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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: 2) by davester666 on Friday February 17 2017, @04:35AM

    by davester666 (155) on Friday February 17 2017, @04:35AM (#468085)

    I believe his idea is actually that people with ideas that are different from his/his party should either be fired or have everything they do recorded so they can be appropriately punished. Naturally, there is no need to record people with the same ideas as he/his party has.

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday February 17 2017, @04:05PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday February 17 2017, @04:05PM (#468241)

    I agree with your analysis. I'm trying to tell myself that the laws will prevail and the current political abuse of them will come and go with the election cycles. Or not. I wonder how politically stable Costa Rica will remain if things continue to go sideways in el Norte? The scary thought is: the last time a big wall was built, it was actually to keep the citizens from leaving the country.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]

    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday February 17 2017, @06:11PM

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 17 2017, @06:11PM (#468283) Journal

      Not just the last time. That was also one of the purposes of the "Great Wall of China". Of course, that one was also a way of condemning people to death without saying so.

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      Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.