Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by takyon on Friday December 14 2018, @10:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the can't-find-the-signal dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Signal says it can't allow government access to users' chats

Last week, the Australian government passed the country's controversial Access and Assistance Bill 2018 into law, legislation that allows government agencies to demand access to encrypted communications. Companies that don't comply with the new law could face fines of up to AU$10 million ($7.3 million). A number of companies that stand to be affected have spoken out about the legislation, and Signal has now joined in, explaining that it won't be able to fulfill such requests if asked.

"By design, Signal does not have a record of your contacts, social graph, conversation list, location, user avatar, user profile name, group memberships, group titles or group avatars," Signal's Joshua Lund wrote in a blog post. "The end-to-end encrypted contents of every message and voice/video call are protected by keys that are entirely inaccessible to us." Lund added that Signal is open source, meaning anyone can "verify or examine the code for each release." "People often use Signal to share secrets with their friends, but we can't hide secrets in our software," he wrote. "We can't include a backdoor in Signal."


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday December 15 2018, @03:14AM (2 children)

    by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday December 15 2018, @03:14AM (#774681)

    ...The AU government could declare the software source contraband, its use illegal, and assert various kinds of legal unpleasantness against the author(s.)...

    You misunderstand: the only pressure that is allowed to be applied flows from the US to Aus, any other direction is STRICTLY prohibited.

    --
    It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Saturday December 15 2018, @05:14AM (1 child)

    by fyngyrz (6567) on Saturday December 15 2018, @05:14AM (#774703) Journal

    Irrelevant.