The FBI spied on a Signal group chat of immigration activists, records reveal | Hacker News Reader

The FBI spied on a Signal group chat of immigration activists, records reveal

theguardian.com

37 pointsvinni212 comments

This is why US Army is forcing work related communications onto an employer owned instant message application.

It may or may not be more secure, but it is privately owned and always official business. The employer can take legal action for improper disclosure of messages from that system. It also means other segments of government can never use these messages in any kind of legal proceeding without a prior valid search warrant.

> US Army [...] employer owned instant message application [...] it is privately owned

Uh, no. At least one of these things is not true.

> It also means other segments of government can never use these messages in any kind of legal proceeding without a prior valid search warrant.

Unless there is a special legal provision applicable to specifically this system, no, it doesn't. That certainly is not a consequence of being an employer-owned, for-official-business-only system of a government agency, in fact, it is the opposite of what that would generally means, which is that it is already government information from the start and law enforcement (federal or state) wouldn't need a warrant to use it against individuals. (This is separate from whatever process might be necessary if the Army preferred not to share it, for security or other instiutional, rather than Fourth Amendment, reasons.)

That is incorrect. Soldiers in the Army have a implicit fourth amendment protection on all US Army data systems. To overcome that some data system owners require a signature on a policy statement that allows unrestricted monitoring. Those are often called user access agreements. I have been told the Air Force operates in the opposite.

I am not sure what any of that has to do with state government access. From a legal perspective state government intrusion of a federal data system for evidence gathering is equivalent to a foreign nation. The federal government will happily share this information provided the proper administrative authorizations, but there is no unrestricted access.

"The FBI’s report from August, prepared by its New York division, does not make clear how the bureau accessed the Signal group. "

Has to be one of the three "they are directly included in the chat, are sent copies from a participant or have access to a member’s unlocked phone"

option four, they used pegasus or similar to takeover the device with a 0 or 1-click installing memory resident malware

That's exactly the same as option three.

With zero-click exploits you do not need access to the phone and it does not need to be unlocked.

Without the phone being locked even in AFU state you get rather limited access.

> With zero-click exploits you do not need access to the phone

The whole point of the exploit is that you get access to the phone.

Does this mean that those saying that signal using phone numbers was wreckless, were right?

Um, yes? This kinda stuff has been FBI SOP for the past century-ish.

If you are a "politically sensitive" activist group trying to make an actual difference (vs. performative and feel-good stuff) - then you should assume that the spooks are watching, if not actively infiltrating, and plan accordingly.

(If your goals are mostly performative and feel-good - then having the FBI spying on your group is A List bragging rights and cred, no? Congratulations!)

nooo you have to be nice to the gestapo noooooooo

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