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Privacy @lemmy.ml
evilcultist @sh.itjust.works

Salt Typhoon also compromised the private portals, or backdoors, that telephone companies provide to law enforcement to request court-ordered monitoring of phone numbers pursuant to investigations.

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  • Lost in the noise of the story is that Salt Typhoon has proved that the decades of warnings by the internet security community were correct. No mandated secret or proprietary access to technology products is likely to remain undiscovered or used only by “the good guys” – and efforts to require them are likely to backfire.

    So it’s somewhat ironic that one of the countermeasures recommended by the government to guard against Salt Typhoon spying is to use strongly encrypted services for phone calls and text messages – encryption capabilities that it has spent decades trying to undermine so that only “the good guys” can use it.

    • They knew the warnings were correct. And because I knew they knew, I also knew where their priorities lie, and they do not lie with our security, as I explained two days ago: https://lemmy.ml/post/23222525/15342981

      If China’s access to your data were actually a high priority to the US security state, then they wouldn’t be installing these back doors. They’re much more interested in 1) accessing your data and 2) convincing you that China is your enemy.

      The US security state isn’t interested your security, they’re interested in what the capitalists are interested in: imperialism and screwing over the working class.

      • Well, yeah, it's not our security they're worried about.

        They're worried about their security. The security of their big mansions, millions or billions of dollars in the bank, the security of being able to be a horrible fucking weasel whose decisions end people's lives but sleep like a baby at night knowing no one can touch you.

        But they're also small-minded enough to not realize how this compromises everyone's security, because they were busy only worrying about securing themselves.

        Like look at the UHC CEO who just got shot in broad daylight. The company wasn't even willing to spring for good security for a guy who metaphorically put a noose around countless people's necks.

        They only care about their own security but they're too myopic to see past themselves enough to understand the cascading consequences of not caring about anyone else's security, and how that might, in the end, undermine their own security.

        We're not dealing with the cleverest people, here.

15 comments