for quite some time Signal has been in the spotlight of various countries, since the use of message encryption "is not good for them", for their part Signal believes that banning encryption would be unrealistic, because the access and use of encryption should promote the full exercise of the right to privacy, to which many governments criticize encryption and have implemented measures to prevent or restrict the ability of organizations to encrypt data.
Countries like Pakistan, India and Cuba ban encryption and require organizations to obtain permission to use encryption methods.
The Indian government is among those who disapprove of encryption, believing that it only allows criminals to evade detection and threaten the security of the nation and the public. For some analysts, while the Indian government is wrong, that hasn't stopped it from trying to impose backdoors or outright ban encrypted communications.
“We strive not only to keep the content of your messages and your contacts private, but also to collect as little data as possible while providing a functional service,” said Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal. We are distinguished from our competitors by the fact that our mission is to provide a private application and that we are not tied in any way to the surveillance business model. We have a very different model and a very different mission. »
Signal has made it clear that it will not comply with any order requiring it to compromising its encryption, which means that the Indian government's imminent threat of undermining the security of its citizens will remain moot if it implements this legislation.
The Foundation Signal is a non-profit association. The Signal Messenger app is under the auspices of this non-profit organization and the foundation exists solely to support the messaging app. So, in more colloquial terms, we can think of Signal as a non-profit organization. This means that Signal has no shareholders and no capital.
“Therefore, we have no structural incentive to prioritize profit and growth to the detriment of our core mission. And you won't see a billion-dollar exit coming: We're not waiting to strike it rich and move to a super yacht. So it's a different structure, a different model,” says Meredith Whittaker.
Signal is based on a sustainability model that is based on donations and a non-profit model, rather than secretly monetizing data in the background or engaging in the surveillance business model, which is the dominant paradigm in the tech industry. .
“That's the case across the tech industry, but not so much in messaging. I would like to insist a little on this point. Obviously, there are messaging services that scan everything you send on their service and then try to monetize you based on what you say. Every time I hear it, it seems completely crazy to me, but it is his universe”, adds the president of Signal.
By contrast, Signal's competitors, such as iMessage and WhatsApp, claim to be fully encrypted. Obviously WhatsApp is owned by Facebook and there is a lot of controversy about it. There is also a connection to Signal, Brian Acton, who was a co-founder of WhatsApp and is now on the board of Signal. These services would be inherently encrypted.
WhatsApp uses the Signal encryption protocol to encrypt your messages.
“It was absolutely a visionary choice that Brian and his team made at the time, and I commend them for that. But you can't just do that and stop at message protection,” says Signal President Whittaker.
On the other hand, WhatsApp would collect information about the profile of its users, profile picture, who is talking to whom, who is a member of a group.
This is powerful metadata.
Signal, as stated before, is a non-profit organization. She would not have access to data like Facebook.
“We avoid having access to this data. We do not buy, sell or trade your data. It is a different paradigm. We cannot point the finger at WhatsApp, no matter how cleverly marketed, and say that it is truly secure and private. All these details lead us to conclude that it is not. Well, Signal exists for precisely that purpose,” says Meredith Whittaker.
The Signal protocol and the main cryptographic primitives it uses to guarantee confidentiality and security are open to consultation. According to Signal's president, people with specialized training and skills have spent thousands upon thousands of hours reviewing Signal's code.
“Every time a new piece of code is uploaded to GitHub, there are people in the Signal community forums looking at it, commenting on it, and figuring out what functionality could be derived from it. There is an active and vigilant community that verifies Signal's claims against the crypto code and protocol we use, time and time again, says Whittaker.