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EPA Officials May be Using Signal to “Spread Their Goals Covertly”

posted by janrinok on Thursday February 16 2017, @11:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the are-we-for-encryption-or-against? dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Two Republican members of Congress sent a formal letter Tuesday to the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of the Inspector General, expressing concern that "approximately a dozen career EPA officials" are using the encrypted messaging app Signal to covertly plan strategy and may be running afoul of the Freedom of Information Act.

The open source app has gained renewed interest in the wake of the election of President Donald Trump.

As Ars has reported previously, all Signal messages and voice calls are end-to-end encrypted using the Signal Protocol, which has since been adopted by WhatsApp and other companies. However, unlike other messaging apps, Signal's maker, Open Whisper Systems, makes a point of not keeping any data, encrypted or otherwise, about its users. (WhatsApp also does not retain chat history but allows for backups using third-party services, like iCloud, which allows for message history to be restored when users set up a new device. Signal does not allow messages to be stored with a third party.)

Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/house-members-epa-officials-may-be-using-signal-to-spread-their-goals-covertly/

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16 2017, @11:49PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16 2017, @11:49PM (#468012)

    I don't think so.

    I don't have an issue with this unless these are formal, official meetings, such as meetings that members of the public could have access to (in which case there should be transcribed records available, and possibly video or audio footage). All of the participants in these private discussions may subpoenaed by congress, so it is not as if congress has no legal means of oversight.

  • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by FunkyLich on Friday February 17 2017, @12:18AM

    by FunkyLich (4689) on Friday February 17 2017, @12:18AM (#468021)

    Well I have a slight issue with this.
    I feel like really wanting to kick right at their teeth all those who do anything in their power to pry on people when they take a leak or when they sleep and using all sorts of techniques - imprisoning included - to intimidate people away from wanting some privacy in their lives, and then these same people use open source technology to discuss their backstage schemes on how to continue prying on people. This open source technology which most probably has been developed in spite of, not thanks to, these schemers, who have spent their money exactly for the opposite of developing the said open source technology.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 17 2017, @01:19AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 17 2017, @01:19AM (#468033)
      The EPA is not the sort of government agency with such voyeuristic tendencies that you rightly fear, I think. On the contrary they might in fact feel themselves threatened by these other parts of the government themselves.