remember back when we didn’t listen to famous people’s opinions outside their field of expertise?

avacado

ah fair enough. i think that was the initial confusion from myself and perhaps the other user in this discussion. i didn’t realise your use cases.

it’s always a fun topic to discuss and got me thinking about some new ideas :)

afaik mmW is FR2

5G FR1 is sub x-band microwave

cool, sounds like you have most of the principles down.

what i didn’t yet see articulated with chat-e2ee is how the actual code itself verifies itself to the user in the browser? it sounds to me like it assumes the server which serves the code is ‘trusted’, while the theoretically different server(s) which transmits the messages can be ‘untrusted’.

out of interest, do you actually mean no login, or do you mean no email-verified login?

i’m trying to understand your exact scenario.

but in general, the problem is where do you get your original key, or original hash to verify from? if they are both coming from the server, along with the code which processes them, then if the server is compromised, so are you.

thankfully browsers give alot of crypto API lately (as discussed in your link) so your byo code payload could be alot smaller these days.

but you still need at minimum a secure key, a hash and trusted code to verify the code the server serves you. there are ofc solutions to this problem, but if the server is unstrusted, you absolutely can’t get it from them, which means you have to get it from somewhere else (that you trust).

edit: it just occurred to me you may not be a native english speaker, in which case i apologise. “typically not” means it usually doesn’t happen.

For anyone who’s wondering:

(From the GIMP manual)

The GIMP is not freeware

GIMP er ikkje såkalla “freeware”

El GIMP no es freeware

GIMP non è freeware

GIMP n’est pas un freeware

when you feel up to reading the word after “typically” feel free to modify the attitude

excellent writeup with some high quality referencing.

minor quibble

Firefox is insecure

i’m not sure many people would disagree with you that FF is less secure than Chromium (hardly a surprise given the disparity in their budgets and resources)

though i’m not sure it’s fair to say FF is insecure if we are by comparison inferring Chromium is secure? ofc Chromium is more secure than FF, as your reference shows.

another minor quibble

projects like linux-libre and Libreboot are worse for security than their counterparts (see coreboot)

does this read like coreboot is proprietary? isn’t it GPL2? i might’ve misunderstood something.

you make some great points about open vs closed source vs proprietary etc. again, it shouldn’t surprise us that many proprietary projects or Global500 funded opensource projects, with considerably greater access to resources, often arrive at more robust solutions.

i definitely agree you made a good case for the currently available community privacy enhanced versions based on open source projects from highly commercial entities (Chromium->Vanadium, Android/Pixel->GrapheneOS) etc. something i think to note here is that without these base projects actually being opensource, i’m not sure eg. the graphene team would’ve been able to achieve the technical goals in the time they have, and likely with even less success legally.

so in essence, in the current forms at least, we have to make some kind of compromise, choosing between something we know is technically more robust and then needing to blindly trust the organisation’s (likely malicious) incentives. therefore as you identify, obviously the best answer is to privacy enhance the project, which does then involve some semi-blind trusting the extent of the privacy enhancement process - assuming good faith in the organisation providing the privacy enhancement: there is still an implicit arms race where privacy corroding features might be implemented at various layers and degrees of opacity vs the inevitably less resourced team trying to counter them.

is there some additional semi-blind ‘faith’ we’re also employing where we are probably assuming the corporate entity currently has little financial incentive in undermining the opensource base project because they can simply bolt on whatever nastiness they want downstream? it’s probably not a bad assumption overall, though i’m often wondering how long that will remain the case.

and ofc on the other hand, we have organisations who’s motivation we supposedly trust (mostly…for now), but we know we have to make a compromise on the technical robustness. eg. while FF lags behind the latest hardening methods, it’s somewhat visible to the dedicated user where they stand from a technical perspective (it’s all documented, somewhere). so then the blind trust is in the purity of the organisation’s incentives, which is where i think the political-motivated wilfully-technically-ignorant mindset can sometimes step in. meanwhile mozilla’s credibility will likely continue to be gradually eroded, unless we as a community step up and fund them sufficiently. and even then, who knows.

there’s certainly no clear single answer for every person’s use-case, and i think you did a great job delineating the different camps. just wanted to add some discussion. i doubt i’m as up to date on these facets as OP, so welcome your thoughts.

I’m sick of privacy being at odds with security

fucking well said.