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The Taliban’s curious love of SIM cards.
(restofworld.org)
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this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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Sounds like we need to push Signal in Afghanistan!
Signal won't do much when they're able to triangulate your position with cell tower data.
They're also "phone-only SIMs" which I'm guessing means voice only, no data.
As you didn't read the article:
They hand out SIM cards to track those SIM cards. Using a certain messaging app on the phone or not doesn't change SIM card tracking within the network.
Can include the contents of messages you’re sending. So if they’re using Signal, then at least they can’t see what they’re talking about.
They’d still see that they’re using Signal, which is probably good enough for the whip.
You are aware how fucking easy it is to link metadata from devices, no matter what connection they actually use once you have access to a countries backbone, especially if you are a low income country with just a few exchanges, a service that solely exists with centralised servers outside the country and no privacy laws? It's extremely easy. Devices fingerprinting,etc. is a thing.
The only benefit of Signal would be the fact that the man in the middle has no idea that you what you actually write. But considering that it's easy for them to just claim someone has done something and punish them it's no help here.
There are designated messengers for situations like that, briar is one example. But Signal is a really bad choice here and Wifi doesn't change a thing.
Would be awesome if they somehow ended up using signal as a means to facilitate remote learning. Mind you they’d have to be very careful and hide it from any potential snitches…
Signal doesn’t require a SIM card… it can send with wifi…
So yes, signal would work just fine and they wouldn’t need a “free” SIM card.
Next I want to see someone send a flock of pigeons or hawks with free sims
If you don't want to communicate with non-Signal users and are always within range of a public or known Wifi network where ever you are in Afghanistan, then I guess this is fine.
Right, so if you’re sending non-encrypted messages, you are indeed still sending non-encrypted messages, which defeats the whole purpose