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.)
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Friday February 17 2017, @08:45AM
"[Signal is] a perfectly sensible text messaging system that happens to encrypt informal text messaging by default."
Exactly. Not seeing the problem here.
"the EPA has previously examined employee use of text messages to conduct government business and found that only a minuscule fraction of those messages was retained under FOIA"
So, before this, they were probably sending normal, unencrypted text messages. The only difference is that Signal message cannot be intercepted.
Back in the dark ages I worked for the government. I used government equipment to communicate. I assumed that any archival requirements were handled at the infrastructure level - it certainly wasn't anything I spend even an instant thinking about. The government gives you a phone, you use it to send a text, archiving is not your problem.
The more important question may be: Why isn't Signal installed by default on all government-issued phones?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday February 17 2017, @06:48PM
There is a project, called Dishfire, which aims to collect and archive text messages; in 2011 it was collecting 194 million messages per day (if Edward Snowden is to be believed).
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/16/nsa-collects-millions-text-messages-daily-untargeted-global-sweep [theguardian.com]