- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.zip
- pulse_of_truth@infosec.pub
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.zip
- pulse_of_truth@infosec.pub
“Signal is being blocked in Venezuela and Russia. The app is a popular choice for encrypted messaging and people trying to avoid government censorship, and the blocks appear to be part of a crackdown on internal dissent in both countries…”
All countries should ban US-domiciled companies like signal, or any communication platform hosted in Five-eyes countries, and especially ones domiciled in the US, which has to adhere to National Security Letters.
https://www.eff.org/issues/national-security-letters/faq
Mass censorship is never good for civil liberties. Let people decide on there own.
Also Signal is cryptographically sound. Many other messagers use a similar protocol
As I commented below, US security forces aren’t that interested in message content anyway, since they don’t have time to parse through every message to construct meaning. Signal does require your phone number tho, as well as message timestamps, meaning they can build social graphs of real people. Tons of metadata living on a single US-based server.
It doesn’t matter if it is US based. You shouldn’t trust the server.
Signal has known issues. That doesn’t mean it is entirely bad though. Saying things like Signal is insecure is simply untrue. It has weaknesses but it also has the benefit of protecting your messages completely and being well established.
My question was more about the motives in this case.
Well IMO all countries should have the motivation to prevent US spying on their country’s populations. You generally don’t know about honey pots before they get exposed.
The question of what should be done can be interesting, but that was not my question. It’s obvious this is not the motive here.
If you are in your own country opposition it’s better to use a foreign tool, even better if it’s in a country that’s not gonna collaborate with yours.
I imagine just using metadata you can look for people who are discontent, then provides list of those people to the opposition to contact and mobilize them and get them to protest.
Or target them with stories and bots to turn them into a revolutionary force, but that would be more useful for social media networks instead of signal.