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Signal downloads spike in the US and Yemen amid government scandal | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 14 points 2 years ago (12 children)

It just about always comes down to user error. The White House trusting Signal is very indicative of the effectiveness of the app's underlying protocols and the organization's commitment to privacy. This is definitely huge publicity and I hope Signal endures the limelight.

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  • [–] 48 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (7 children)

    LOL what kinda bullshit comment is this?

    The people in the White House are idiots. They choose Signal because they're either dumb/negligent -or- because they have been intentionally avoiding record preservation requirements.

    Signal is a solid app for sure, but these dipshits didn't choose it for being the right tool for the job here, as it certainly is not.

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    -or- because they have been intentionally avoiding record preservation requirements.

    It's this one

    dipshits didn't choose it for being the right tool for the job here, as it certainly is not.

    It was, actually. If they weren't dipshits it wouldn't have been a problem.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago* (3 children)

    Signal, on your personal device, is fine for personal use. It is absolutely not fine for classified communication as the VP or head of DoD, as there are billions of dollars dedicated to compromising your phone.

    The encryption doesn’t mean shit if they breach an endpoint or account.

    If it was strictly personal chat, yeah, no problem, but they just have to assume the messages are being read by other nations.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    That's absolutely correct. Everyone seems to fixate on the encryption, but hackers are lazy and they'll attack whatever is weakest. In this case that means the storage on the phone after it's decrypted.

    Don't store classified information on your phone, regardless of what you use to transmit it.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Or better yet, do whatever the heck security experts tell you to do. I can only imagine what’s standard procedure for the president's cabinet.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago*

    I wholeheartedly agree the White House is full of morons. I was just saying that Signal is a solid app for me to securely share bullshit with my family. Its definitely not the right tool for government officials to use. But its plenty safe for sharing memes and pics of my dog.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    The white house trusting signal is nice, but using it to circumvent official communication tools which document messages for the archives is not the way it should be used - they used the "disappearing messages"-feature as well. This usage is more in line with criminal organizations like the mafia or yakuza.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I believe some people have been ordered to archive the chat so that it can be presented to Congress in the future. Trouble is, looking at the screenshots it's already gone as they had the message lifetime set to a week.

    I wonder if this will be seen as destroying evidence .

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