this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
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Privacy
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For sure. I'm convinced signal is supported mainly for the same reason's apple products are: it's got a shiny user interface and it's simple to use. That let's them overlook all the privacy dangers behind the curtain.
A gigantic US-based service based on phone-number(meaning real identity) identifiers.
Exactly, it takes a lot of credulity to believe that the US government would just altruistically develop and fund a messaging platform that genuinely respects privacy. I recall somebody was talking about how collecting metadata is basically equivalent to having a private investigator follow you around, and I think that's a great analogy. People tend to fixate on the content of the conversations, but the reality is that knowing who talks to whom is just as valuable.
Do you think they're lying to authorities when they get a search warrant? https://signal.org/bigbrother/santa-clara-county/ That would be quite a big deal, and someone will be going to jail if you're right.
All they have is your phone number, the date the account was created, and the last time it connected to the service. Yes, that represents a vulnerability, but you;re just casting aspersions that the whole thing is compromised.
Maybe there is some super secret NSA back door that Signal engineers aren't even aware of. But it's at least pretty clear that the local fascist authorities aren't getting that info even with a warrant.
I think that the operations of US government are very opaque, and it's perfectly possible that Signal has to work with authorities like the NSA, while they don't have to cooperate with other authorities. However, even in case they currently don't cooperate that can't be used as a guarantee that this will continue to be the case going forward.
The key point here is that if data is leaked it has to be assumed that it is used maliciously, privacy assessments cannot be trust based. And the motivations of the government funding and promoting Signal do matter in the calculus.