I agree with you on principal but also think that from a practical point, that ship has long sailed.
It's always been a possibility that when you sent an email to someone their provider could be building an ad profile on you. Any third party tool someone else uses to manage their personal files and communications could always have some arbitrary privacy policy that let them do what they see fit.
For the most part, you never know what random SAAS someone on the other end of a relationship is really using.
> It's always been a possibility that when you sent an email
Yes, and that's exactly why E2EE messaging became a thing. Signal put it on the map through the WhatsApp integration.
To me there is a difference if the server spies on me (that's without E2EE) or if the person I am writing to leaks everything on the Internet.
If the person you're writing to leaks everything on the Internet, you should consider you are talking to them in public. I'm sure you don't say all the same things when you are in the metro or when you are in private, or do you?
Your comment is correct but rarely practical.
- Most people are not in Signal
- I have friends that want utmost privacy and shun me for using Android and buy iPhone etc but then install Google Maps. Add my name/address/email/phone etc to google sync.
- Worse - many employers are using FAANG for services. How many managers are uploading Excel sheets? Who supervisors them?
- Even if I keep every thing locally (which I don't ) finally govt will lose their passport database and ...
> - Most people are not in Signal
Whatsapp uses the Signal protocol for E2EE: https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/
So yeah, whatsapp messages are E2E encrypted and therefore can not be used as training data unless you upload them to the cloud manually, as this project does
> Most people are not in Signal
So what? WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted. Signal is better (e.g. because the client is open source), but security is a gradient. WhatsApp is better than Telegram in terms of security.
> but then install Google Maps
Again, it's a gradient. Sure, they leak some data, but at least they don't leak all the content of all their messages. Or would you say that if you leak your name on the Internet, you may as well publish your sextape because "now everybody knows your name, you have nothing to hide anymore"?
> How many managers are uploading Excel sheets?
So because my company leaks my work documents to Microsoft means that I should leak the content of the messages I send to my partner? How do you get to that conclusion?
> finally govt will lose their passport database and ...
Right. And it is a known fact that when the government loses their passport database, suddenly your private pictures appear on the public Internet! /s
> Yes, and that's exactly why E2EE messaging became a thing.
Pretty much never for email. Maybe some people go out of their way to perform PGP but that's usually only for the most sensitive of information and sometimes not even for that.
The only thing I've used PGP for in many years is encrypting my home address when buying darknet drugs
Yes but I'd say some people (me) like WhatsApp because of the privacy and end-to-end encryption. Email i assume is less private but still more private than a public post.
Imagine someone puts all the Signal messages someone else sent them through an AI. I dunno. I think problem is most AI doesn't work like Confer.to, also by Signal's founder.
People have been screenshotting conversations, saving them on their phones, and sending them to friends over text for as long as there have been conversations to screenshot.
The entire concept of conversations being "secure" is only as good as your ability to trust the other party isn't doing something insecure with them (and that yours and their devices are, themselves, as secure as you think they are. Which they generally aren't.)
All of which is to say, it's security theater and always has been when applied to real life situations.
There's a difference between small scale screenshotting certain conversations, and wholesale vacuuming up everything in to the AI machine.
Except now there’s not. The fact is, when you tell somebody something, what they choose to do with it is out of your hands. Unless you want to start using drm-encumbered systems.
There's still a difference between a person deciding to share one or a bunch of messages they receive --usually I know the people I write to, so I know more or less what to expect-- and systematically uploading received message to some AI. Fine if they do it locally, not fine if the messages I write end up at Google, OpenAI or anybody else.
This is unrealistic. Hardly anyone who is going to feed their own messages to an AI is going to pay attention to whether it’s local or cloud based. Get real.
Well, then not at all...
So you're saying DRM is good now?
No, I’m saying when you send messages to someone else, they are out of your control. Trying to fight that with DRM would be folly.
the ship has long sailed but there is a massive supertanker way worse and we don't have to make it easier on them
It hasn't since long sailed.
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