- <title>Experience and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile phone</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Mon, 10 Oct 2016 11:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>In July
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">I
-wrote how to get the Signal Chrome/Chromium app working</a> without
-the ability to receive SMS messages (aka without a cell phone). It is
-time to share some experiences and provide an updated setup.</p>
-
-<p>The Signal app have worked fine for several months now, and I use
-it regularly to chat with my loved ones. I had a major snag at the
-end of my summer vacation, when the the app completely forgot my
-setup, identity and keys. The reason behind this major mess was
-running out of disk space. To avoid that ever happening again I have
-started storing everything in <tt>userdata/</tt> in git, to be able to
-roll back to an earlier version if the files are wiped by mistake. I
-had to use it once after introducing the git backup. When rolling
-back to an earlier version, one need to use the 'reset session' option
-in Signal to get going, and notify the people you talk with about the
-problem. I assume there is some sequence number tracking in the
-protocol to detect rollback attacks. The git repository is rather big
-(674 MiB so far), but I have not tried to figure out if some of the
-content can be added to a .gitignore file due to lack of spare
-time.</p>
-
-<p>I've also hit the 90 days timeout blocking, and noticed that this
-make it impossible to send messages using Signal. I could still
-receive them, but had to patch the code with a new timestamp to send.
-I believe the timeout is added by the developers to force people to
-upgrade to the latest version of the app, even when there is no
-protocol changes, to reduce the version skew among the user base and
-thus try to keep the number of support requests down.</p>
-
-<p>Since my original recipe, the Signal source code changed slightly,
-making the old patch fail to apply cleanly. Below is an updated
-patch, including the shell wrapper I use to start Signal. The
-original version required a new user to locate the JavaScript console
-and call a function from there. I got help from a friend with more
-JavaScript knowledge than me to modify the code to provide a GUI
-button instead. This mean that to get started you just need to run
-the wrapper and click the 'Register without mobile phone' to get going
-now. I've also modified the timeout code to always set it to 90 days
-in the future, to avoid having to patch the code regularly.</p>
-
-<p>So, the updated recipe for Debian Jessie:</p>
-
-<ol>
-
-<li>First, install required packages to get the source code and the
-browser you need. Signal only work with Chrome/Chromium, as far as I
-know, so you need to install it.
-
-<pre>
-apt install git tor chromium
-git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
-</pre></li>
-
-<li>Modify the source code using command listed in the the patch
-block below.</li>
-
-<li>Start Signal using the run-signal-app wrapper (for example using
-<tt>`pwd`/run-signal-app</tt>).
-
-<li>Click on the 'Register without mobile phone', will in a phone
-number you can receive calls to the next minute, receive the
-verification code and enter it into the form field and press
-'Register'. Note, the phone number you use will be user Signal
-username, ie the way others can find you on Signal.</li>
-
-<li>You can now use Signal to contact others. Note, new contacts do
-not show up in the contact list until you restart Signal, and there is
-no way to assign names to Contacts. There is also no way to create or
-update chat groups. I suspect this is because the web app do not have
-a associated contact database.</li>
-
-</ol>
-
-<p>I am still a bit uneasy about using Signal, because of the way its
-main author moxie0 reject federation and accept dependencies to major
-corporations like Google (part of the code is fetched from Google) and
-Amazon (the central coordination point is owned by Amazon). See for
-example
-<a href="https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37">the
-LibreSignal issue tracker</a> for a thread documenting the authors
-view on these issues. But the network effect is strong in this case,
-and several of the people I want to communicate with already use
-Signal. Perhaps we can all move to <a href="https://ring.cx/">Ring</a>
-once it <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/830265">work on my
-laptop</a>? It already work on Windows and Android, and is included
-in <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring">Debian</a> and
-<a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ring">Ubuntu</a>, but not
-working on Debian Stable.</p>
-
-<p>Anyway, this is the patch I apply to the Signal code to get it
-working. It switch to the production servers, disable to timeout,
-make registration easier and add the shell wrapper:</p>
-
-<pre>
-cd Signal-Desktop; cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p1
-diff --git a/js/background.js b/js/background.js
-index 24b4c1d..579345f 100644
---- a/js/background.js
-+++ b/js/background.js
-@@ -33,9 +33,9 @@
- });
- });
-
-- var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
-+ var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org';
- var SERVER_PORTS = [80, 4433, 8443];
-- var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
-+ var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
- var messageReceiver;
- window.getSocketStatus = function() {
- if (messageReceiver) {
-diff --git a/js/expire.js b/js/expire.js
-index 639aeae..beb91c3 100644
---- a/js/expire.js
-+++ b/js/expire.js
-@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
- ;(function() {
- 'use strict';
-- var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
-+ var BUILD_EXPIRATION = Date.now() + (90 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
-
- window.extension = window.extension || {};
-
-diff --git a/js/views/install_view.js b/js/views/install_view.js
-index 7816f4f..1d6233b 100644
---- a/js/views/install_view.js
-+++ b/js/views/install_view.js
-@@ -38,7 +38,8 @@
- return {
- 'click .step1': this.selectStep.bind(this, 1),
- 'click .step2': this.selectStep.bind(this, 2),
-- 'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3)
-+ 'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3),
-+ 'click .callreg': function() { extension.install('standalone') },
- };
- },
- clearQR: function() {
-diff --git a/options.html b/options.html
-index dc0f28e..8d709f6 100644
---- a/options.html
-+++ b/options.html
-@@ -14,7 +14,10 @@
- &lt;div class='nav'>
- &lt;h1>{{ installWelcome }}&lt;/h1>
- &lt;p>{{ installTagline }}&lt;/p>
-- &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a> &lt;/div>
-+ &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a>
-+ &lt;br> &lt;a class="button callreg">Register without mobile phone&lt;/a>
-+
-+ &lt;/div>
- &lt;span class='dot step1 selected'>&lt;/span>
- &lt;span class='dot step2'>&lt;/span>
- &lt;span class='dot step3'>&lt;/span>
---- /dev/null 2016-10-07 09:55:13.730181472 +0200
-+++ b/run-signal-app 2016-10-10 08:54:09.434172391 +0200
-@@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
-+#!/bin/sh
-+set -e
-+cd $(dirname $0)
-+mkdir -p userdata
-+userdata="`pwd`/userdata"
-+if [ -d "$userdata" ] && [ ! -d "$userdata/.git" ] ; then
-+ (cd $userdata && git init)
-+fi
-+(cd $userdata && git add . && git commit -m "Current status." || true)
-+exec chromium \
-+ --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
-+ --user-data-dir=$userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
-EOF
-chmod a+rx run-signal-app
-</pre>
-
-<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
-activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
-<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
+ <title>How does it feel to be wiretapped, when you should be doing the wiretapping...</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_does_it_feel_to_be_wiretapped__when_you_should_be_doing_the_wiretapping___.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_does_it_feel_to_be_wiretapped__when_you_should_be_doing_the_wiretapping___.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 8 Mar 2017 11:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>So the new president in the United States of America claim to be
+surprised to discover that he was wiretapped during the election
+before he was elected president. He even claim this must be illegal.
+Well, doh, if it is one thing the confirmations from Snowden
+documented, it is that the entire population in USA is wiretapped, one
+way or another. Of course the president candidates were wiretapped,
+alongside the senators, judges and the rest of the people in USA.</p>
+
+<p>Next, the Federal Bureau of Investigation ask the Department of
+Justice to go public rejecting the claims that Donald Trump was
+wiretapped illegally. I fail to see the relevance, given that I am
+sure the surveillance industry in USA believe they have all the legal
+backing they need to conduct mass surveillance on the entire
+world.</p>
+
+<p>There is even the director of the FBI stating that he never saw an
+order requesting wiretapping of Donald Trump. That is not very
+surprising, given how the FISA court work, with all its activity being
+secret. Perhaps he only heard about it?</p>
+
+<p>What I find most sad in this story is how Norwegian journalists
+present it. In a news reports the other day in the radio from the
+Norwegian National broadcasting Company (NRK), I heard the journalist
+claim that 'the FBI denies any wiretapping', while the reality is that
+'the FBI denies any illegal wiretapping'. There is a fundamental and
+important difference, and it make me sad that the journalists are
+unable to grasp it.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Update 2017-03-13:</strong> Look like
+<a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/03/13/rand-paul-is-right-nsa-routinely-monitors-americans-communications-without-warrants/">The
+Intercept report that US Senator Rand Paul confirm what I state above</a>.</p>
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