Signal Pulls Out

[FrodoSwaggins]

Stealth messaging app Signal likely to retreat from Sweden in the face of a new privacy-busting law planned by legislators:

Signal intends to exit Sweden should its government amend existing legislation essentially mandating the end of end-to-end encryption (E2EE), an identical position it took as the UK considered its Online Safety Bill, which ultimately did pass with a controversial encryption-breaking clause, although it can only be invoked where technically feasible.

"Either it's a vulnerability that lets everyone in, or we continue to uphold strong, robust encryption and ensure the right to privacy for everyone. It either works for everyone or it's broken for everyone, and our response is the same: We would leave the market before we would comply with something that would catastrophically undermine our ability to provide private communications."

https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/26/s...om_sweden/
Cribbing from V for Vendetta, his majesty's United Kingdom has sought to extend its already vast domestic spying powers since 2016, and is credibly accused of requesting a government backdoor in Apple's encryption:

The law was expanded in April last year with the passing of the Investigatory Powers Bill, which further increased the UK's digital surveillance capability with a range of new powers.

These include allowing intelligence agencies and law enforcement to gather Brits' internet connection records, revealing the services they connected to and when. The bill also made provisions for authorities to gather data en masse from sources with little to no expectation of privacy. Such examples include footage from CCTV cameras and images posted to social media.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/07/h...oor_order/
Apple has declined all such requests, instead opting to reduce the quality of its encryption in the UK market, which apparently satisfies or sidesteps government requirements without instituting the backdoor. At any rate, news like this does not bode well for Signal.

[gorzek]

I will migrate to whatever E2EE app is available even if it's not technically "legal." To hell with this crap.
I love Signal but I will ditch it if they have to pull out of the US. Not much they can do about that.
It's a very bad sign that countries are deliberately undermining encryption, though. They always claim it's to combat crime and terrorism, but depriving people of strong encryption means everyone is more vulnerable to having their data stolen. Of course, governments also want these backdoors for domestic spying and political persecution.

[antipelican]

Good on Signal for paying attention and actually intending to take action if E2EE is compromised. I guess the bar is in hell, but it's still the encrypted app I trust the most. Just remember E2EE is useless if authorities gain physical access to unlocked phones, or bad actors are screenshotting/recording messages -- my rule of thumb is to never message something you wouldn't want read in a courtroom no matter how "secure" the platform is.