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.
There are a number of good alternatives. Signal wins because it’s well known, easy to use and install. Governments are targetting private communications, not a specific app so their entire class is under threat and alternatives that can be backdoored will be.
It’s all very short sighted. If you really want to stop private communications you have to outlaw all people with technical knowledge and access to general purpose computers. I can cobble something together that is secure enough for a criminal or terrorist to communicate with freely available software but it won’t be full featured or nice to use.
Taken to the extreme this thinking ends with sending all the people with glasses to “work” some fields in the country because intellectuals challenge the security of the regime. That makes no fucking sense in a liberal democracy. So why even start down this path. Get a warrant and surveill people at the end points. It’s the only acceptable solution.