Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy

On Thu, 20 Feb 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote:

Can't Signal eventually be bought off?
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Interesting question. They are a foundation so that does put some
legal limitations on such scenarios. However! So was/is Open AI and
look what happened there.
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So I assume, since it is based in the US that the answer to your
question is a "yes". But I am not a lawyer. ;)

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Lol.  When you want to say you're not a lawyer, you should say IANAL,
which is one of these ridiculous USENET acronyms. :) But what I really
think is that nobody should say IANAL.  Lol.  First, who cares?  Lol.
Second, it's almost never illegal to give your opinion on anything.

I was thinking about it, but in the end, didn't go all "acronym". ;)

But, yeah.  You gave us a great example.  Open AI was a non-profit
organization later turned for-profit.  So, the same nonsense could
happen to Signal unless it has made any sort of unusual special
arrangements.
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Companies and political parties (which are the same thing) should
formalize for-life commitments.  For example, a Senate candidate, a
Republic president and so on should register in writing some principles
and promises that they actually must live up to, lest they be impeached.

I don't see how that could ever be done? I mean there are trusts and
foundations, but I assume they can be broken or dismantled.
On the other hand... there are active companies who are several 100s of years
old, and the catholic church has been going strong for what... 1980 years or so? So clearly it is possible to build organizations centred around an ideology,
business plan or other concept, that has been working for 100s if not 1000s of
years.

Take a look at YouTube.  The world has invested 15 billion videos in it
and now it needs to pay for viewing them by lack of privacy and ad
viewing.  I can't recall when the world actually agreed to this deal.
Deals should be clear from the very start.

I find it very fascinating that you can find all kinds of copyrighted material
on youtube, and that is fine, and no one cares. But when the piratebay guys
built a web site that links to movies (not hosting it themselves) it was prison
+ fines for them. Different rules for google and private persons. This is very
sad.

For me to use Signal, say, I'd need a for-life promise that it would
never be taken over from me.  But, actually, I wouldn't use it either
way because I just prefer a decentralized system.  Signal should
redesign itself in a decentralized manner so that perhaps I could host
my own server (for my own communication), say.  Just like e-mail and
news are.

I don't use anything to chat with family since they would not be interested, but
one project I do like, and which would probably be my choice if I tried to get
my family to use it is delta chat. I like the concept behind it. I also think,
but don't remember at the moment, that it is possible to use it on iphones,
android and for me, on regular computers and they all work together.
For audio/video I use jitsi. I don't host it myself, but my companys cloud
provider sells their own version of hosted jitsi. It works really well!