A “joint situational report” from FBI and NYPD records obtained by the Guardian and the organization Property of the People reveals that agents infiltrated a Signal chat of activists in New York organizing courtwatch efforts in immigration court.
This year immigration organizers have ramped up their court watch and court accompaniment programs, as ICE has used increasingly forceful tactics in court, including detaining people who show up to routine hearings, something prohibited under the Biden administration.
The FBI’s report characterized court watchers as “anarchist violent extremist actors,” and the report did not specify how they accessed the Signal group. The infiltrator participated in a Signal debrief call within the courtwatch chat, and also claimed that discussions within the chat included instructions for participants to use violence against law enforcement. There were however no specifics in the report around what violence was discussed. Court watching has long been a nonviolent tactic, and activists are worried this could be one more way the Trump Administration suppresses speech.
(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)
Use disappearing messages and please Vette your chat partners
I suppose they have just posed as a member, not broken any encryption, right? I’m asking to gain early warning if signal gets compromised.
Yes
infiltrated a Signal chat of activists
They have your phone number when you created the account. They can collect metadata and study who is connected to who.
The contents of the messages may be unreadable to them without access to your phone, but signal functions as a honey pot for metadata analysis.
Not sure I understand. To gain access to metadata they would need to access either the host or dns, wouldnt they?
To gain access to metadata they would need control of the server or a way to sniff packets, which an org like the FBI doesn’t need because they can just file a warrant for a certain ID or phone number. That’s one of the smelliest parts of Signal, can you really call it private if you need a number that almost always corresponds to your IRL identity? In this way something like Jami or SimpleX might be better, but then again they haven’t been audited as far as I know
I mean, i get the point. The idea that near constant “probable cause” could be peovided is inherent in prism and other us strategies that have had media coverage so i guess it is possible, if not likely.
Then again, we’re talking about meradata. Yes, you can profile someone but the normal political activist isnt that interesting. People like me use four or five different methods of communication and are costing millions to track. Its just not fun.
So I guess i’ll stay with my suggestion: signal for everyone, those who need more, know it.
