I don't trust Signal

> Off the bat, let me explain that I expect a tool which claims to be secure to actually be secure. I don’t view “but that makes it harder for the average person” as an acceptable excuse. If Edward Snowden and Bruce Schneier are going to spout the virtues of the app, I expect it to actually be secure when it matters - when vulnerable people using it to encrypt sensitive communications are targeted by smart and powerful adversaries.

I'm not so sure about this. I don't think Snowden and Schneier are praising it because it is the most secure application available that works for every threat model; I think they're doing it because it's the best attempt to up the security of the masses. In other words: there's a limit to its threat model. Signal makes it harder to do mass-scale surveillance, and allows e.g. whistle-blowers to contact journalists without standing out because they're using an encrypted messaging app.

Yes, it's important to highlight those trade-offs, and one can always do better, but as far as I can see Moxie has always justified the trade-off with arguments that were not based on being self-serving. You might not agree with his conclusions, but I think it's unfair to accuse him of being self-serving. (Unless you mean "thinking about the consequences for the success of Signal" by "self-serving". It's not really clear how it serves Moxie otherwise, and the author doesn't go into detail about that.)

In the end, I think it comes down to the author expecting different goals from Signal than the project itself has - as implied by his disdain for GIF search. Obviously Signal isn't only implementing features just to get more secure - it also wants to be widely adopted. It's just that the author apparently doesn't consider that as important.

OWS's staunch refusal to permit anything other than phone numbers as identifiers should tell you everything you need to know about Signal.

It is an authenticated, nonrepudiable communications platform using identifiers that are very difficult (possible, yes, but most people will get it wrong) to comprehensively anonymize.

The ability to present nonrepudiable communications to a judge is precisely the wet dream of law enforcement officers, ambitious prosecutors, and despotic regimes everywhere. All they need to do is flip the people you're communicating with, and you're done.

I don't actually endorse any of the alternatives, just listing them. I haven't had time to research them in depth. I have worked with Tox before and I know some of the guys behind it, though, but I think it's dead in the water.

Signal is not for state-proof encrypted communication. Not large states like the USA or Russia. If you think it is, you've been misinformed. For state actor proof communications you need to evaluate every action you take and think:

"What are the assumptions that I'm making here?"

One assumption is that you're not currently on anyone's radar. Are you willing to bet the entire enterprise on this assumption? How certain are you? Are you 99.999% certain?

Another assumption is that the operating system you are running the app in is not compromised on either end of the communication. 99.99%?

Another assumption is that the screen isn't viewable by other devices. Another assumption is that the frequency of your key taps aren't picked up by a mic and then turned into intelligible letters.

Another assumption is that the encryption algorithms you're utilizing haven't been subtly chosen to be intelligible to a single actor or that they'll stay secure once we have quantum computers.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

Signal is good because it raises the bar. Stock traders buying black information probably won't get your communications. They won't be scooped up in a email server leak. They wont be visible to your wife when she enters your phone's unlock code because they auto delete, and they don't get pushed to your iPad, like FB messenger[0].

But if you want to go up against James Bond, and you're already on his radar, you need to give up the illusion that anything computer related is fully trustable. Just pre-arrange some code words or OTPs and meet in person in an area without electronics or go even more old school and use dead drops with hand written communication.

[0] I personally know 3 people that were caught cheating this way.

e2e, by nature, is client specific. So Matrix, as a connectivity glue protocol, has nothing to do with it.

Synapse, the reference server, can handle rooms, and force encryption on the rooms.

p2p is client side. Riot, as reference client, is the one that takes care of this, and, if I get everything right, it is on by default.