Speaker 4: do about that. That's a way to try to combat
Speaker 4: security nihilism. But I think an approach Cooper and I
Speaker 4: are also really fond of is thinking of this like
Speaker 4: safer sex. There's all different kinds of things you can
Speaker 4: do that our mitigations are actually incredibly helpful, and we
Speaker 4: can't look at it as a binary of safe or
Speaker 4: not safe. It's actually like much more of a gradient.
Speaker 4: But you know, the focal are and the nihilism, I
Speaker 4: think come from a very similar place, which is we're
Speaker 4: asking people like society is kind of asking or demanding
Speaker 4: that people be experts and something that's really hard. I
Speaker 4: am like a fairly technical person, and even there are
Speaker 4: some things that I find hard to serve wrap my
Speaker 4: head around. And I've been working in privacy and security
Speaker 4: for like quite a while, and I think think, you know,
Speaker 4: it's also really hard when you think about these apps
Speaker 4: as like a brand new person. So, like, one of
Speaker 4: the things that popped up a lot in our research
Speaker 4: is like why should we trust signal? And that's actually
Speaker 4: a great question, Like what about Signal in its interface
Speaker 4: and its design.
Speaker 5: Would cause you to trust it? Like some people were
Speaker 5: like it's a nonprofit. That's great, but I don't know
Speaker 5: what that means. I'm like, that's actually a fantastic question,
Speaker 5: Like what does that mean? Right?
Speaker 4: Like why should you trust this? You've heard through the
Speaker 4: grapevine that you should. And I think these are kind
Speaker 4: of all the things that people are dealing with because
Speaker 4: if you sort of take a step back and just
Speaker 4: look at software or any different kinds of software generally,
Speaker 4: why should you trust that it's safe and secure when
Speaker 4: there have been so many different kinds of leaks or
Speaker 4: breaches or things breaking, right, Yeah, Like, so these are
Speaker 4: I think really really closely tied. But I think a
Speaker 4: big thing for us is trying to combat that security nihilism.
Speaker 4: Like when whenever we can like, there is things you
Speaker 4: can do. I don't want to say like no matter
Speaker 4: how great the threat, but I believe like, no matter
Speaker 4: how great threat, there is stuff, there is stuff you
Speaker 4: can do.
Speaker 3: No matter how great the threat is, there's stuff that
Speaker 3: you can do to make it more difficult and more
Speaker 3: expensive for that person to attack you. Right, Like we
Speaker 3: all lock the doors to our house, or you know,
Speaker 3: for the most part, or you know, we all we
Speaker 3: all do things to to protect ourselves like that that
Speaker 3: aren't fool proof, right. Somebody can always break a window
Speaker 3: to get into your house, right. Somebody can find other
Speaker 3: ways to get into your house. But locking the door
Speaker 3: makes it so that somebody has to do the noisy
Speaker 3: thing of breaking a window. Right. It makes it so that,
Speaker 3: you know, somebody has to spend more time and effort
Speaker 3: and more risk of getting caught in getting into your house. Right.
Speaker 3: And that's and that's like we layer. When you layer
Speaker 3: these protections, right, the idea, you know is that you're
Speaker 3: you're you're making it harder, You're making there be more
Speaker 3: friction right to piercing your security.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's that's a really good point, and
Speaker 2: that the concept of friction, you know, this is something
Speaker 2: I've talked about. Not that these are exactly the same things,
Speaker 2: but in the although there's not not wildly different when
Speaker 2: it comes to like how insurgents win insurgencies, right, it's
Speaker 2: not by carrying out these sort of like great battlefield
Speaker 2: victories that sweep the enemy from the field. It's by friction, right,
Speaker 2: which wears down both the culture and the kind of
Speaker 2: readiness of the opponent until they simply bounce, which is
Speaker 2: a pretty durable and effective strategy. You can keep it up.
Speaker 2: It's this matter of like there's no like sweeping sudden
Speaker 2: like ninety minute three act win here. It's more a
Speaker 2: matter of the more difficult, the more expensive you make it,
Speaker 2: the more you hold on to and the more all
Speaker 2: of us hold on to. Right. That's the other benefit
Speaker 2: is like, even if you're not even if you are
Speaker 2: the most law abiding person in the world like myself,
Speaker 2: having these security measures in place means that you're kind
Speaker 2: of contributing to the overall immune system of a of
Speaker 2: a kind of community of people who don't want the
Speaker 2: NSA listening to their ship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And the friction thing is is also
Speaker 3: exactly what Signal does, right, Like by the threat model
Speaker 3: for Signal is stopping the NSA or other global adversaries
Speaker 3: from listening to all communications as they travel over the internet, right,
Speaker 3: And that's when you can when you can do that,
Speaker 3: like when you can when you can listen to everybody's
Speaker 3: conversations as they travel over the Internet, it's really cheap
Speaker 3: to spy on anybody. Right when you're encrypting that communication,
Speaker 3: then the NSA or whatever other global adversary has to
Speaker 3: go actually hack your phone, right, they have to. They
Speaker 3: have to target you specifically, they have to burn resources
Speaker 3: and you know, burn weapons, right, zero days to get
Speaker 3: access to your phone. And that's a lot more costly,
Speaker 3: it's a lot more noisy, it's a much higher risk
Speaker 3: of them getting caught. So it's introduced to huge friction,
Speaker 3: uh in that in that area.
Speaker 5: Go ahead, okay, go ahead, go.
Speaker 3: Ahead, I say, and I think you're asymmetic. The sort
Speaker 3: of comparison to asymmetric warfare is exactly spot on, because
Speaker 3: none of us are ever going to have the money
Speaker 3: that that the NSA or Masade has. None of us
Speaker 3: are ever going to have the the total technical acumen
Speaker 3: that the NSA or MASAD has, right, but like those
Speaker 3: that you know, so we have to kind of fight
Speaker 3: a you know, in terms of caryption, in terms of encryption,
Speaker 3: a guerrilla war, right, and we have to make things
Speaker 3: so expensive and so annoying for them that it's not.
Speaker 5: Worth it totally. And just to sort of building that.
Speaker 4: One of the things I love about Signal is while
Speaker 4: they're creating friction for our adversaries, it's actually so frictionless
Speaker 4: to use as a user. And I think that's one
Speaker 4: of the things I find just continually impressive about that.
Speaker 4: I don't want this to turn into like the like.
Speaker 5: We're all himbos for signal. Looks we probably are.
Speaker 4: But because like that's one of the things as a
Speaker 4: researcher like Kuber and IOMs have to be like, we're
Speaker 4: not paid by a signal at all, Like, but this
Speaker 4: is in fact, like one of the best things you
Speaker 4: can use. But again, one of the things I think
Speaker 4: is amazing is that it is so easy to use
Speaker 4: and it really is designed for and I'm using the
Speaker 4: term usability as as a design term, meaning that it
Speaker 4: is they're thinking about a common user, including those with
Speaker 4: like lower digital literacy or those that are have never
Speaker 4: used any kind of any kind of security tool, and
Speaker 4: so they're hitting a specific threshold of usability for things
Speaker 4: to be understandable. And again, that's incredibly hard to do well,
Speaker 4: and they are they are doing it quite well. Like
Speaker 4: it's very I would argue, it's very easy and sort
Speaker 4: of seamless for people to make a jump from WhatsApp
Speaker 4: or if you're on like Google or Android using like
Speaker 4: Google Messages, sorry Google, if you're on Android or an iPhone,
Speaker 4: from Like Messages to Google Messages to signal like it
Speaker 4: doesn't It might look slightly different. I might feel a
Speaker 4: lot more blue, I might feel a lot more black,
Speaker 4: depending on how yours is constructed. But for the most part,
Speaker 4: a lot of the features are kind of where you
Speaker 4: expect them to be, and it's not at all difficult
Speaker 4: to get it up and running, which is not something
Speaker 4: against Cooper said earlier.
Speaker 5: We could say about things like PGP.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wanted to kind of move on to talking
Speaker 2: about other apps and their security or lack of it,
Speaker 2: and I think we should start probably by talking about Telegram,
Speaker 2: because that's probably close to top of the list of
Speaker 2: things people use for secure communications that is not nearly
Speaker 2: as secure as they think. So, yeah, I wanted to
Speaker 2: kind of chat with you about like why that is,
Speaker 2: and I specifically I wanted to talk one of the
Speaker 2: things that is frustrating about Telegram is they kind of
Speaker 2: have they have like a secret chat or private chat,
Speaker 2: like they have a couple of different options that don't
Speaker 2: necessarily mean what they sound like they mean to most people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's actually one thing our report found. So
Speaker 4: private chat and secret chat are in fact.
Speaker 5: The same thing.
Speaker 4: They're just called slightly different things in the app, which
Speaker 4: for for again, for those listening.
Speaker 5: That are don't have the background in design, that's bad design.
Speaker 4: That's actually not that's not professional, that's a that is
Speaker 4: a mistake. There's no reason for a feature to have
Speaker 4: like two different names inside of inside of your software.
Speaker 4: And so I don't know if that's an oversight on
Speaker 4: their part. I'm assuming so, but like those two things
Speaker 4: correlate to the same feature, and so they should actually
Speaker 4: be called the same thing. But then even further that
Speaker 4: being said, what does private mean to a user?
Speaker 5: What does secret mean?
Speaker 4: You know, Facebook Messenger they call their encrypted message secure
Speaker 4: or no, they also call it secret.
Speaker 5: Sorry, they also call it secret. But does that mean security?
Speaker 5: Does that mean encrypted?
Speaker 4: And so that's like one of the one of the
Speaker 4: weird things where it's like, you know, I think by
Speaker 4: using a very sort of like normalize or culturally almost
Speaker 4: like emotional name like private, it makes something seem like
Speaker 4: it's actually quite safe, when in fact it's not. And
Speaker 4: there's a variety of reasons as why, like Telegram is
Speaker 4: not not a very secure app that I will let Cooper.
Speaker 5: Talk about more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would never advise anybody to have a chat
Speaker 3: over Telegram if they are concerned about the privacy of that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So we were talking about friction and the fact that
Speaker 3: and encrypted chats are not the default in Telegram creates
Speaker 3: a friction for users to have an actually secure chat.
Speaker 3: Right you have to go remember to turn it.
Speaker 4: On, and you can only turn it on turn it
Speaker 4: on individually per message. It's not like an overall feature
Speaker 4: on Telegram or Facebook Messenger. You have to go select
Speaker 4: a specific like the specific conversation per conversation, which is
Speaker 4: and another thing ourper gets into is how also those
Speaker 4: chats don't look very different. They look almost identical to
Speaker 4: a normal chat. So for for low vision users or
Speaker 4: anyone with any kind of like disability, especially a vision
Speaker 4: related disability, it's almost impossible to it's like nearly impossible
Speaker 4: to recognize which chat you're using if you're looking at.
Speaker 5: The chat logs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, outside of that, like if people, you know, in
Speaker 2: terms of like things, that may not be options right now,
Speaker 2: I think basically everyone listening signal is a perfectly viable option.
Speaker 2: But it's not impossible that, for example, you might wind
Speaker 2: up in a country where, even if there's not a
Speaker 2: specific law against it, there is a precedent established that
Speaker 2: if you have signal on your phone, you know, it
Speaker 2: can be at least used as a justification for charges
Speaker 2: that you are planning to use. Like you know, with Atlanta,
Speaker 2: people are getting charges because they had a lawyer's name
Speaker 2: written on their arm right, and and so the state saying, well,
Speaker 2: that's evidence that we're planning to commit a crime. You know,
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean that convictions will go through in that
Speaker 2: kind of thing, but it may be a reason why
Speaker 2: signal might not be an option, or say, you know,
Speaker 2: something comes out about it that makes it seem less secure.
Speaker 2: What are other good or or acceptable options? And I
Speaker 2: know when we're talking about this, these are often options
Speaker 2: that require more input and work from the user in
Speaker 2: order to maximize their potential security. But I do think
Speaker 2: it's good to like let people kind of know what
Speaker 2: else is out there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so when signal isn't an option, WhatsApp is actually
Speaker 3: not a bad option. So WhatsApp it is owned by Meta,
Speaker 3: which is a you know which is which is you
Speaker 3: know not which is not ideal? But WhatsApp actually uses
Speaker 3: the same encryption protocol as signal. Uh so, like under
Speaker 3: the hood, the way that the you know, the way
Speaker 3: that the math works to hide your messages from the
Speaker 3: NSA is exactly the same, right, and they've implemented it well.
Speaker 3: You know, there are a few more steps that, you know,
Speaker 3: a few more precautions that you need to take with WhatsApp,
Speaker 3: like making sure that your chats aren't backed up being
Speaker 3: the main one. But WhatsApp is certainly good enough, right
Speaker 3: if you're if you're you know, chat networks aren't using signal,
Speaker 3: if you're in a country where you can't use signal, right,
Speaker 3: Like WhatsApp has two billion users, I'm you know, it's
Speaker 3: it's you can use WhatsApp almost anywhere in the world.
Speaker 3: It's and it's ubiquitous enough that it's not going to
Speaker 3: mark you as you know, somebody with something to hide, right,
Speaker 3: And like, and I don't want to I don't want
Speaker 3: to discount what's app. Right, getting two billion people to
Speaker 3: have end to end encrypted messaging by default overnight basically
Speaker 3: was a major cupe. Like that that was world changing, right,
Speaker 3: and like they they really do deserve applause for that obviously,
Speaker 3: you know, I think partly because of their scale, partly
Speaker 3: because they're own b meta, right, they haven't taken all
Speaker 3: of these same steps, Like they do have more metadata
Speaker 3: on their servers than Signal does. Right. But if that's
Speaker 3: your option, that is a fine option.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's really good to know, particularly since
Speaker 2: options are always more secure than not having any kind
Speaker 2: of a backup plan totally.
Speaker 4: And if people are like even slightly nervous about WhatsApp,
Speaker 4: of great things, they do have disappearing messages. The downside
Speaker 4: is like the fastest disappearing message is only twenty four hours.
Speaker 4: But that's something that again you still have, and that's
Speaker 4: like that is that is an amazing feature.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that kind of gets into also what kind
Speaker 2: of stuff you can do in order to maximize the
Speaker 2: value of features like that. Like, for example, if you're
Speaker 2: coming back into the country or a country and your
Speaker 2: phone gets confiscated by customs or whatever because security so
Speaker 2: uses have some sort of eye on you for whatever reason.
Speaker 2: If you've got you know, thumbprint log in or face
Speaker 2: log in, they're going to get into that phone right
Speaker 2: in your twenty four hour delete thing may not have
Speaker 2: gotten taken care of everything. If you've got like a
Speaker 2: complicated eight digit password and no biometrics enabled, maybe depending
Speaker 2: on where you are and whatnot, that'll keep your phone
Speaker 2: locked long enough for those messages to get deleted, right, Like,
Speaker 2: it's all about kind of maximizing the chances that something.
Speaker 3: Like that helps. Yeah, exactly. We definitely recommend that people
Speaker 3: turn on disappearing messages. I think that that's just a
Speaker 3: good sensible default to have. Also definitely recommend that if
Speaker 3: you're going to be in a situation where you think
Speaker 3: you're going to be, you know, there's a higher likelihood
Speaker 3: if you interacting with law enforcement, if you're crossing a border,
Speaker 3: if you're going to a protest turn off the biometric
Speaker 3: unlock on your phone. Certainly, especially in the US, there's
Speaker 3: the case law isn't settled, but there's a lot of
Speaker 3: state courts that have decided that police can force you
Speaker 3: to unlock your phone with your biometrics and that that's
Speaker 3: totally fine. So this, you know, in the in the
Speaker 3: US context, is a good idea in any context. I
Speaker 3: think it's a good idea if you're at heightened risk
Speaker 3: to turn off totally.
Speaker 4: I mean, one thing we're also a big fan of
Speaker 4: is figuring out too like and this is again where
Speaker 4: threat modeling is so key, is like, is this a
Speaker 4: circumstance where you need your phone or another thing that
Speaker 4: you know you can always do if you are nervous
Speaker 4: about traveling across the border, is you can delete signal
Speaker 4: and reinstall it and everything is gone. You can delete
Speaker 4: WhatsApp temporarily while you're crossing a border so it's not
Speaker 4: on your phone. You know, there are things like that
Speaker 4: you can do if you feel comfortable wiping your phone,
Speaker 4: that's something also you can do. You know, these are
Speaker 4: all again these are these are these are different things,
Speaker 4: and I think this is one of the things our
Speaker 4: report I don't remember how too much we get into
Speaker 4: a bit something that at least we've been thinking about.
Speaker 4: Cooper and I run a little lab called Complication, and
Speaker 4: one of the things we've been thinking about there is
Speaker 4: just also how do we instill sort of like better,
Speaker 4: better holistic practices where we understand that a phone is
Speaker 4: just one component of our safety and so like secure messaging,
Speaker 4: encrypted messaging is one component of that safe safety. So
Speaker 4: like what are other things we can do?
Speaker 5: And some of that can.
Speaker 4: Be you know, wiping your phone if traveling, if that
Speaker 4: makes sense for you, or if that's a thing that
Speaker 4: makes you feel safer, or removing certain apps and then
Speaker 4: you know, reinstalling them, reinstalling them later.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and it and it really is holistic. Right,
Speaker 3: Like a thing that a thing that people need to
Speaker 3: keep in mind is that, you know, disappearing messages can't
Speaker 3: stop an untrustworthy uh conversation partner, right Like if if
Speaker 3: my conversation partner is untrustworthy, they can take screenshots of
Speaker 3: the messages, right, they can you know, go they can
Speaker 3: go snitch to law enforcement about what I've hold them. Right,
Speaker 3: Encrypted messaging, discipree messages, These are not panaspeas. Right, you
Speaker 3: still have to you still have to keep all of
Speaker 3: your other aspects of security as well, right, So don't
Speaker 3: entirely rely on these technologies to save you, right, you
Speaker 3: have to also trust the people you're working with and
Speaker 3: build these layers of security.
Speaker 4: Yet it's true, I mean, Cooper, you could leak all
Speaker 4: of my secrets right now on this podcast and them.
Speaker 5: That too, what a gentleman.
Speaker 2: And that is that is the other thing, right where
Speaker 2: when it comes to like what is secure, one thing
Speaker 2: to remember is that signal for all the good things
Speaker 2: about it, Nothing, nothing at all about that app stops
Speaker 2: the recipient of a message from you from taking a
Speaker 2: screen grab or just handing their phone over to their
Speaker 2: friendly local federal agent, right, which is always you know,
Speaker 2: we don't want to be I'm not trying to be
Speaker 2: a security nihilist here. I think you know, there's no
Speaker 2: replacing communication over phones in many situations. But if you are,
Speaker 2: for example, going to be transferring a bunch of Plan
Speaker 2: B pills in an area where that is prosecutable, that
Speaker 2: probably shouldn't go on your phone in that language. Right,
Speaker 2: Perhaps you know you could come up with a clever
Speaker 2: codeword or whatever. But don't you know it is security
Speaker 2: is like you said, holistic. You know you should not
Speaker 2: be looking at it as just like, well the app
Speaker 2: is secure.
Speaker 3: So that's enough.
Speaker 4: I mean, one thing I also want people sort of
Speaker 4: think about too, because that's a really great point Robert,
Speaker 4: is like, we do all different kinds of things every
Speaker 4: day in our lives that could, you know, in dangerous.
Speaker 4: Like I think a lot of the work I do
Speaker 4: is I work a lot with people facing all different
Speaker 4: kinds of online harassment. So like falling in love, for example,
Speaker 4: is a dangerous thing to do. You could have your
Speaker 4: heart broken or that person could hurt you. Learning how
Speaker 4: to trust people, you know, crossing the street, deciding to
Speaker 4: jaywalk right, all different things we do sort of.
Speaker 5: Every day actually can expose us to harm.
Speaker 4: And so one thing I think for people listening to
Speaker 4: keep in mind is that's the same one we have conversations.
Speaker 4: And I think a way to avoid nihilism is just
Speaker 4: to remember that that every day we are sort of
Speaker 4: going out there and actually being incredibly brave just by
Speaker 4: living our everyday lives, by deciding to be in community
Speaker 4: and have friendships and have relationships, and in my case,
Speaker 4: I love jaywalking, and no one around me does, and
Speaker 4: that's why that's my choice. And I have not yet
Speaker 4: gotten hit by a car jaywalking.
Speaker 2: I think it's good to look at this the same way.
Speaker 2: There's a concept that the military has sort of developed
Speaker 2: when talking about how not to die when you're in
Speaker 2: a gunfight or something. It's called the survivability onion, right,
Speaker 2: And I think it's extremely useful both if you're talking
Speaker 2: about like, well, I'm going to a protest and there
Speaker 2: will be violence there, you know, should I wear armor,
Speaker 2: et cetera. But it's also just really it's really useful
Speaker 2: with any kind of security, and and the onion, it's
Speaker 2: it's envision, doesn't on you because like the largest outside
Speaker 2: chunk of it is don't be seen, don't be acquired,
Speaker 2: which means somebody actually getting you in their head sights.
Speaker 2: Don't be a hit, which means being behind cover or something.
Speaker 2: And then the very internal part of it is like,
Speaker 2: have some sort of armor in case you are shot.
Speaker 3: But if you if the.
Speaker 2: Armor is useful, the majority of the onion has already failed.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: If encryption is useful, that is not a dissimilar sort
Speaker 2: of situation. Right, So there's a there's a degree of
Speaker 2: canniness is super helpful and thinking about like what is
Speaker 2: what is visible about me? If I'm doing something, I
Speaker 2: know that I have to be extra concerned about the
Speaker 2: state seeing what is visible about me from the outside,
Speaker 2: you know, tobly, I mean.
Speaker 4: I think that's an amazing thing to think about. Like
Speaker 4: where where are you sending a text message? Are you
Speaker 4: in a place in which like someone can lean over,
Speaker 4: Like I'm the nosiest motherfucker, and all the time I'm
Speaker 4: constantly like like looking around being like what's that person
Speaker 4: watching on an airplane? Or like if someone is sitting
Speaker 4: next to me scrolling, So like you wouldn't want to
Speaker 4: like send a sensitive text message like next to me,
Speaker 4: because I'd be like, that's that's interesting fodder.
Speaker 5: That's kind of a show Texas to Cooper later, you know.
Speaker 4: And so I think it's important to think about that,
Speaker 4: Like who's around you? Is this is like how are
Speaker 4: you describing something? Do you know the person you're messaging?
Speaker 4: If you're in a group message, you know everybody there?
Speaker 4: Like do you trust all of them?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 4: And if you're ever nervous there are this is I
Speaker 4: guess the upside also to in person conversations. You can have,
Speaker 4: you know, a phone call or an in person conversation
Speaker 4: with someone. Right if you're really not sure or you
Speaker 4: don't feel comfortable even sending something over signal, that might
Speaker 4: be the time to be like, hey, do you want
Speaker 4: to meet up and get a coffee and then you know,
Speaker 4: try to find a discreet place to have have a conversation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I do want to roll to ads real quick.
Speaker 2: One second, and I think Cooper had something to say,
Speaker 2: and we'll we'll continue, but first products ah, we're back Cooper.
Speaker 2: You look like you had something to add.
Speaker 3: On that, nothing particularly serious, just that. I think that
Speaker 3: that's I think that that's really good advice for the
Speaker 3: military and absolutely justifies the nine hundred billion dollars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad they put together a fucking graphic. I
Speaker 2: wonder how many billions of dollars that did best I could.
Speaker 4: I could make a graphic for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if anybody, if anybody wants to fund us for
Speaker 3: hundreds of millions, we will will do it less now
Speaker 3: a year, hundreds of millions.
Speaker 4: We have so many good T shirt ideas and sticker
Speaker 4: ideas y'all like so many good ones, so many unhinged
Speaker 4: ones that the world needs to see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I do. I guess just because of
Speaker 2: the amount of time I've spent thinking about this stuff
Speaker 2: from my old job. There are a couple of concepts
Speaker 2: from military planning I think about in this context, and
Speaker 2: one of them that I also think is relevant to
Speaker 2: what we're talking about with friction is the concept of
Speaker 2: an ode loop, right, which is how do you win
Speaker 2: and combat against an opponent, And it's by disrupting this
Speaker 2: thing called the ode loop. And the ODO loop is
Speaker 2: how an adversary carries out actions in a conflict like this, right,
Speaker 2: and the steps you have to go for observe, orient, decide,
Speaker 2: and act. And if you can disrupt any stage of that,
Speaker 2: you can stop them from taking actions, right, which stops
Speaker 2: them from being able to harm you. And the good
Speaker 2: security is going to impact all three of those things, right,
Speaker 2: It's going to stop them from being able to see
Speaker 2: you sometimes if they can see you stuff like you know,
Speaker 2: you were just talking, we were just talking earlier about
Speaker 2: link previews, right, and how that can kind of expose
Speaker 2: maybe who you're in communication with potentially, well, that could
Speaker 2: allow the state to orient themselves to you and to
Speaker 2: your friends, right, And obviously stuff like locking down your
Speaker 2: devices not having unnecessarily info online can stop them bring
Speaker 2: being able to decide, you know, what you're doing and
Speaker 2: how they should respond to that. And I think that's
Speaker 2: also good if you're thinking, if you're not just somebody
Speaker 2: who is concerned about your security like most people are,
Speaker 2: because it's good to have some security. If you're actually
Speaker 2: dealing with the state or a corporation as an adversary
Speaker 2: in some way, it can be useful to think about
Speaker 2: your security culture in those terms.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, I think that's absolutely right. It's it's and
Speaker 3: I think that it's you know, it points to you
Speaker 3: like we should, we should understand what the you know,
Speaker 3: mode of thinking of our adversaries is, right, like we
Speaker 3: you know, we should if your adversary is the NSA, right,
Speaker 3: which is like probably actually not most people in the US,
Speaker 3: Like for most US activists, the NSA is not actually
Speaker 3: your biggest adversary, right, Like your biggest adversary is going
Speaker 3: to be local police, right, your biggest adversary is going
Speaker 3: to be you know, the the you know, somebody like
Speaker 3: your abusive partner, right, and you need to. And this
Speaker 3: is why threat modeling is important, because you need to
Speaker 3: to really to really think about, you know, think through
Speaker 3: like you know, well, okay, wait, am I actually worried
Speaker 3: about protecting myself from the NSA? Or am I more
Speaker 3: worried about uh uh, you know the the racist police
Speaker 3: officer that drives down my street every day? Right? And yeah,
Speaker 3: probably it's the latter. And so you can you can
Speaker 3: take a lot more useful actions, right uh. And and
Speaker 3: you know you can you can you know, break that
Speaker 3: oda loop for him once you know actually what it is. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: if you're defending yourself against the NSA, you're gonna leave
Speaker 3: yourself wide open to the actual threat. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's totally I think a great example. And I don't
Speaker 2: mean to be like quote unquote sub tweeting somebody here,
Speaker 2: but I've known a couple of folks like this. It's like,
Speaker 2: if you have if you're super paranoid, you're not putting
Speaker 2: anything online, You're only talking with your close friends, you
Speaker 2: use a dumb phone, you have burners, but you also
Speaker 2: drive around with a shitload of weed in your car
Speaker 2: in a state where that's illegal. It's like, well, like
Speaker 2: your threat modeling is not great in that situation, right,
Speaker 2: or like I do all that, but I carry in
Speaker 2: a legal handgun with me wherever I go. It's like, well,
Speaker 2: it may be more of a threat than your phone.
Speaker 4: My partner the other day was like, what if I
Speaker 4: got a dumb phone? I was like, what if I
Speaker 4: divorced you? Like like what if?
Speaker 5: They were like what do you mean?
Speaker 4: And I was like, well, I'm going to be the
Speaker 4: one using all the maps for both of us, yeah,
Speaker 4: and having to google all the dumb shit you want
Speaker 4: at Google. That doesn't make I'm now your weakest link,
Speaker 4: like go fuck yourself. But also I was like, I'm
Speaker 4: absolutely not going to be your your your Google maps bitch,
Speaker 4: Like I'm not not doing that. But but I mean
Speaker 4: I think also, you know, to both of y'all's points
Speaker 4: to get serious again for a second. I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: like my threat model, for example, might be similar or
Speaker 4: slightly different, maybe slightly less serious than than Cooper's. But
Speaker 4: you know, like some of the like the the the
Speaker 4: journalists in India we were working with, have quite a
Speaker 4: high threat model, right, Like, yeah, the Indian police force
Speaker 4: are very much like the NSA. They're very talented they
Speaker 4: have a lot of money and tech at their disposal,
Speaker 4: and that might be different for some of the activists
Speaker 4: we're working with, let's say in like Louisiana or Texas, right,
Speaker 4: but the differences is, like we're still talking about I
Speaker 4: would argue two brutal police forces that just have different
Speaker 4: means of disposal at their hands. So like the Louisiana
Speaker 4: police are our groups you should totally be worried about.
Speaker 4: They might not be able to hack your phone, but
Speaker 4: maybe eventually they could.
Speaker 5: But there are other there are obviously other things that
Speaker 5: were about them.
Speaker 4: But you know, in the context of like some of
Speaker 4: the folks who are working with in the South, like
Speaker 4: reproductive justice activists, some of the things are probably much
Speaker 4: more serious in terms of your threat model would be
Speaker 4: like a nurse for someone who let's say is miscarring
Speaker 4: or has sought an abortion. And this is something Kate
Speaker 4: Bertosh from the Digital Defense Fund, a friend of of
Speaker 4: you know ours, has talked about where like the people
Speaker 4: that are supposed to take care of you might be
Speaker 4: the ones that are actually your your biggest threat, right,
Speaker 4: the ones that have heard you say something or you've
Speaker 4: can fight it in for example, and that is kind
Speaker 4: of a horrifying thing to think about.
Speaker 5: But that is, that is a thing you.
Speaker 4: Have to threat model, right, is is can I trust
Speaker 4: this person? How am I describing?
Speaker 5: You know? What's happening?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, Well, did y'all have anything else you wanted
Speaker 2: to make sure to get into in this conversation? There's
Speaker 2: so much more in your in the great paper you
Speaker 2: helped co author, What is Secure and Analysis of Popular
Speaker 2: Messaging Apps on the Tech Policy Press. But yeah, is
Speaker 2: there anything else y'all wanted to really make sure you
Speaker 2: hit before we roll out?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Please don't use telegram for a variety of reasons,
Speaker 4: but also like it's very unclear how they respond to
Speaker 4: any law enforcement or government. They don't say anything, and
Speaker 4: it's kind of impossible to reach anyone that works there.
Speaker 4: Please don't use Facebook Messenger other than maybe sending memes.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of really gross surveillance capitalism inside a
Speaker 4: Facebook messenger that the paper gets into. But effectively, Meta
Speaker 4: is building this weird, sprawling infrastructure inside a Facebook Messenger
Speaker 4: and try to link Facebook and Instagram.
Speaker 5: And one of the things we noticed is.
Speaker 4: That, like if you've blocked someone on Instagram or mute
Speaker 4: to them, but you haven't blocked remuted them on Facebook,
Speaker 4: that your stories, like all those stories are still coming
Speaker 4: across in messengers, so you can still see content from
Speaker 4: someone because it's linking both of those both of those profiles.
Speaker 4: So you know, you could see how partaking like an
Speaker 4: online harassment lens like why that's why that's really bad,
Speaker 4: that's really harmful and could be potentially you know, upsetting
Speaker 4: and triggering for folks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll add that. I think my the major thing
Speaker 3: I want people to to think about is that encryption
Speaker 3: really does work, and it works really well. And we
Speaker 3: can see that because a lot of countries right now
Speaker 3: are trying to pass laws that either weaken or byan
Speaker 3: encryption right and in fact, the UK uh did passed,
Speaker 3: did just pass such a law, the online Safety built
Speaker 3: in the UK. And so it's really important that we
Speaker 3: that we you know, push back against these laws and
Speaker 3: fight back against these laws and and whatever we can, right.
Speaker 3: And I'm not I'm not coming at.
Speaker 9: This as somebody who's a big believer in the you know,
Speaker 9: in in incrementalism and in working with governments, but I
Speaker 9: think that I still think that it's really important to
Speaker 9: you know.
Speaker 3: Educate folks and push back against these laws and try
Speaker 3: to not let these pasts because these will be really
Speaker 3: bad for all of us totally.
Speaker 4: And not to defend the Online Safet Bill, because I
Speaker 4: would never do that. I'll go to my grave not
Speaker 4: speaking highly of it, only speaking critically at least, like
Speaker 4: the pushback from encryption experts and encryption supporters like Merrit Whitaker,
Speaker 4: president of Signal, did lead to lawmakers in the UK,
Speaker 4: for example, admitting that there's no sort of feasible safe
Speaker 4: way to build a back door, right, And that is
Speaker 4: I think also a win because of so much pushback,
Speaker 4: because of so much research, because of so much criticism
Speaker 4: that security and privacy folks gave people that are pro
Speaker 4: encryption like that, we you know, we were able to
Speaker 4: walk back that part. And I do think that's a
Speaker 4: big deal, even if there are other issues with that bill,
Speaker 4: because I think it also sends a sick pun intended
Speaker 4: to other governments as well, and I think that that's
Speaker 4: incredibly important. But yeah, I would also say just just
Speaker 4: use Signal whenever you can.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, well all right, folks, that is going
Speaker 2: to be it for us here at it could happen here. Yeah,
Speaker 2: thank you all for listening, and thank you Cooper and
Speaker 2: Carolyn for coming on.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having us, yeah.
Speaker 5: And thank you for having us.
Speaker 4: You can find us on social media for now, I
Speaker 4: guess until it all.
Speaker 5: Lights on fire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, whichever one you want to trust.
Speaker 3: I'm Cooper Cue on most social media's Blue Sky Mastered
Speaker 3: on Shitter.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm Caroline Cinders. My first name, last name. Our
Speaker 4: lab is Convocation Research and Design Record Labs on Twitter
Speaker 4: at the moment.
Speaker 5: Hopefully we'll get be getting on Blue Sky very soon.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, probably get back on there more.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Twitter has gotten remarkably worse, which you know, we had
Speaker 2: a back in the day on the old something Awful forums.
Speaker 2: There was a thread in one of the debate forums
Speaker 2: about this very right wing site called Free Republic, which
Speaker 2: is like one of the earliest reservoirs of what became
Speaker 2: trump Ism, and the tagline for the thread just kind
Speaker 2: of watching these people, was there is always more and
Speaker 2: it is always worse, And boy, goddamn, if that hasn't
Speaker 2: been a continually accurate statement about the whole of social media.
Speaker 4: Right now, isn't a time amazing to watch someone just
Speaker 4: light forty billion dollars on fire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just like yeah, totally there to it. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: like the nihilist and me being like, wow, Comrade Musk
Speaker 2: really really taking some hits to capitalism here.
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