“Signal is being blocked in Venezuela and Russia. The app is a popular choice for encrypted messaging and people trying to avoid government censorship, and the blocks appear to be part of a crackdown on internal dissent in both countries…”

  • ivn@jlai.lu
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    5 months ago

    I don’t get it, are you really arguing that Russia and Venezuela are blocking Signal to protect their citizens from American snooping?

      • QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Isn’t the whole point of something like End-to-End Encryption so that not even the company themselves can read your messages?

        In that case it wouldn’t matter even if they did turn the info over.

        Edit: I read more into the page you linked. Looks like those NSLs can’t even be used to request the contents either way:

        Can the FBI obtain content—like e-mails or the content of phone calls—with an NSL?

        Not legally. While each type of NSL allows the FBI to obtain a different type of information, that information is limited to records—such as “subscriber information and toll billing records information” from telephone companies.

      • ivn@jlai.lu
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        5 months ago

        My question was more about the motives in this case.

          • ivn@jlai.lu
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            5 months ago

            The question of what should be done can be interesting, but that was not my question. It’s obvious this is not the motive here.

            If you are in your own country opposition it’s better to use a foreign tool, even better if it’s in a country that’s not gonna collaborate with yours.

            • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
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              5 months ago

              I imagine just using metadata you can look for people who are discontent, then provides list of those people to the opposition to contact and mobilize them and get them to protest.

              Or target them with stories and bots to turn them into a revolutionary force, but that would be more useful for social media networks instead of signal.

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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        5 months ago

        Mass censorship is never good for civil liberties. Let people decide on there own.

        Also Signal is cryptographically sound. Many other messagers use a similar protocol

        • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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          5 months ago

          As I commented below, US security forces aren’t that interested in message content anyway, since they don’t have time to parse through every message to construct meaning. Signal does require your phone number tho, as well as message timestamps, meaning they can build social graphs of real people. Tons of metadata living on a single US-based server.

          • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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            5 months ago

            It doesn’t matter if it is US based. You shouldn’t trust the server.

            Signal has known issues. That doesn’t mean it is entirely bad though. Saying things like Signal is insecure is simply untrue. It has weaknesses but it also has the benefit of protecting your messages completely and being well established.