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The ergonomics of PGP are awful. The author's appreciation of Signal is valid, except for one caveat: what if your phone has malware? That's all your fancy Signal crypto out the window. It's the usual argument of: `A chain is only as strong as its weakest link`.

My point is: there are other factors to consider besides advice like: `Just download Signal and you're golden`.

Edit: I'm referring to people casually saying: `Download Signal and you'll be fine` and not pointing out other OPSEC practices we all need to follow, regardless of threat model. (Not clicking on malicious links sent via SMS etc).

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Can you describe a system that is effective when your phone has malware?

I have a little experience with this, designing systems that use TPMs and remote attestation to shut down communication rather than allow forgery or leaks. It’s very delicate to begin with, even if one entity owns all the devices, and unsolved for the general case.

But iOS and ChromeOS seem pretty good.

> Can you describe a system that is effective when your phone has malware?

I'm referring to people casually saying: `Download Signal and you'll be fine` and not pointing out other OPSEC practices we all need to follow, regardless of threat model. (Not clicking on malicious links sent via SMS etc).

other OPSEC practices we all need to follow, regardless of threat model.

That doesn't really add up - a goals of things like more secure phones and secure general purpose messengers is explicitly to provide a high level of security without following a bunch of OPSEC practices. You aren't going to get mass adoption of more secure systems by insisting everyone take up OPSEC practices 'regardless of threat model'. The aim is to reach that adoption through systems that offer a lot of security without a lot of security-related ceremony. It's sort of inherent in the notion of mass adoption.

> Can you describe a system that is effective when your phone has malware?

There is no such system. However, there are phones based on FLOSS, which you can trust and verify: GNU/Linux phones.

Do you know of some interesting research in this area besides maqp's https://github.com/maqp/tfc?

doesn't that apply to PGP too? you could still have a key logger or malicious kernel modules or whatever.

> you could still have a key logger or malicious kernel modules

Nobody says that.

> Nobody says that

Are you aware of the old jokey phrase, `Use Tor. Use Signal`?

Yes, and I'm aware of why it's jokey.

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