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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."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 16 2018, @06:57PM
i don't use "signal" so i don't know if a working SMS receiving component (-aka- registered SIM) is required to use it.
if you don't have to back-type a sekrit number or letter combo to them when signing up to a "signal" account then all is good.
else, "signal" has to be able to link "you" to a "SIM" and thus a phone number.
so even if the content of the comms might be sekrit if the transport network is compromised the packet from "YOUr SIM" to destination can be monitored?
and things like: "YOUr SIM", located in a known dark back-alley for "alternative medicine" is making a connection to a cell-tower in the vicinity of a lawless white-nose-powder growing plantation somewhere in the middle of amerikan continent ... and it's all encrypted thus it remains unknown if the quality is worth anything.