The article is light on technical details but if it makes whistleblowing easier and safer than for example emailing their editors that's probably a good thing.

[–] PenguinTD@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 week ago (6 children)

But like the ice tracker, wouldn't download and use the app expose the potential user lists to surface if local authority can ask for such information?

[–] Armand1@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think they are bundling this into their regular app, so they'd have to put every guardian read on the list😅

[–] JadedBlueEyes@programming.dev 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yep, that's the point described in the linked paper - traffic goes via the same domains used for their app, and the messenger is embedded in their app

[–] irotsoma@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not only that, but every app will constantly appear to be sending messages, so real messages are greatly obfuscated. That's honestly the real innovative part of the product IMHO.

[–] PenguinTD@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

that's really cool. Does the message part work as regular p2p message app?

[–] irotsoma@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

No it's a bit complex. The transmissions are sent constantly at regular intervals and are a very specific size and are then combined later. So it's not "instant" messaging. It's closer to email.

[–] PenguinTD@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 days ago

So encrypted, periodical interval to mask out any incoming/out going variance in traffic I wonder how they mitigate the backend part as there might be a ton of wasted traffic to hide the actual traffic. since they obviously need a lot of users to hide the whistle blower, but that also mean their backend needs to be pretty smart to handle lots of traffic and still consume energy to decrypt and then throw away the "noise" data.

load more comments (4 replies)