The Battle Inside Signal
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The entire value proposition of Signal is that no one in the middle can see what's going across. The vast majority of those things will be benign or even good. A few will be bad or abusive. People use Twitter, Gmail, Facebook Messenger, Apple Messages and whatever Google is calling their chat client today for good, bad and ugly things, too.
I'd have much more respect for Casey Newton (I hope you're reading this) if he disrobed from his pretense and lectured us about Signal being a tool for Orange Man 2.0, rather than this vague whisper campaign about "abuse." And, personally, unless Newton entirely made up his quotes or took them totally out of context, Gregg Bernstein (hope he reads this, too) would have very little shot of making it past a phone screen with me. A former employee trying to stir up my workforce by attacking the core values of my company in the press is not something I look kindly on.
More cynically, this is may just be battle space prep for the run up to legislation giving the gov a backdoor into any E2E systems. The pretext being 'something something terrorism'.
Also, I commented this above, but there's a different way to solve the problems of polarization and radicalism. It involves solving people's material problems, and the US has been slowly getting worse at this and decaying for a while now. Instead, the political establishment is doubling down on surveillance, the silencing of dissent off of any platform with reach, and ultimately physical repression, through the increased funding and militarization of police.
Right now this is claimed to be targeted at the far right.. but it doesn't take a genius to compare the police reaction to BLM vs the capitol riot to see where it is going.
What is surprising to me is that the politicians and bureaucrats seem to think bad actors are supreme idiots. They aren't. The overt nature of a criminal mind whose cloaks themselves in church going taxpayer in suburbia is the reason why no agency in the world can predict tragic acts of domestic terrorism.
If someone is going to plan a Charlie hebdo-esque operation, no intelligence can help you. They can just meet at the park for a cold drink and discuss which weapons they are going to use. Intel agencies rely very much on tip offs from civilians and private interests like banks and shops/malls "guy came in looking dodgy and bought a ton of slightly dangerous stuff" kind of thing.
The same way USPS doesn’t go around opening letters and getting rid of whatever they don’t like.
Bad news...
They scan the outside and sometimes X Ray the mail though...
Plus, "they only freely open mail from out of country" transfers really poorly to Signal.
That’s the entire point though, right? The politicians and law enforcement agencies want a way to provide those same exceptions for encrypted communications.
> During an all-hands meeting, an employee asked Marlinspike how the company would respond if a member of the Proud Boys or another extremist organization posted a Signal group chat link publicly in an effort to recruit members and coordinate violence.
Like it or not, something like this will happen eventually and Signal will become aware of it, if only through the press. It only makes sense to have a policy framework to deal with these things rather than flying by the seat of your pants. Perhaps the policy will be "we won't take down group chats without a court order", or perhaps it will be something else. But to just punt until a link to some folks planning a lynch mob arrives in press@signal.org is irresponsible both to the platform and to the society.
More importantly than group links is what happens to Signal when someone realises that they can change people's public keys on a whim. Although the app is supposed to display a notification in that case, they can also change the app on a whim.
Fundamentally, I just do not see how Signal's social goals (which are laudable) are compatible with their chosen implementation. Marlinspike's arguments about centralisation vs decentralisation and the moving ecosystem are all valid yet in the end it doesn't matter. He identified a problem and basically ignored the where his chain of logic led, i.e. that he would need to figure out how to keep up with a moving ecosystem in a decentralised way. Otherwise, the end game is easy to anticipate: they bend and start swapping public keys silently, either due to police pressure, or pressure from internal activist employees, or pressure from Google/Apple.
“what we do need is good tools for users to be able to control who gets to communicate with them on Signal”.
Which it quite likely did, but the author chose to take only the first bit out of context to fit their chosen narrative...
I don’t want Signal to moderate my chats in any way at all. I do want my friends/family to easily be able to only choose to receive messages sent by people they wish to hear from. Which is, at least so far, exactly how things are. I guess these new “group chat links” make a difference, but it’s not like you are ever forced to click and join such a group. I don’t want the internet to be censored or shut down just because some people choose to participate in 4chan/8kun...
Bad example because the USPS can and does use x-rays, Geiger counters, and sniffing dogs to inspect packages without actually opening them. No analogous tooling exists for encrypted messages.
That's enough to start modelling.
There are people out there who fundamentally believe that no one should be able to think or speak free from their scrutiny.
The American media is a fantastic machine for manufacturing a bogeyman then discarding it once it is no longer useful for narrative purposes.
Never let a good disaster go to waste.
Seems like free speech is on a tight rope after the "insurrection". Sure didn't waste any time.
Next, I seriously expect Amazon and Google at some point to turn on the microphones on all Echo and Home devices and make sure that nobody ever says anything outrageous in their private homes. Failing that, report them to the authorities, or better, doxx them with social media mobs.
Why not? I put a cover over my laptop cam.
However, new tools for combatting abuse on the Airvibe network are being researched, including implantable vocal modulators and persistent environmental smart home microphones. For parents concerned about what their kids are hearing on Airvibe, CBS News recommends substituting Airvibe time with safe platforms monitored for misinformation like Facebook or Youtube.
I think this is what the Republicans would have you believe, but I think the left extremists are more about simply pursuing people who they believe as toxic to wherever they retreat.
Who says that? People, myself included, don't want specific harmful for society groups to be allowed to speak free, not that nobody's allowed to say anything.
Yes, nazis should not be allowed to speak free. And no ramblings about privacy here on HN will ever change my mind.
In fact, I'd be happy to sacrifice my own privacy if we can root out the evil of racism, nazism, terrorism, and other things that absolutely everybody agrees are bad.
That being said, I think the frameworks used to prevent that at the moment have a lot of potential for abuse, especially from private companies. And it's something that should be improved upon, and normal people should have privacy as much as possible.
I believe that two consenting "nazis" should be able to speak privately on e2e platforms, mainly because this is the same mechanism that will let consenting marxists, christians, muslims, satanists, pro-life advocates, pro choice advocates... escape mainstream outrage.
I realise this is a security risk, in the same way that not having microphones everywhere in public spaces is a security risk.
Child exploitation and plotting terrorist acts are the "biggest hills to die on" in this space, but investigators have always had "targeted" means to deal with these without resorting to mass surveillance. I believe existing powers are adequate to investigate these crimes.
I'm also generally ok with mainstream censorship of broadcast or social media. Public speech is a different animal.
So, who decides, or is there a cutoff on what percentage of people must believe an idea for it to be allowed to be communicated?
And as such it doesn't make sense to write down a specific definition like "groups that goals are to harm others" or similar, even though that would cover pretty much everything. Ideally there would be a public organization, not aligned with specific political groups, making the decisions in a transparent way. Or some sort of a body like WHO where countries can take part in. It's a complex topic, that I don't have a perfect solution for.
You might say it's "groups that goals are to harm others"
Someone else might say it's anyone who doesn't support progressive policies because to do otherwise would cause harm to people, many of which are "marginalized" and "under-represented".
Let's see if we can agree on what a nazi is before we start figuring out what people are allowed to say and think in private.
>Ideally there would be a public organization, not aligned with specific political groups, making the decisions in a transparent way.
Good luck with that.
I don’t need an algorithm to tell myself that nazis are bad.
But once you want to censor other people, you need to come up with an algorithm deciding what’s censorable or not. So… where’s your threshold ?
As to how to recognize it, I think it's easy for humans to do so. And how do we train computers to recognize it? Well, if we can teach it to recognize cars, bikes, etc from photos I'm sure extremist ideology shouldn't be impossible to achieve with some helping hands from people.
And besides, as I said in another comment. I don't have all the answers, just like I don't have an answer on how to teach computers to recognize X in photos flawlessly, but I think this is something we should start working on.
And in case you don't follow, it's because the Nazis were very pro animal rights.
It isn't, not even when you are one of those who thinks "anyone who disagrees with me must be a nazi"—meaning that in theory you could just train a model with things you like and things you don't like and label the second group with "nazism"—because your opinions can and do shift often too and so the model would become outdated by the month, if not by the day.
> And besides, as I said in another comment. I don't have all the answers
And yet you speak with such certainty, as if you did. On that note, in your first comment you proclaimed that you were willing to sacrifice your privacy, and yet you used an anonymous account to make that declaration.
People should be allowed to say that they wish to improve something, even if they don't have the exact scientifically proven step by step way to actually implement it. We are allowed to say that wars should end, that people shouldn't die of hunger, and so on - even if we don't have the exact step by step plan on how to implement it that we can share on HN.
And sacrificing my privacy doesn't have to mean that it's open to public, it refers to actually being able to enforce certain rules. If I were to do something that's illegal on HN the authorities would have no problem finding me.
> People should be allowed to say
Well, you're not going to find disagreement on that area from me; everyone is, or should be, indeed allowed to say anything. As I understood it, you were arguing otherwise.
> We are allowed to say [...] even if we don't have the exact step by step plan on how to implement it that we can share on HN.
And other people are similarly allowed to argue with you on anything you might say if they so choose. That's the point of a free exchange of ideas, I think.
> And sacrificing my privacy doesn't have to mean that it's open to public
But... Something is either public or it's private....
Anyhow, not only you suggested that I was attacking you for no reason, but you also brought up "wars" and "hunger" and I don't particularly understand why, and this now seems like an attempt at equivocation. Hopefully I'm just misinterpreting, but I don't feel like you are trying to argue in good faith.
Like the ministry of truth, huh?
That's why the left constantly describe anyone who isn't on the left as Nazis, even though they clearly aren't. Free speech requires absolutism - the moment you make an exception of the form, "well ... but not for them" suddenly the term is redefined and huge swathes of people are being dumped in that bucket regardless of reason or evidence.
I'd be happy to sacrifice my own privacy if we can root out the evil of racism, nazism, terrorism, and other things that absolutely everybody agrees are bad.
The people who talk about racism the most are by far the most racist people in society. They manage to be racist whilst claiming to hate racism by redefining it to not be about race, but perceived "power" where "power" is entirely subjective. Hence they can hate on white people whilst claiming to be fighting racism.
Again, the lesson is simple. All free speech must be protected to the absolute end. The moment you make an exception, leftists will en-masse attempt to redefine the word used to delimit the exception to encompass anyone who isn't on their side.
The right isn't above this sort of behaviour either, see the abuse of "terrorist" to mean random people in Afghanistan in the first years of the millenium. But I haven't seen much of that lately. As of 2021 this behaviour is definitely more common on the other side of the hall.
Besides, the whole "free speech must be protected to the absolute end" is such a stupid thing to insist on. Here in Germany that's not the most sacred thing, do you know what the article 1 of the german basic law is? "Human dignity shall be inviolable." - and guess what, we're not some dystopian racist hellhole.
The way these terms are actually used in 2021 has nothing to do with the classical definitions. Rather, Twitter warriors describe anyone who votes for Trump as a racist Nazi. The terms have become unmoored from their original definitions. And as a German I am sure you're aware that this problem of redefinition happens there too.
Here in Germany that's not the most sacred thing, do you know what the article 1 of the german basic law is? "Human dignity shall be inviolable."
German law is crap then. That statement is vacuous, means nothing and can be interpreted in whatever way the government wishes to whatever end the government wants. The US First Amendment is vastly superior and I'm not even American: it is crisp, fairly specific and applies to a very small group of people (Congress).
As for not a dystopian racist hellhole, no, Germany isn't. Neither is the USA, so using Germany to try and make a point about free speech doesn't seem very relevant. China is such a place, if the reports of concentration camps for Muslims in the west are true, and they also have no free speech. So the correlation between free speech and being non racist seems pretty good.
Back when there were only 3 TV networks that reached the whole of the US, would you have argued that anyone with a POV should be able to get some time (how long?) on one of those networks, "because free speech" ?
Free speech never meant the ability to demand the use of any mechanism or any resource to reach a real or hypothetical audience. Changing the definition because lots of people chat on social media doesn't cut it, I think.
Those radio and TV networks were, before the internet, the only way you could broadcast to the nation, or the city, or the region or whatever. If you wanted to reach many people and not in print, you had to be on them. As you note, this is no longer the case.
The resource you want access to is, variously, either the internet itself or (e.g.) Signal's audience. You don't need Signal for the former, and you don't have any constitutional or moral right to the latter.
Even so, I agree you have neither a constitutional nor a moral right to anything of Signal's in any case. And yet, the world would be a better place - for all people, Signal's staff and shareholders included - if they gave it freely. Nobody is obligated to spend their own time or effort to improve the world, but if we want the world to be a better place then somebody has to.
The more accessible unfettered communication is, the better the world is able to become. Full stop. Restrained communication is less capable of improving the world, because restrained communication is less capable of changing the world at all, because those invested in the status quo have incentive to restrain communication which could make change.
Secondly, in the case of a company such as Twitter, which can censor based on content, they are free to say that they think that the world is a better place if they do indeed play that role. You may disagree with them. I might even disagree with them too. But they are free to take that position, and I would contend that requiring them to follow your instincts on this is, in the long, a greater harm than figuring out net neutrality rules for the wiring (so to speak).
It will be a much better world where someone kicked off Twitter can move to Twotter or Trotter or Titter or Tatter, than one where Twitter is told what to do by governments.
Secondly, there is no reason we cannot have it both ways. A single communications company with content-neutral policies is helping the world more than one with content-sensitive policies. Two communications companies with content-neutral policies in competition with one another may be better yet, but that does not make Twitter choosing to censor its users the right thing for them to do. I have not said the government should tell Twitter what to do, only that they should choose not to censor because that makes the world a better place.
There is a growing contingent of people, especially younger people, who do not understand how free communication underlies the ability to make any change at all. Who do not see that creating the tools to censor conversations harms the future. They see immediate benefits in clamping down on this or that harm (temporarily ignoring that they're making themselves the arbiters of right and wrong and giving them the power to declare what is or is not a harm in the first place) but not grasping that they will not be in control of those tools in perpetuity.
The primary risk to Signal at the moment seems to come from Google and Apple, not internal employee dissent.
Also, it does not hurt to point out that unlike Facebook, which is wired for clicks and "user engagement", Signal does not spread or profit from hate speech and disinformation, which is what got us into recent developments, but rather works like a private chat. So perhaps we have already made some progress by having these people switch over--their recruiting is likely to be severely affected if they rely on Signal for it.
> Bernstein (disclosure: a former colleague of mine at Vox Media), added, “You could see a lot of jaws dropping. That’s not a strategy — that’s just hoping things don’t go bad.”
So what's the alternative, exactly, when you are supposed to keep things encrypted between users? Either you are a conduit or a publisher, you have to choose.
Then Signal is no more culpable than any other chat service over which OTR or similar could operate.
Edit: wording.
What about the park rangers maintaining the forests?
I'm glad to see Signal is aiming to just be privacy-oriented law-abiding infrastructure.
I took it as a sign that they were telling us not to trust them as clearly as they were allowed. For secure communications I'm using Jami now and I've been very impressed. For SMS/MMS in general I'm still looking. I've tried a few alternatives and frankly I'm not really happy with any of them.
Sadly I've had very little luck getting my family to move to Signal and less luck getting them to use Jami. The bulk of my communications are unsecured SMS/MMS. It's such a basic function that I'm surprised open source solutions aren't better. Whatever they've become Signal had a pretty great interface.
One difference is tech companies, including "foundations" like Signal, are not federally regulated in the way that telephone companies are.
Absent privacy, change in our world becomes impossible.
I really can't believe it. I can see any commercial application like What's App or FB or TWTTR being coy about speech and not having the privacy of their users in mind, and bending to prevailing winds --not having fast principles.
But Signal? Signal? Do these idealist engineers not envision the comms that can happen on e-e encrypted systems? They don't think criminals, hooligans, spies, unsavory people, sex criminals, drugs dealers, arms dealers, etc. would use the network?
Oh, but boy, wait, what if people in whose politics we don't believe in use it? Oh, noes. In this case we have to be careful and raise concerns --but those other things, no, that's why we believe in freedom of speech and e-e encryption.
Sigh.
They believe in things, until they don't. Which means they don't truly believe in the principles they said they believed in.
What's that old saw, I believe in freedom of speech for the people I agree with?
Moxie should get up there next time and say: "If you only believe this product should be used by people you agree with, then you took the wrong job".
It's like the Komsomol have come to town.
Also, personally I don't think signal should compromise the quality of their product though. E2E is too important.
I mean WTF do they think? Only "their" revolutionaries can use the app, but others can't?
It's like TOR. It can be used by dissidents but it can also be used by enemies of the state, yet the state believes on balance TOR does good.
Just because it's a stupid insurrection doesn't mean it's not an insurrection.
- A group storming the capitol of the US after being fed a steady stream of lies regarding an election result, with the President himself pushing them to go.
versus
- A group protesting after yet-another-person-of-color was murdered, pushing for equality and a check on police brutality.
Totally checks out. ;P
The extremest fringe of the summer protests was burning cop cars and and a courthouse in one instance. There was even an area that declared itself an Autonomous Zone. That is insurrection. Not going to achieve anything though so everyone ignored it at the time. It wasn't any more of a problem than the Capitol riots.
I am not; I'm comparing the movements that led to each situation. You want to compare extremists, but the extremists are not the point - they'll always be there. The intent of the movements that caused these actions to happen are what matters, and it's fairly clear which side each falls on.
Many of those instances of violence in the summer protests were reactionary and driven by police exercising unnecessary force, which has been documented in troves of video.
Those who participated in the DC incident on the 6th were driven by a stream of misinformation, which has _also_ been well documented at this point.
One wanted to believe in conspiracy theories and support a failure of a President, going so far as to listen to him to attempt to overthrow the government. The other one just wants equality.
>There was even an area that declared itself an Autonomous Zone.
Yes, I live down the street from it. Having experienced it and lived around it, I would not classify it as anything remotely close to what was seen on January 6th in DC.
A government installed by the people is a principle that compares on similar footing to equality.
It was weaponized patriotism, not misguided patriotism.
There's also nothing to be gained by doing so. Most likely your family and friends and co-workers, given your area, are of a similar mindset, so there's no social capital to be gained. It's unlikely that it will net you a better job or higher paying salary, or make your life easier in any way.
Seeing other viewpoints can help with compassion, though, and that might be a necessary ingredient for a society. Not that that's your concern: an individual is negligible to the behavior of the collective.
Why would I ever change my opinion to gain social capital, or make my life easier? I base it off of documented events; we've all lived the same past year whether people want to believe it or not.
It's simply not rationalizing when an individual looks at these two events that are clearly different in buildup, intent, and outcome, and then chooses to not view them the same.
Trying to bait someone with this stuff feels really old school internet, but not in an effective way.
We could probably have an interesting conversation in person, maybe even a meaningful one; but on the internet that's pretty much impossible. I certainly don't expect to change your mind, or even to convince you there's a possibility you might be wrong. You don't seem to have anything particularly new or insighful to add, so it's unlikely my opinions will shift. So there's not really a point in having a discussion, at least not in a format where we need to type out long comments and do point by point rebuttals.
And in any case other people are already doing the point my point contentious debate thing with you, and it doesn't seem to have much of an effect on anyone so it's a pretty obvious waste of time.
You seem the argumentative sort though so feel free to respond to this and explain why I'm wrong about whatever. I'll be drinking scotch and I do recommend that instead, but whatever you decide have a nice Tuesday night.
And look I can only speak for my city since I was there but calling the protests violent is technically true but misleading in the way “there was a fight” is misleading in zero tolerance school policies. Being at the front of the protest was terrifying because the police were itching for any excuse to escalate and purposely obstructing people, grabbing and pushing the crowd daring someone to push back. Tensions are already high and the police acting like schoolyard bullies doesn’t help, and finally some guy finally breaks with a “get your hands off me” they get pulled down to the ground and start getting beaten, people step in to defend the guy and pull the cops off him, more cops rush in and boom — “violence.”
The shit at the Capitol was absolutely moronic and they had basically zero chance of achieving their goal but the intent was there and that’s really what matters.
So, you mean like hypothetically taking over 6 blocks of downtown Seattle and declaring it an autonomous zone?
Not even trying to play, if the Capitol shit was actually a sit-in a la #OccupyTheCapitol then I would be here defending their right to protest.
I find that everyone who comments about this zone on here is not actually from Seattle, and just firing off the same talking points.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did...
You deserved it."
They had knives and zip ties and intended to take hostages. The fact that they are incompetent does not obviate their intent.
It's just the nature of true encryption. You take both the good and the bad, we've known this for a while now.
All I see here is evidence of a sensible team pondering about the future of their product in light of recent events, both the potential for their platform to be abused, and let’s face it, the potential for their platform to disappear off the face of the internet if it becomes the platform of choice for an unsavoury audience. Neither of which they have much control over.
I would be more worried if people at Signal were not thinking about this, debating the issues and reflecting on the direction of their product.
I thought the article (despite the over-egged headline) was interesting and not particularly hysterical.
What I don’t see here is anyone actually suggesting they compromise E2E or any of the fundamentals of the product that we like in Signal.
I feel strongly that Signal needs to stay moving in the direction it’s heading - which is to be a no-bullshit, secure, E2E encrypted, reliable and open platform with none of the data-hoarding of its rivals.
I do not see any harm in Signal self-reflecting in particular in light of recent events.
A “head in the sand” approach seems worse. I’m surprised by the cynical comments here so far. How about we take a charitable read of this?
The potential? Seriously? There is no question a service like this will be abused (Let's ask Erdogan this question). No serious criminal is going to NOT consider using Signal as a comms medium. People who need to evade snooping will use it. People who need privacy will use it.
As for the other. For this product, either you believe in your principles or you don't. It was the whole premise of the product. Without it, there is no need for it. There are "better" (easier) alternatives.
It's like building a back-up product and saying, you know, we could save costs by not always reliably having the expected data. Yes, true. But why have your product in the first place?
It's probably helpful to look at a less emotionally charged principle like "customer focused". If your company enshrines "customer focus" as an inviolate principle, and nobody's comfortable discussing the value or meaning of "customer focus", you won't end up with a laser focus on the customer. You'll end up rudderless, because anyone skilled at office politics can justify whatever they want to do by declaring it customer focused.
...which was handily rebuffed. You're overstating it.
The question is: How much liberty and privacy are you willing to give up to prevent that from happening again?
For me, the answer is zero. The next batch of idiots are welcome to come and take their turn getting arrested next week. It is offensive and disturbing yes, but not a real threat to democracy. And there's no 8chan in prison, so this problem will sort itself out eventually.
There are 2 approaches to fixing this.
1 is to undercut the roots of radicalism and polarization. I would say to do that by radically redistributing wealth and democratizing government. Yes, the capitol stormers mostly weren't poor, but Trumpism is in large part a reaction of horror by small business owners at being squeezed by monopolies, and what popular support they have would evaporate if the government fixed things instead of being run as the public relations firm and personal military of all the large companies put together.
2 is to instead double down on physical repression (by funding police) and digital repression of dissenting viewpoints by abolishing any right to privacy. This seems to be the direction we're heading. It already happened in large part under the last few presidents but Signal is obviously in the crosshairs.
I'm not mad at you. But I am frustrated that this obviously bad approach has support - of not dealing with root causes and material problems, but committing to suppression of beliefs on both the right and left that are obviously a reaction to those root causes.
Would you be taking this principled stance if this was an insurrection on the Iranian parliament?
You don't think this is over-egging the custard a bit?
I didn’t get that from the article unless I genuinely missed something.
The specific hypothetical was if the Proud Boys were to recruit people for coordinated violence and not “what if I don’t like someone’s politics?”
> Oh, but boy, wait, what if people in whose politics we don't believe in use it?
Coordinating violence and recruiting people to participate in that violence isn’t a political stance.
Not really. It's weaponized privacy. Freedom of speech for thee (when it's expedient to my political goals) but not for me.
Breaking US law isn’t covered by the First Amendment and coordinating violence is breaking US law.
I don't agree when insurrection and violence is deemed 'political activism' or 'free speech' in countries like Iran, China, North Korea, etc.
Privacy should not come at the cost of data ownership
"Concerned "Parents" are worried that video games might cause kids to become violent murderers kind. "
This is just mainstream media and their lackeys blowing up things out of proportion just to prevent Signal from getting popular.
When terrorists and cp distributers are using your platform which of your ideals will take precedence?
Why is the left now so into policies that they decry when done in other countries: social scoring, travel bans, censorship? What is going on? Is the US going through it’s version of China’s Cultural Revolution?
There is a growing idea especially among Americans that all "left" people are authoritarians. It's even funnier because the idea of "terrorists and cp distributors" using encryption to bypass regulation was floated in your Congress was almost verbatim the reasoning behind the EARN IT act, introduced in Senate by Lindsey Graham, whom I hope you don't think is on the left. It went on to receive bipartisan support as well.
“The app saw a surge in usage during last year’s protests for racial justice, even adding a tool to automatically blur faces in photos to help activists more safely share images of the demonstrations. This kind of growth, one that supported progressive causes, was exciting to Signal’s roughly 30-member team.”
“But as the US presidential election grew closer, some Signal employees began raising concerns that group links could be abused. On September 29th, during a debate, President Trump had told the far-right extremist group the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” During an all-hands meeting, an employee asked Marlinspike how the company would respond if a member of the Proud Boys or another extremist organization posted a Signal group chat link publicly in an effort to recruit members and coordinate violence.“
““The world needs products like Signal — but they also need Signal to be thoughtful,” said Gregg Bernstein, a former user researcher who left the organization this month over his concerns.”
————
You do know that there was also coordinated violence in the BLM protests.
And yes, I know about that bill and that it was supported by Republicans. In fact, I linked to it in an earlier comment prior to your comment.
This power is ripe for abuse and power like this has been abused in the past in the US. Why would you think that it wouldn’t be abused again?
Example, what the FBI did in the 60s including to MLK.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–King_suicide_letter
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
Illegal surveillance against people deemed subversives. Taped MLK’s affairs. Sent it to his wife and him. Told him to commit suicide.
Another example: More recent history as revealed by Edward Snowden shows that the government basically recorded all phone calls and grabbed all Google data on you, etc...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden
Who is willing to invest this power in government? Apparently, for some ridiculous reason, you are more afraid of those Capitol Hill nut jobs than the CIA and FBI? You know the CIA that overthrows governments like that of Iran. You know the FBI that spies on sitting Presidents. Compare that to the nut jobs who organized publicly on Facebook and Twitter and decided to take selfie’s and posted to social media?
Would you be for or against this if Trump won a second term?
How do you moderate content you are not expected to have any access to by design? And if the answer is to not have encryption, then when activists or groups that are being actively targeted and threatened need secure communications but find none, who is that on?
And frankly it’s a near certainty they already do. I know drug dealers do at least.