Swiss Army Banned All Messengers But One - SR70

This week we cover the Swiss army's new top encrypted messenger choice Threema, a new iOS fake reboot exploit, Norton's cryptominer, and Mozilla's recent decision to stop cryptocurrency donations.

Welcome to the Surveillance Report - featuring Techlore & The New Oil to keep you updated on the newest security & privacy news.

00:00 Introduction
00:28 Our Self-Promo!
01:05 Data Breaches
09:09 Company News & Beginning of Swiss Army Story
13:00 Research
18:03 Politics
22:14 FOSS News
31:29 Misfits
34:50 Our Self-Promo!

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#security #privacy #news

[techlore]

00:00 Introduction
00:28 Our Self-Promo!
01:05 Data Breaches
09:09 Company News & Beginning of Swiss Army Story
13:00 Research
18:03 Politics
22:14 FOSS News
31:29 Misfits
34:50 Our Self-Promo!

[Silverhawk-uf]

As a soon to be Swiss army soldier, I've recently received information about that Threema thing. There is no mention on a ban of any messenger whatsoever, Threema just is the official messenger for the Swiss army.

[MrREALball]

24:00 you know what is even worse for mUh EnViRonMeNt? Giant ass data centers collecting unbelievable amounts of data about everyone for financial gain, but I haven't seen any outrage over that for some reason.

[flazryuful]

I was really hoping that remote shut off of cars would never happen. It was a rumored feature of OBD 3 in 2014.

This kind of thing falls victim to the same issue that adding a back door to phones does. Once you have a hole in the security of a device, it can be exploited.

My other concern with this is that stopping an engine from running doesn't stop the already built up velocity. And with the mass of a car thats a lot of energy that now doesn't have anything controlling it.

[yourpersonaldatadealer]

You can detect if your phone is on when ‘off’ by looking at the electromagnetic signature and comparing it to a base line (when the battery is verifiably dead due to physical limits in the cell technology and maximum capacity). Deep learning networks can also help with this classification of states.

[djsaekrakem]

you could solve the fake reboot vulnerability by adding a removable battery instead of making all phones completely sealed.

[developerpranav]

I don't know how I'd have become so privacy conscious without you guys! <3

[consolegamer]

What are your opinions on the news about the IRS wanting to track any third-party (Venmo, Paypal, CashApp, Zelle) transactions above $600 a year? or maybe this is for SR71?

[arsantiqua]

Regarding the Swiss army it is more complex. The requirement is mandatory for communication between troops and officers. Soldiers can still communicate with their families back home with what ever they like. Yet, the army recommends Threema for security reasons. The reason is that Switzerland is one of the few western countries that still uses conscriptions for all men and possibly woman too in the future (especially now as the army is headed by a woman). Due to roughly 500 years of compulsory conscription the army is now reaching deep in to civilian life. The best Swiss universities ETH and EPFL are usually seen as a polytechnical universities by foreigners. They are but they also double as military academies as the county is lacking separate military schools. Imagine the MIT was military and had a huge bunker system underneath. I guess that would possibly nail it. That's why they offer things like security studies or military tactics alongside Tech studies. So especially in Tech and IT it is not unusual that your professor is also your commander or your lecturer your officer. But even at the the civilian universities it is quite common to have military presence depending on the field. At law school pretty much all of my male professors and fellow students had a parallel career as officers. It was not unusual to see people sitting in lectures with their uniforms. I was told that it is the same in medicine or veterinary studies. There are even cases in exotic things like theology (as they need field preachers). Heck, if I remember right, every fourth household in the country has a gun in the closet and in Switzerland that means military grade automatic. That's how deeply intertwined military and civilian life is. Hence it would simply be impossible to enforce a mandatory use of Threema unless you ban every other messenger in the country. This isn't possible as Switzerland has the popular referendum and popular initiative. This means that people can vote on pretty much anything and override the decision made by the parliament by simply changing the constitution. And they do this exactly four times per year. Naturally this would make any attempt of banning a messenger impossible.
So what the military is doing here is basically to nudge the civilian population in to using Threema by encouraging it's use. Given their impact on society its a solid strategy: you install Threema for military use and then keep it because your to lazy to uninstall and because your old friends from the army are hanging out there. The army is still important for life long friendship among male Swiss. Spend a compulsory year in snow and dirt and chances are you will be happy to jug a beer and complain about it at any occasion for the rest of your life. Every other male can relate to that and will happily join in the contest of who was the most miserable back in the army and then exchange contacts after the forth beer.
Also: the Swiss are used to using alternative services. Amazon as an example isn't wide spread in Switzerland as the Swiss tend to use Galaxus instead. While Google did a good job of alienating users by spamming them with German, French and Italian search results due to lazy programming. As a Swiss you are better off using Startpage. Even payment by mobile phone is done by a local app called Twint. So all in all there is a very high chance that the military might succeed and establish Threema as the standard to go for everybody.

Anyhow there is also another reason for using Threema: sure, they mostly did it for security reasons but there is also a legal one. Due to a new law in the US congress WhatsApp isn't compatible anymore with the EU privacy norms. Switzerland isn't a member of the EU but collaborates often for training and joint military missions such as in Kosovo. Since they are mostly professional armies they don't have the problem. So Switzerland had to find a solution to comply. So as said the problem is a bit complex for historic reasons. Switzerland doesn't have an army, Switzerland is an army as the Germans used to joke. Technically Switzerland is even still a Confederation meaning a military defence alliance although one that is so many centuries old that it officially transformed in to a democracy in 1848 (or a well organized militaristic anarchy if you believe the Germans). Hence it is officially the Swiss Confederation while Switzerland was how it was originally called by it's enemies. Sorry for my spelling errors, English isn't my native language.

[jayarmstrong]

Regarding PoW environmental impact, headlines leave out the massive amount of energy and human effort that's required to store, secure, transport, and manage Fiat. Think of all the buildings, bank vaults, people driving to work at banks, armored cars, data centers, security teams, customer service depts., etc. Also of note, in the same chart that shows bitcoin mining consuming more power than some countries, you can see video gaming in California alone also consumes more than a lot of countries. My takeaway is to ask if the value of PoW cryptos worth it and continue steering society toward less harm.

[rogerorchard]

When I was young, all the server (Pre internet) all the sysadmins where told, the hash you stored was the password + username + a server seed, why can't web servers do the same thing admin's where doing 30 years ago. it makes getting the password files pointless, as the hash is only any uses on the server get it from, back then you could not do dictionary look up as the user name, that just stops the lookup, and the seed stops some of the other ways of finding the password.

[Foche_T._Schitt]

Instead of "free credit monitoring" why don't they also offer to teach people how to freeze their credit?

[vincentallen]

With the crypto environment thing, tons of mining companies have moved to renewable energy and I believe it's around 50%ish (I forget where I read that). The Coin Beureu has a great video explaining this.

[bennyprfane]

It's funny that the Swiss army would cite proprietary code as an argument for Threema being more private, isn't it? So that misconception is still alive and well...

[DaPanda]

If vehicles are going to have a kill switch embedded in them then it would make sense to at least have statistics on the drivers being pulled over. Age, sex, area in which they're being pulled over, and very obviously have both body Cam and dash cam footage of the events... Because I think we all know that this has the huge potential to be abused.

[portentouslad]

19:26 "guilty until proven otherwise."

[BreadMan]

I didn't even complete the video yet and I love it.

[EricTorrKlopperSuiderland]

Really good channel, always interresting. I have to disagree with one piece you mentioned. I've personally almost never heard of of the argument that Bitcoin/Crypto mining is bad for the environment, but I've seen constant reports about the fossil fuel industry.

[snowstrobe]

Nathan, the issue with crypto is not the energy usage at your home, it's the usage at the massive servers needed to manage the currency. Like Henry, I've always found it weird how a big thing is made of the environmental cost of it.

[vidhyachan]

Good stuff. Thanks for the walk through