{"id":60757,"date":"2023-04-30T08:55:04","date_gmt":"2023-04-30T08:55:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alecmuffett.com\/?p=60757"},"modified":"2023-05-05T07:03:12","modified_gmt":"2023-05-05T07:03:12","slug":"resource-for-journalists-how-best-to-frame-your-article-criticising-elonmusk-for-adding-encryption-to-twitter-dms-questions-to-ask-resources-to-consult","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alecmuffett.com\/article\/60757","title":{"rendered":"Resource for Journalists: How best to frame your article criticising @ElonMusk for adding #Encryption to @Twitter DMs. Questions to ask, resources to consult."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Note: this is a “living” document. Check back for updates.
Last updated: 5 May 2023 around 0800h London time.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hi! Thank you for reading this!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you’re a journalist and you’re going to write something about Twitter adopting Encryption for Twitter Direct Messages, it’s really easy to adopt the frame that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Elon is doing it, so it must be bad.”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

or <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Some people are saying that Encryption enables Child Abuse!
Therefore Elon is enabling Child Abuse!”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026but the reality is a lot more complex than that. There are great questions you can ask, and there are assurances which you can demand from Elon and Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why are these frames suboptimal?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Twitter is a huge platform, used by millions of people, and it primarily enables two forms of communication:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Nearly-Broadcast (Tweets)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. One-to-One and One-to-Several (Direct Messages)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    \u2026plus some other niche\/experimental mechanisms like audio chats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The encryption announcement impacts the Direct Messages feature, and it’s all about giving more privacy to all the people who use Direct Messages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Yes, but isn’t Privacy a bad thing?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    What really? Is privacy a bad thing? Certainly there exists a minority of bad people \u2014 even in the USA less than 1% of the population is in prison<\/a>, so arguably there are 99% “good” people out there \u2014 and “privacy” is an enabler <\/em>for everyone, including the bad people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    But that doesn’t mean that we need to avoid privacy, in much the same way that we don’t need to avoid creating public infrastructure like “roads” just because they might <\/em>be used by a getaway vehicle in a bank heist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    A different perspective is that we need more privacy, everywhere, and in theory<\/strong> (note: foreshadowing<\/em>) Elon will be providing this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    But why does Encryption need adding to Twitter DMs? Couldn’t “they” (people who need privacy) just use Signal?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Consider: if you are fortunate enough to live in a part of the world where the entire household water supply is “drinkable” quality, how nice your life is as a result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Having a 100% drinkable water supply means that it doesn’t matter which tap you use to wash food, that if your kid gets a cut you probably don’t need to boil and cool water just to wash it out as part of the treatment, if they drink from a hosepipe (or the bathtub, ick) it’s not a huge deal, and you can largely forget about the stress and self-discipline necessary to save your family from getting sick. Of course it’s a tremendous waste of resources to use drinkable water to flush a toilet, but overall the provision is an enabler of so much public health.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Ditto, for end-to-end privacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It’s utterly normal for a conversation which started trivially to become much more sensitive, for instance a discussion with your parents which suddenly includes them sending credit-card information to you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Do you want that data to be at risk of theft by hackers? No. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Do you want to scold your parents for not stopping that Twitter DM conversation to use Signal to send you the sensitive stuff? No. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Do you want to live your life with the stress and self-discipline necessary to stop hackers from walking off with your sensitive messages?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    No. Of course not. Irrespective that the 1% bad people might use that privacy to do bad things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Shouldn’t Elon build a “back door” into the encryption to access DM content, for Law Enforcement?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    So here’s a story (Deutche Welle) regarding Saudi spies who worked at Twitter<\/a> and who (BBC) went trawling through the personal information<\/a> and (Bloomberg<\/a>, archived<\/a>) Direct Messages of Saudi dissidents for that Government, leading to dissidents being arrested<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Twitter (like all platforms) is not in a position to security-vet all of its employees, and even then the question would be “vetted by\/for which governments?” \u2014 so it’s overall wiser (foreshadowing again<\/em>) for Twitter to cut itself entirely out of the conversations which DMs enable, so that only the participants can see the content of the conversation.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So is this \u2014 making access to DMs “participant only” \u2014 is this what End-to-End Encryption actually does?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Yes, although it’s probably better to talk about “end-to-end security”<\/em> or “end-to-end privacy”<\/em> because the “encryption” is merely the clockwork which enables it to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    If you want to know more about the goals and mechanisms of end-to-end security, there’s a good white paper from Privacy International (context blogpost<\/a>, report PDF<\/a>) which helps as an explainer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So how do we make a story out of this?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    If you want to attack Elon<\/em><\/s> make a decent story out of this product launch, here are the questions that you should be asking:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \n
    1. Is the Encryption credible?<\/strong> Does it use “recognised algorithms” or is it some homebrew thing which the world has never seen before and which is a cause for concern? Telegram uses weird homebrew encryption and it’s a matter of concern <\/a>amongst experts<\/a>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    2. Has Twitter been transparent?<\/strong> Are they publishing the code\/algorithms they use? Is there a white paper describing operation?<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    3. Aside:<\/strong> There’s this thing in security called Kerckhoffs’s Principle<\/strong><\/a> which means that if they say something like “We can’t tell you how it works for security reasons,”<\/em> they are fibbing and you can burn them<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    4. Is the Encryption truly end-to-end secure?<\/strong> Are the conversations truly participant-only? Are Twitter employees entirely incapable of retrieving message content? Is there an e2e-breaking mechanism which enables non-participants (including: law enforcement) to ever access, filter, or block message content? Do bits of messages leak into logfiles and then get sent back to Twitter<\/a>, even by accident?<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
    5. Is the Encryption on by default?<\/strong> If not, why not? Are there plans to address this? The problem of non-default encryption<\/strong> afflicts both Telegram<\/a> and Facebook Messenger, but at least Facebook has plans to address this.<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
    6. Are there good abuse-reporting mechanisms?<\/strong> If you’re using a tool to message someone, there should at least be a convenient mechanism to block them, and (ideally) a means to credibly report their (alleged) abuse to authorities. Happily, this can entirely be done by means which preserve the end-to-end privacy of communication<\/a>. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      These are all good questions to ask, and they need to be asked of any solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Who can I trust to act as a resource?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

      I would recommend following \/ asking the following people for quotes; they have somewhat more public bandwidth than I do:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        \n
      1. Security & Safety, Journalism Perspective: Runa Sandvik<\/a> at Granitt<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
      2. Cryptography: Professor Matt Green<\/a> at Johns Hopkins<\/a>; Matt writes pithy, critical but overall sane and exceptionally well-informed stuff, although he does have a habit of speculating about worst-case scenarios, which technically is fair but may cause confusion<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      3. Matthew Garrett<\/a> seems to be doing a solid job of reverse-engineering the Twitter Encrypted DM functionality on his Twitter timeline, and is frank about the limits of his\/our understanding \u2014 an important aspect to consider when reporting. It’s a work-in-progress, so follow him for details<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      4. Privacy International<\/a> (Global)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      5. Electronic Frontier Foundation<\/a> (US)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      6. Open Rights Group<\/a> (UK)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      7. …more to come<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

        What if I want to read more?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

        Some good resources on End-to-End Security; the first two links from Privacy International are heavily based around the (third link) primer which I wrote on the topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          \n
        1. https:\/\/privacyinternational.org\/report\/4949\/securing-privacy-end-end-encryption<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
        2. https:\/\/privacyinternational.org\/sites\/default\/files\/2022-09\/SECURING%20PRIVACY%20-%20PI%20on%20End-to-End%20Encryption.pdf<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
        3. https:\/\/alecmuffett.com\/alecm\/e2e-primer\/<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
        4. …more to come<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

          But don’t Twitter hand over data to the US Government? Wouldn’t this be included?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

          You’re actually asking two questions here; one is about how each of the world’s governments handles the issue of requesting content \u2014 under warrant \u2014 from the world’s various platforms, and I have previously written an article at Medium on how that works for the US Government.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

          The second is “wouldn’t Twitter still be able to share message content with Governments if end-to-end security is being used?” \u2014 and the answer is: no, not if it’s done properly (i.e.: see the questions above)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          The next question is “wouldn’t that make Governments rather angry?” and the answer to that is “assuredly yes<\/a>, but it’s not illegal to give people privacy\u2026 yet. And sometimes it’s absolutely necessary.<\/a>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          It would be a strange world where only people who lived in conflict zones were “permitted” by “authorities” to have strong privacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          But isn’t it “notable” that Twitter will have Encryption?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

          Certainly it’s a change, and arguably (see above) a change for the better; but this just means that Twitter DMs are joining an ecosystem which includes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n