Signal president Meredith Whittaker is prepared to withdraw the privacy-focused messaging app from Australia — saying she hopes it doesn’t become a “gangrenous foot” by poisoning its entire platform by forcing it to hand over its users’ encrypted data to authorities.
Ms Whittaker says Signal would take the “drastic step” of leaving any market where a government compelled it to create a “backdoor” to access its data, saying it would create a vulnerability that hackers and authoritative regimes could exploit, undermining Signals’ “reason for existing”.
Pressure has been mounting on Signal and other secure messaging platforms. ASIO director general Mike Burgess has urged tech companies to unlock encrypted messages to assist terrorism and national security investigations, saying offshore extremists use such platforms to communicate.
Last I heard, plenty of companies used Signal for certain secure messaging. And I don’t just mean dodgy off the record stuff, I mean confidential things that Teams is too open for.
Opening up private company communications to the government makes that data a huge target for foreign intelligence and criminal organisations. Even our allies will happily pass on valuable company secrets to their own companies. Everyone is out for themselves. The software our government uses to analyse data will generally be closed source and supplied by a foreign power and not sufficiently audited.
Unfortunately our politicians are dangerously ignorant about the techological risks to national sovereignty and our economy. So they rely on often dubious advice from parties with a vested interest that is opposed to the public interest.
It’s pretty convenient for sharing new account/access passwords which is something I need to do occasionally. In the back of my mind I keep hearing a voice saying ‘you could do this more securely if you thought about it for a moment’ but I just ignore the zealot in my skull.