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Comment by crooked-v | Hacker News Reader

There are already government e2e apps. The only reason to use something else is to have selective auto-deletion and/or to use personal devices for official classified data.

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Another reason: all of the folks on that group chat have legitimate reasons to have contacts on their phone that would be outside government apps. Foreign leadership. Journalists. Etc.

Signal is likely to be one of the main ways of communicating with those.

Using separate apps for government and external communication might have prevented the recent scandal.

It wouldn't actually. The contact in his phone (incorrectly added by Apple AI from a forwarded email) would be the same regardless which app he was using.

Instead, Signal (and this forked version) would have to do its own independent contact management, maybe based on in-person scanning of QR codes plus web-of-trust.

The contact (a journalist) wouldn't be reachable on a government messaging app.

Signal does have its own contacts management and doesn't have to be allowed access to OS-native contacts.

If only it would a- not ask you to access your contacts and b- accept when you say no instead of saying "we'll ask again later" (and then, indeed, asking again later).

Do you have the link to this alleged government-produced e2e software so we can inspect ourselves? I realize they have an incentive to appear incompetent, but surely there must be evidence (further than your testimony) of such gossip popping up somewhere

There are not just government e2e apps, but government-provided and customised smartphones specifically for them, like the DMCC-S programme. [0]

Some of the apps are listed in that brochure.

There's no excuse for using Signal on personal devices for classified conversations.

[0] https://www.disa.mil/~/media/files/disa/fact-sheets/dmcc-s.p...

Are the apps usable? The jargon seems intentionally impenetrable. The editor of that document should be shot every time they used an acronym. Like i get the DOD is a profitable dick to suck but this is just embarrassing for a document intended for the public.

Anyway can you link the source? That's presumably the useful half. The marketing bit doesn't add anything.

I don't care how usable they are, this is the DoD and NSA-approved mechanism for conducting classified conversations and viewing classified data on mobile devices. The adversaries here are other countries who are very good at what they do, security is far more important than convenience.

As for further research, there's plenty online about his programme and these devices. Feel free to Google it yourself. You're asking to be spoonfed.

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