Building privacy tech for journalists + activists + human rights. President @SessionTechFND msg: alexlinton (@session_app) šŸ’š

Switzerland
Joined September 2013
Nobody but you has the right to read your personal messages. You deserve to have your privacy, dignity, and safety protected and respected. This regulation may ripple throughout the rest of the world if left unchecked. getsession.org/blog/open-let…
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There's a gap between digital rights issues and innovation. Many developers and cryptographers obfuscate the fact that their products/ideas aren't usable and accessible to people in need (conflict zones, internet shutdowns, gender-based violence cases, communities at risk). On the protocol side, all those endless test-nets, improvement proposals, and dev sandboxes create an impression of ready-to-serve products. While they are far from "easy-to-useā€œ, they lack basic privacy features or require hard technical knowledge to use them in a private manner. Signal is good because you can recommend it to a non-technical person, the UX is easy to understand, and it can be installed quickly. Brave browser plays the same role in privacy adoption (minus "lack of download megabytes" in many places). I'm always interested in reading new cryptographic primitives: when exactly can this research be implemented in reality? Five years, ten years from now? When technical jargon like "account abstraction" can be turned into "1 big button app". With clear PoC to a battle-tested product. Just... because... people... need.... privacy... now. At scale. Not only financial, but data privacy: storage, comms, browsing, file-sharing, geo, identity, media consumption, dating, archiving, voting, organizing, you name it.
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If Session has ever helped you, please take a look.
8 years ago, Session was founded with a mission to restore your privacy. Today, Session faces a funding shortage which puts its very survival at risk. Please read this appeal from Session co-founder Chris McCabe. getsession.org/donation
There's a new version of this post
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WhatsApp deserves criticism, but claims like this do not contribute positively to the privacy and security ecosystem. The language around what makes a messaging app private has been oversimplified, and people have come to equate end-to-end encryption as a discrete feature with the security / privacy of the overall system(s) in which it is used. WhatsApp happily borrows on Signal's reputation, waving away criticisms through mere mention of the Signal Protocol. However, this deliberately misrepresents people's feelings towards the platform. People feel they do not (or cannot) trust WhatsApp because it is owned by a mega-corporation whose incentives are at odds with its own users. As a result, it chronically under-protects metadata, which largely undermines its use of e2ee. To have a meaningful conversation about private and secure communication now and in the future, we cannot teach the belief that e2ee is enough on its own. E2ee is table stakes, not the gold standard. Vagueposting about 'holes in WhatsApp's encryption' reinforces the myth that security begins and ends with e2ee; it also FUDs end-to-end encryption in general. The belief that encryption cannot be trusted; or that end-to-end encryption alone is synonymous with complete security and privacy, creates extremely favorable conditions for non-private, non-secure communication tools to flourish. With that in mind, undermining trust in encryption does seem a likely strategy for a platform which doesn't utilize e2ee by default. However, who does this narrative really serve? The surveillance apparatus that feasts on the hoard of metadata created by services that are non-private and centralized.
You’d have to be braindead to believe WhatsApp is secure in 2026. When we analyzed how WhatsApp implemented its ā€œencryptionā€, we found multiple attack vectors.
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alex linton retweeted
Chat and message frens with privacy on @session_app With over 1M+ users @session_token is bringing decentralized private messaging globally Session Everywhere. Arbitrum Everywhere
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Hi!āœŒļøPersonally, I’m not a fan of vibes-based trust. First VERIFY, then trust, is my motto. Which is why Signal is open source. We want everyone to be able to inspect our code, and our encryption protocol, and see for themselves the lengths we go to to protect your comms and collect as close to no data as possible. Many eyes make secure code, and we are grateful to all of the deep experts who spend their time looking closely at our repos and reporting issues when they find them. We also don’t think it’s responsible to run critical infrastructure—like Signal—without providing a means of validating its integrity (although sadly, many do). Open source should be the rule, not the exception. Signal is trusted by the security and hacker community, and hundreds of millions of others, BECAUSE they can examine it, and because on examination, it has shown to be robust, private, and secure–for over a decade. A lot of major tech platforms also trust the Signal Protocol for the same reason–they’ve scrutinized it, and it’s proven to be robust. Over 3 billion people communicate every day on services that use the Signal Protocol–it’s the gold standard in the industry for a reason, and that reason is that it’s been inspected, and verified, and it has stood the test of time. So in short, our public code, our tech, and our commitment to robust privacy are what we lead with, not marketing or promises. We don’t ask people to like us, or agree with us. We ask that you check our work, or ask those who you trust to check it, and make your own call. This is the future of tech that we believe in, and we’re proud to do our part to lead by example. ā¤ļø Check our work here: github.com/signalapp
I don’t trust Signal anymore
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A pleasure to join the incredible @bpreneel1 and @nym to discuss Chat Control last week. youtube.com/watch?v=INykZCJh…
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Recent news and a space last week I hosted with @ArcanumVentures brought me to writing this week's newsletter about online privacy Comments from @sethforprivacy @LashaAntadze @alexblinton Links to the article and related news/discussions below
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Many people put hard work into this. Come and hack with us in Berlin.
W3PN HACKS hackathon.web3privacy.info šŸ„ €30,000 Prize Pool šŸ„ 7 winners—one for each track—will be selected by our independent jury. šŸ„ No sponsor bounties. We focus on real-world impact with a 100% protocol-agnostic approach.
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Lola's example is neat and tidy, but in reality unthinkable amounts of Lola's personal details are being fed into an AI in order to connect these 5 dots and sell her some juice. Those other details may not be as benign as juice drinking stats, either.
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In fact, Publicis has spent billions of dollars and several years digging for, collecting, and analysing out as much data as they can about Lola. Well Lola...and you, of course. šŸ‘THIS IS NOT ABOUT JUICE šŸ‘
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Massive upgrade coming for Session users.
Groups V2 for @session_app has finally been released! It has a completely rearchitected backend to bring increased reliability and new features to groups, like support for multiple admins. Although the release is out and everyone should upgrade now, V2 Groups aren't yet activated. Activation will occur on the 19th of March, this is the point where existing groups can be migrated to V2 and newly created ones will automatically use V2. Once activated and migrated you should notice increased stability when adding a removing group members. The larger changes like multi admin support, group descriptions and images, will roll out quickly in future releases!
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alex linton retweeted
Earlier this year, Proton moved towards a non-profit structure. Today, Proton Founder/CEO @andyyen will be sharing the stage with @mozilla to discuss why the world needs alternative ownership models to preserve privacy & purpose. Head to Stage 15, Pavilion 5 at 3:35pm to attend the session. šŸ”— websummit.com/sessions/lis24… #WebSummit2024
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alex linton retweeted
Endangering encryption = endangering cybersecurity + people’s privacy! Australia’s regulations and enforcement actions are jeopardizing safe communication + privacy — resulting in encrypted messaging platforms like @session_app leaving the country.
New from 404 Media: Session, a popular encrypted chat app, leaving Australia after police visited employee at home, asked questions about app. Also Australia's wish for companies to hold a phone/email of every user More pressure on chat apps each day 404media.co/encrypted-chat-a…
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alex linton retweeted
A new Swiss foundation—the Session Technology Foundation—has been created for the ongoing stewardship of Session šŸ‡ØšŸ‡­ Session is now more resilient to hostility towards encrypted messaging, and better positioned to protect your privacy. Learn more: getsession.org/blog/introduc…
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We are pleased to introduce the Session Technology Foundation, a new organisation dedicated to stewarding the continued development of @Session_app and advancing privacy-focused, decentralised technologies session.foundation/president…
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Feel like your phone knows you better than your best friend? You're not paranoid. You're perceptive! 🧐 In this week's newsletter, we talked about the hurdles of digital privacy, and 3 #DePIN projects that are working to solve them. For more alpha like this, subscribe to our newsletter šŸ‘€ : [depinhub.io/newsletter-signu…] — a #DePINHub thread 🧵
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