U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid unprecedented cyberattack

More like 23 years ago when the Patriot Act was signed, and every time it has been re-authorized/renamed since. Every President since Bush Jr. is complicit, and I'm getting most of them in the previous 70-ish years (or more) wish they could've had that bill as well.

They knew, they were putting backdoors when they needed them.

Now the new administration will take half of the blame in public opinion (that's how this works) and also half of the profits, so they won't investigate too strictly those who've done such things.

But also words don't cost anything. They can afford to say the obvious after the deed has been done.

If its not Open Source and Audited yearly, its compromised. Your best option for secure comms is Signal and Matrix.

Well yeah, to use RCS on Android, you need to use Google's Messenger app, so they can absolutely still get your data. Source from GrapheneOS.

I don't use RCS because I refuse to use Google's Messenger app. Simple as.

RCS is an industry standard, not a Google thing.

Yes, like Signal!
Which does not only use end-to-end encryption for communication, but protects meta data as well:

Signal also uses our metadata encryption technology to protect intimate information about who is communicating with whom—we don’t know who is sending you messages, and we don’t have access to your address book or profile information. We believe that the inability to monetize encrypted data is one of the reasons that strong end-to-end encryption technology has not been widely deployed across the commercial tech industry.

Source: https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/

I haven't verified that claim investigating the source code, but I'm positive others have.

No, BPs are a risk. Better to avoid apps that require phone numbers

In the voice of Nelson Muntz: "Nobody spies on our citizens but us!"

The reporter mentioned signal, though the gov spokespeople didn't seem to recommend any specific app

Use something where the client is open source.

When a whole nation's communications are intercepted by another entity, yes, the bad part is that it's another nation. Especially an adversarial one.

This is not about individuals' personal privacy. It's about things that happen at a much larger scale. For example, leverage for political influence, or leaking of sensitive info that sometimes finds its way into unsecured channels. Mass surveillance is powerful.

Yes. Wars happen. Even corrupt politicians are nicer when their control base is inside the country.

It was always recognized.

Every time I go to the Interwebs and read what people have to say on security, it's always the same high horse absolutism.

I've read Attwood's book on Asperger's syndrome a couple weeks ago. There such absolutism was mentioned as a natural trait of aspies, but one that, when applied to social power dynamics or any military logic, gets you assroped in jail.

People who want to spy on you or read all your communications understand too that general security suffers, but just not having that power is out of question for them, and also with the power they already have the security effect on them personally won't be too big.

It's a social problem of the concept of personal freedom being vilified in the Western world via association with organized crime, terrorism, anarchism, you get the idea.

It's not hard to see that the pattern here is that these things are chosen because they challenge state's authority and power, because, well, subsets of what's called organized crime and terrorism that can be prevented by surveillance are not what people generally consider bad, and anarchism is not something bad in any form.

What's more important, people called that do not need to challenge the state if the state is functional, as in - representative, not oppressive and not a tool for some groups to hurt other groups.

As we've seen in all the world history, what's called organized crime and what's called terrorism are necessary sometimes to resolve deadlocks in a society. It has never happened in history that a society could function by its formalized laws for long without breaking consistency of those. And it has never happened that an oppressed group\ideology\movement would be able to make its case in accordance with the laws made by its oppressor.

Why I'm typing all this - it's not a technical problem. It's a problem of bad people who should be afraid not being afraid and thus acting, and good people who should be afraid not being afraid and thus not acting.

I use some decoder ring I found in a cereal box, it's totally secure.

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I mean, clearly not the SAME people.

Att won't make money off that unless they offer it as a paid service. No reason to give that away for free and the other cell carriers can just pay off (bribe with campaign contributions) legislators to understand encryption is "too costly to implement at such a scale"

You mean RCS?

I'll raise you one better: use Signal (or simplex.chat if you're cool). Google and Apple control RCS, and carriers can still sniff metadata. Cut both groups out with a proper messenger.

We've long had NSA slides that showed Tor and e2ee solutions as "disastrous" to their visibility.