I can imagine this being another good boost for Signal, Matrix apparently got a good publicity boost out of France adopting it for government communications, I imagine this would be a similarly...
I can imagine this being another good boost for Signal, Matrix apparently got a good publicity boost out of France adopting it for government communications, I imagine this would be a similarly useful PR talking point. Perhaps this will also make it easier over time to encourage friends and family to migrate to Signal from WhatsApp or Messenger.
Another thing I found interesting though:
Promoting the app, however, could antagonize the law enforcement community.
Officials in Brussels, Washington and other capitals have been putting strong pressure on Facebook and Apple to allow government agencies to access to encrypted messages; if these agencies refuse, legal requirements could be introduced that force firms to do just that.
This could become an interesting pain point in politics in general: consensus is that once companies create backdoors they invalidate the security encryption offers. So either official instances must make exceptions for the systems they use or we're going to have a heated debate over which security measures are more important: government's ability to secure it's own information or it's ability to collect the information of others.
Eh - Signal is open source, and its code is pored over by a large group of fanatical anarchistic anti-government security nuts on a regular basis. It is probably the least vulnerable you could...
Eh - Signal is open source, and its code is pored over by a large group of fanatical anarchistic anti-government security nuts on a regular basis. It is probably the least vulnerable you could pick from a backdoor perspective. Even if the US forced a backdoor anyway it could be forked and a 'Signal Plus Fuck You America' release would be up in hours.
What is more likely is it gets made illegal to use in certain jurisdictions, which would be hilarious as the dangerous people in those jurisdictions would obviously use it anyway, OR that endpoint software installs would become mandatory (like what happens on Chinese international students' devices before they leave the country).
Yeah Signal is more or less a secure version of WhatsApp. Similar interface, functionality, and yes phone number requirement. That last point might seem off-putting but since Facebook kind of...
Yeah Signal is more or less a secure version of WhatsApp. Similar interface, functionality, and yes phone number requirement. That last point might seem off-putting but since Facebook kind of aggressively pursues your phone number as well Messenger is practically also tied to your phone. Signal also has the added benefit of not mining and storing data.
Not to mention since abandoning the XMPP bridge and more open APIs Messenger simply has little to no added value over WhatsApp or Signal. You can pretty much do everything in Signal that you'd want to do in Messenger except seeing when somebody is browsing Facebook.
I can imagine this being another good boost for Signal, Matrix apparently got a good publicity boost out of France adopting it for government communications, I imagine this would be a similarly useful PR talking point. Perhaps this will also make it easier over time to encourage friends and family to migrate to Signal from WhatsApp or Messenger.
Another thing I found interesting though:
This could become an interesting pain point in politics in general: consensus is that once companies create backdoors they invalidate the security encryption offers. So either official instances must make exceptions for the systems they use or we're going to have a heated debate over which security measures are more important: government's ability to secure it's own information or it's ability to collect the information of others.
Eh - Signal is open source, and its code is pored over by a large group of fanatical anarchistic anti-government security nuts on a regular basis. It is probably the least vulnerable you could pick from a backdoor perspective. Even if the US forced a backdoor anyway it could be forked and a 'Signal Plus Fuck You America' release would be up in hours.
What is more likely is it gets made illegal to use in certain jurisdictions, which would be hilarious as the dangerous people in those jurisdictions would obviously use it anyway, OR that endpoint software installs would become mandatory (like what happens on Chinese international students' devices before they leave the country).
So is Signal the way to switch from Messenger? I'm going to need to know what to pitch to my friends and family.
Yeah, it's pretty analogous to Messenger. It has its own E2E encrypted messages, but it also will manage your normal SMS text messages.
Thanks!
Is this like WhatsApp? I've never really used it but isn't it based on your phone number?
Yeah Signal is more or less a secure version of WhatsApp. Similar interface, functionality, and yes phone number requirement. That last point might seem off-putting but since Facebook kind of aggressively pursues your phone number as well Messenger is practically also tied to your phone. Signal also has the added benefit of not mining and storing data.
Not to mention since abandoning the XMPP bridge and more open APIs Messenger simply has little to no added value over WhatsApp or Signal. You can pretty much do everything in Signal that you'd want to do in Messenger except seeing when somebody is browsing Facebook.