Even State Department-funded Human Rights Watch admits that authorities combine legal and illegal methods to obtain convictions: https://text.hrw.org/report/2018/01/09/dark-side/secret-origins-evidence-us-criminal-cases
Combining dragnet surveillance with device hacking is intended in the design of both tools. Hence, State Department-funded Signal dupes you into handing over your identity as part of the population-centric mapping. In custody, your phone will be hacked when it is taken away if it’s important.
https://xcancel.com/hannahcrileyy/status/2034273723667161480#m
I still don’t get it. What is bad about signing up with your phone number? All readable Info that governments can force out of Signal is. “Yep this guy uses Signal, signed up last year” so nothing is lost (except if they use that as a sign you are a terrorist, but then they just wanted to monitor you anyway in the first place)
exactly. what is the question?
also its not “monitor me” and “monitor you”, but “monitor whoever is using the service” more closely, and as it seems, retaliate against them.
The question is: What privacy do I loose by signing up to Signal with a phone number instead of hypothetically a username.
If you are being monitored, they know your phone number. With that they know you are using Signal, but nothing more. Messaging through Signal is safe.
If you are not being monitored, nobody knows you are using Signal. Messaging through Signal is safe
if you could sign up with a username, your account couldn’t be linked to a real world identity. also the government wouldn’t have a phone number to send state malware to (unlike signal the telephony system is full of security vulnerabilities)
if you personally are monitored then yes they know your phone number. but here it’s the other way around. you became a person of interest because you use signal.
no. everybody who has the power to issue data requests to signal, and also has access to a database binding phone numbers to identities, knows that you are using signal.
Ah ok now I get what you mean. Hashing for phone numbers is ineffective so it’s a two way lookup. Is the population using Signal small enough that this doesn’t just equate to surveiling everybody?
very few people use signal