So we know the UK, France, Sweden and Australia all have “pondered out loud” about getting platforms like Signal to allow backdoors into encrypted calls and messages.
This creates a sense of safety about these platforms being secure, because governments want to come after them.
Here’s a tinfoil hat take: Five Eyes is significantly reducing inter cooperation. The non-fascist parts of the alliance don’t want to share with the obvious authoritarian, but the authoritarian one used to share the fruits of their established backdoors with them, and now they don’t.
Note that the US isn’t asking signal for a backdoor. Why? Back in 2015-2016 (last years of Obama), Apple had a loud and visible feud with the FBI. Since the authoritarian came to power, this all disappeared from the media. Interestingly, 10 years have gone by since that moment, every single aspect of our lives has become more surveilled, and somehow the US govt has stopped trying to get into phones? *While the CEO is making hand deliveries of 24 karat gold bars to the Oval Office?
TLDR; I think a safe assumption that they are in our devices by now. Fundamentally people misunderstand encryption. Encryption is only as strong as the weakest link. If your signal chats are unencrypted for consumption on your device, then that’s when the unencrypted content can be captured.
For the longest time, Apple stored your iCloud backups encrypted. Looked good in marketing materials, until they casually admitted the decryption key is stored in the same cloud.
Combine this with ICE capturing citizens without due process. If you have a vanilla smart device, you’re doing the surveillance for them. /tinfoilhat
Oh … but oh!
TLDR; The people accusing an author of clickbait are often penning bait to drag the OP into a mud fight.
You make some valid points but the way you’re going on the offence and present your points isn’t welcoming to more discussion for me. Maybe others will.
Except that I didn’t accuse you of clickbaiting - I pointed out that the style was similar and has unfortunate consequences.Because the headlines we’re used to reading are so pervasively clickbait, it’s an easy trap to fall into because that’s how we’re used to seeing things titled.Edit: On rereading my comment - yeah, that did come off pretty confrontational. Signal gets a lot of bad-faith criticism from people pushing alternatives that are provably less secure, so it’s a knee-jerk reaction for me at this point. In my defense, there’s a reason the more confrontational statements were in a “tinfoil hat” tag - it was meant to make clear they were not literal accusations.
All good, looks like you won the downvote wars anyway, an important aspect of online discourse.
For what it is worth, I used Signal in the title, because that’s what’s been in the media and the app governments have been going after, see the country name hyperlinks.