For customers juggling multiple devices, Signal has some welcome news. The messaging app announced this week that Android customers can now link another Android phone or tablet to their account. The company also said that iOS customers can link an iPhone to their accounts. Customers can update their existing accounts with Signal iOS v8.22 in the Apple App Store and Signal Android v8.20 in the Google Play Store.

To link, download the Signal app onto the new device, then open the app to view a QR code. On the primary account phone, open Signal and go to Signal Settings > Linked devices > Link a new device. Scan the QR code to link the new device. Customers can link more than one device.

From CNET: I Tried Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp, and This Is the One I’d Recommend

If desired, customers can transfer their message history and 45 previous days of saved media to the new device. The company said the transfers process is fully end-to-end encrypted, which means the data is scrambled and unreadable to others.

Improved interface

Signal also says the app will now adapt its layout to different screen sizes so it looks more natural on linked devices, like tablets. When you look at the app on a tablet, it will adjust its appearance to match the tablet’s aspect ratio. The same will hold true for foldable phones, which can have wider screens when folded out, and for iPads and iPhones, the company said.

Signal said customers can also link Chromebooks but that the interface is not completely updated yet.

According to Signal, the rising popularity of foldable phones and devices with unconventional aspect ratios has forced the company to upgrade the app’s appearance across various devices.

What is Signal?

Signal is a free-to-use messaging app launched in 2014 by American cryptographer Moxie Marlinspike (a pseudonym for Matthew Rosenfeld). The app encrypts text messages, scrambling them so they’re unreadable to outsiders, and only the sender and recipient can read them. The app also encrypts voice calls and video chats.

Other messaging apps that also use encryption include Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Session, Threema and Wire. Unlike text messages sent through your regular phone service, encrypted messages can’t be read by your mobile carrier, which can otherwise view and store the contents of SMS and MMS messages sent over its network.

A messaging app that uses encryption is generally secure, but customers should read the fine print, says CNET privacy expert Attila Tomaschek. “Even if your messaging app uses end-to-end encryption, it may still be logging metadata,” Tomaschek said. “In which case, it’s not as private or secure as you may want it to be. So it’s important to check the app’s privacy policy to see how it handles metadata.”

Signal has roughly 70 million customers, putting it well behind competitors such as WhatsApp (3 billion), Snapchat (932 million), WeChat (1.41 billion), Messenger (more than 1 billion) and Telegram (1 billion).

Ever since being admittedly fascinated by the Cambridge coffee webcam from the 1990s, I’ve written about VPNs, the NFL, smartphones, living wages, over/unders and everything in between.

See full bio

The congressman thinks it’s time for a “Data Center Bill of Rights.”

We’ve probably all got one item in our toolboxes or chests that we really, really don’t like, but find too handy to toss. For [Someone Should Make That], that item was the bolt-rounding adjustable wrench. Rather than continuing to gripe about it, or alter his habits to make greater use of the full wrench set he also owns, he decided to build a better mousetrap. By mousetrap, we mean adjustable wrench.

It took a couple of iterations on-screen before he hits on a solution that seems to work quite well indeed. The problem [Someone] had with his adjustable wrench was one of physical slop: once adjusted, there’s just too much play in the mechanism, which results in rounded-off bolt heads. [Someone]’s CNC’d solution takes inspiration from the CNC machine that manufactures it: he’s using spring-loading in the adjustment screw akin to what you find in the anti-backlash nut on your CNC mill or 3D printer’s ball threads. The tension from the springs keeps the wrench tight to the bolt, and that keeps [Someone] from rounding them off. Speaking of 3D printers, he prototyped in plastic before machining, and the screw in the end product stayed that way. It would be interesting to see how well that holds up.

Not only do we appreciate that it’s solved a common problem many of us have, the ethos of “this angers me, so I shall hack it” is one we support 100%, so do give a watch unless you’re one of those people who absolutely can’t stand videos, even when they’re spring-loaded to have no slop. There’s some good tips for beginner CNC operators in there, too.

This isn’t the first time someone’s tried to reinvent this particular wheel, though the last version we liked was a ratchet.

from the surveillance-society dept

Recent reports have raised alarm about the use of PatronScan, an ID-checking and face-scanning system, at multiple LGBTQ+ bars in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood. Much of the attention has focused on reports that the system photographs patrons as they enter venues and questions about whether those images are used for facial recognition.

A broader privacy concern also deserves scrutiny. For years, PatronScan has marketed itself not just as an ID-verification tool, but as a system that allows bars and clubs to identify patrons, keep records about them, and share information across venues. As one news article published in 2019 documented, PatronScan built a network that allowed participating bars to flag patrons and share information about them with other establishments. 

And in California, it’s not at all clear how PatronScan’s business model of scanning IDs and sharing the information from those scans with other bars comports with the law. California’s ID privacy law, which was amended in 2018 to add ID “scans,” states that no businesses shall “retain or use” any information from a scanned ID card except for limited purposes such as to verify age, comply with a legal requirement, or prevent fraud. 

Californians should be deeply concerned about businesses that collect information from government-issued IDs and use it to build databases about where people go, whom they associate with, and whether they should be allowed into other public gathering places. That concern is especially strong in LGBTQ+ spaces, which have long served as refuges for people to go without being tracked, monitored, or put on lists. 

We reached out to Patronscan with questions regarding their practices and their views on California ID law. They referred us to their published FAQ question “Is Patronscan privacy compliant in California?” which claims that the use of Patronscan kiosks is legal in California. They also said “Patronscan does not do facial recognition in North America, or any kind of automated analysis of the ID or the live photo image.” 

The California Legislature Has Investigated PatronScan’s Business Model 

In 2018, the California Legislature published bill analyses (on that year’s AB 2769) that went into detail about PatronScan’s business. Reviewing PatronScan’s own materials, the California Senate Judiciary Committee found that the company had collected and retained information on 561,087 customers in Sacramento alone during the first five months of 2018—a remarkable figure for a city whose population had only recently topped 500,000.

Lawmakers also found that at that time, PatronScan retained information for at least 90 days or longer in some cases, shared information among participating bars, and maintained bans that lasted an average of more than 19 years. A PatronScan “Public Safety Report” used 10,000 scans collected on a single day to report on “where customers live, how far they have traveled, and how many different venues the customers patronized.” 

This was not simply checking IDs at the door. PatronScan was building a database. 

An immigrants’ rights group, the Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), wrote about its concern at the time with these growing ID databases, saying that “placing individuals on a database that labels them a “threat to public safety” has “significant immigration consequences that could lead to deportation, revoking of current status, or denial of future immigration relief.” 

Today, PatronScan states that it retains personal information about all customers for 21 days, and about flagged customers for up to five years. This includes the customer’s name, date of birth, photograph, gender, and zip code. It also includes the dates and times that the customer entered particular bars. Such databases are a grave privacy threat. Personal data is routinely stolen by thieves, misused by a company’s employees, seized by government agencies, and diverted to new purposes by a company’s executives. 

California Law Still Bans ID-Scan Databases, And Bars Should Follow That Law

In 2018, California lawmakers closed what they viewed as a loophole. Existing law already prohibited businesses from retaining or using information obtained when they “swiped” a driver’s license, except for the narrow purposes of legal requirements (like a judicial warrant) or “preventing fraud, abuse, or material misrepresentation.” 

After reviewing companies like PatronScan, the Legislature amended the law to make clear that the same restrictions that apply to businesses that “swipe” ID cards also apply when those IDs are “scanned.” PatronScan opposed that change, arguing it wanted to preserve the ability to share information among bars so participating venues could decide whether to admit patrons.

The bill became law anyway. Yet PatronScan continues to market and sell a system that apparently retains information from scanned IDs, and allows participating venues to flag patrons and share information across its network. 

At a minimum, that raises serious questions about how those practices fit with California’s existing ID privacy law. Bar and nightlife venue owners who utilize PatronScan should think twice about its effects on their customers, and consider going back to standard, visual ID checks. These physical checks have been effective at keeping underage patrons out of 21-and-over venues for decades, and don’t present the serious privacy dangers of creating a private database of bar patrons. 

For venues serving vulnerable communities like immigrants or the LGBTQ+ community, the stakes of using this technology are even higher. It’s disappointing and alarming to see some of California’s more well-known LGBTQ+ nightlife spots instead lining up as PatronScan’s early adopters. A venue cannot claim to be a safe space while feeding its patrons’ data to a third party database. These businesses should reject PatronScan, return to the standard ID checks that every other bar has been able to utilize, and prove to their customers that their privacy and security still matters. 

Originally published to the EFF’s Deeplinks blog.

Filed Under: age verification, california, id privacy, id scans, id verification, privacy

Companies: patronscan