Why isn’t Signal just a Free and open source, infrastructure-less p2p solution? Maybe the goal isn’t really security or privacy after all...
Great question! It's a good way to make it easy for general-purpose users with limited technical expertise to adopt, use, and find one another.
> Seems pretty weird for a “secure” program.
You're right! It's definitely weird, but it's also understandable as a tradeoff in favor of less technically adept users. It's not one I'm in love with, but I think it makes sense.
> And why does it use AWS? Isn’t that subject to all kinds of privacy risks including National Security Letters?
The risk from NSLs depends a lot on what is hosted. If it's opaquely encrypted blobs, there's minimal risk. And where could things be hosted that wouldn't be subject to privacy risks from a government of some sort?
> Why isn’t Signal just a Free and open source, infrastructure-less p2p solution?
That's such a good idea that Signal is already a Free and open source solution!
That said, nothing is ever actually infrastructure-less, just like no data store is actually schema-less. There's just explicit infrastructure and implicit infrastructure. Implicit p2p infrastructure is not immune to governments or NSLs, and is often subject to more by virtue of being in more countries.
You can find any number of infrastructure-less p2p solutions. The number of users they have compared to Signal might be illuminating.
If you think that, just by making authorities know your phone number is registered on Signal is dangerous enough for you to be arrested, you should not use Signal.
Signal, like any other software, can not solve political, or dictatorship. Signal is a chat app, not a magical tool, even if it is helpful for those objectives. That's what we mean when we says "security is layered".
So, if your government have unlimited resources (that is to say, they can simply arrest and sentence you if they *think* you *may* using Signal, Telegram, Whatsapp, Tox chat, ..., without judicial review), then maybe Signal is not your biggest problem.
Whether or not AWS is risky, I don't think signal has any increased risk hosting their infrastructure on it vs. any other service. The whole point is that comms are end-to-end encrypted from handset to handset, and so any data in Amazon's hands is encrypted.