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Comment by Aachen | Hacker News Reader

So Signal messages aren't secure because they're transmitted and so their "obfuscation" isn't enough to protect your data? Have you read what the author cited (and then admitted to not understanding) what Apple says they actually do to the data before transmission?

I could see an argument in the metadata (though there are multiple assumptions involved there, not least that they don't truly do OHTTP but instead conspire to learn at what timestamp a user took a picture), but if you already don't trust in what is essentially math, I'm not sure where the uncertainty and doubt ends

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The difference being that the signal message is sent with consent: You literally press a button to send it there is a clear causal relationship between clicking the button and the message being sent.

The obvious difference is that by sending your photos with Signal, you are doing it willingly. You let it encrypt and decrypt willingly. You decide who gets it.

Here, Apple does that for you.

Your ISP, a bunch of routers and switches and the servers run by Signal can also see your encrypted photo. You don’t really get to decide who sees the encrypted photo. You do get to decide which photo you encrypt and send though.

All of those are parts of the network infrastructure. They neither "see" the photo, edit it or need it. They don't even know if it's a photo.

Everybody knows that there is a network infrastructure where your content flows through. You willingly accept that as a connected device user because it is necessary to be connected.

What Apple did is not necessary and users don't know about it.

I agree that this isn’t necessary and that Apple should have asked for consent from the user.

I do want to point out that Apple doesn’t get to see your photo. Homomorphic encryption is really cool in that way. Apple isn’t able to decrypt the photo and the results they produce are also encrypted. That’s the beauty of homomorphic encryption. I can send you an encrypted spreadsheet and you can compute the sum of a column for me. I’m the only one who can see the actual sum since you can only see the encrypted sum.

Yes, I saw the advertisements all over the comment section here. Thank you.

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