If this sounds like a wackjob conspiracy theory, it's because this is a wackjob conspiracy theory. Signal's source code and algorithms are open. Just because some government departs have given it funding doesn't mean it's a secret plot by the CIA.
Signal uses well-known crypto algorithms. If they are insecure, well, then all cryptography is insecure and it doesn't matter which encrypted messaging app you use.
If there's a backdoor in the code, well, the code is open source and people would be able to find it.
Why would the federal government thwart it's own power? Because it's not a unified whole with a single purpose, but a bunch of different departments with different missions that fight amongst themselves. The CIA fights with the NSA and FBI. CIA departments fight with each other.
Parts of the intelligence community wants unbreakable encryption. One reason is nefarious. They want to communication with human intelligence sources (spies), but have nothing more incriminating on their phone than WhatsApp or Signal.
The other is just principles. Several government agencies, the ones giving money to Signal and Tor, want to enable dissidents in other countries (like Hong Kong or Belarus) to able to communicate amongst themselves.

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More from @ErrataRob

16 Jan
This is why I feel like Winston Smith in the opening of Nineteen Eighty Four, I remember a time when this issue meant something different.
Here's is the "censorship episode" of the show "WKRP in Cincinnati", where you see Andy (radio station program director) argue "free enterprise" against preacher "Dr. Bob Hallier" who is using boycotts to get them to remove music from the radio:
Or, if you prefer a transcript of that scene:
subslikescript.com/series/WKRP_in…
Read 7 tweets
16 Jan
I was an early 1980s Internet hacker. Let me explain why "Bugtraq" is probably the most important achievement in the world of cybersecurity.
Most of what you know of the 1980s hacking scene wasn't Internet, but "phone phreaking" and "BBSs". I don't know much about those things. I was an Internet hacker instead -- on the net since back before DNS was a thing (when 'hosts.txt' was distributed by hand).
By the late 1980s, computers from Sun Microsystems were a big deal. Yet, Sun (and other manufacturers) were immune to notifications of vulnerabilities. Issues had to be handle by tech support, and if you didn't have a support contract, you didn't matter.
Read 16 tweets
15 Jan
This is an exceptionally lazy argument on a platform known for lazy arguments. There are people who consistently oppose censorship on principle, whether it's censoring Trumpists, censoring terrorists, or censoring any other disliked group;
Or, here's a discussion of the threat of Chinese censorship when Microsoft buys GitHub:
Read 8 tweets
14 Jan
So Parler was kicked off the Internet for lack of content moderation. Is Signal next?
So if anything is a "false equivalence" then it's the tweet above. However, these things are more alike than they seems.
If activists came to Signal with the phone numbers of identified Proudboys members, as well as the contents (retrieved from phones) of messages they sent via Signal planning an insurrection, what should Signal do?
Read 4 tweets
13 Jan
Hacking is heresy, challenging orthodoxy. Sometimes orthodoxy and politics are the same thing, sometimes they aren't.
Reverse engineering the Parler app to scrape all the public content from Jan 6 (including content marked "deleted" but not yet deleted) is a "hack". It's an unexpected and really cool thing that we didn't expect.
I suppose this also is political, but what makes it a "hack" has nothing to do with politics. What makes it a hack is that people have orthodox beliefs about public scraping of websites that this challenged.
Read 4 tweets
8 Jan
The "First Amendment" only deals with government restriction of free speech. You may not like a private company censoring your speech, but it's not a "First Amendment" issue. Indeed, the First Amendment means government can't stop private censorship.
Moreover, "Orwellian" is less about a totalitarian state and more about how politicians make lies that sound truth -- such as a senator claiming to be a constitutional lawyer making one of the most common and basic mistakes about the First Amendment.
This "voter integrity" issue is more doublethink, by the way, and EXACTLY what Orwell was talking about. It was about searching desperately for any excuse that could plausibly be exploited to turn the election in Trump's favor.
Read 5 tweets

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