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How would this be any different to creating a global back door in signal, wikr or slack?

The main difference is that by building their own honey pot, they did not have to rely on an external actor to maintain any secrecy.

If they dug their claws into wikr, they'd have to worry about leaks from every single person involved with wikr on top of all potential leaks from law enforcement personnel.

Also, I suspect it's easier to get the warrants needed to create a sting from the ground up than it is for several different law enforcement agencies around the world to each get separate warrants to access wikr/slack/discord/whatever's data.

Once the data legally exists in a law enforcement database, it is relatively simple bureaucracy to share it with allied organizations.

What I mean is they’re effectively breaching the privacy of any perfectly legit users. They’ve done this in the past with stuff like mobile tower spoofing. Why is this ok, and mobile spoofing not, ethically?

Wickr is almost certainly compromised anyway.

Never trust an app that neither charges for its use (like Threema), nor takes donations (like Signal Foundation).

Wickr's funding is a huge mystery. Approach with caution.

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