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Comment by fmajid | Hacker News Reader

She's the lady who was fired by Google in retaliation for organizing the walkouts that protested the big payout Andy Rubin got despite being found guilty of sexual harrassment.

So she's got both principles and guts, good to know and a positive sign for Signal. Not enough to overcome the taint of its initial funding by the US Government, its unnecessary and privacy-busting requirement for phone numbers and the stench by association of cryptocurrency, but who knows, she may be able to influence away from that.

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> its unnecessary and privacy-busting requirement for phone numbers

https://signal.org/blog/building-faster-oram/

> It lays the groundwork for the introduction of usernames and phone number privacy which will offer new privacy controls around your phone number’s visibility on Signal.

So not so much unnecessary as it is hard to implement privately. But it should be on its way.

Does "initial funding by the US Government" really matter? Tor was funded by the US Government and it at least looks like they struggle to break it.

The phone number requirement is asinine and the reason I use Matrix, as I refuse to tie any identity of mine (even those I don't care about keeping private) to a phone number. Has Signal never heard of SIM swapping?

“Has Signal never heard of SIM swapping?”

Of course they have. Signal also has opt-in protection for that.

So by default Signal accounts are vulnerable to a known security issue? Great design!

Are you aware of any secure messaging systems where no trade-offs where made? If so, please let us know.

>it at least looks like they struggle to break it.

Do they? Their FAQ basically says that if your adversary is a nation state we aint gonna be much help.

I think they focus much more on anonymizing against ISPs and have basically thrown the towel in on defending against, say, correlation attacks by nation states.

My family has been using Threema, which doesn't require a phone number.

Proprietary? No thanks. Even Signal open-sources their client.

https://github.com/orgs/threema-ch

I'm not sure what is proprietary...https://threema.ch/en/open-source

Oops ... :/

I can't edit my comment to correct it now, but in my defense Wikipedia says it's proprietary

> and it at least looks like they struggle to break it.

As I understand, that depends entirely on where you stand on the theory that the US government owns most of the exit nodes.

That said, the practical threat profile for most people is lower-level criminals and advertisers, so Tor is probably still a good idea in any case.

Ok, but we can agree that doesn't seem to be a designed-in defect, right? The fact they took funding from the US doesn't seem to have ultimately mattered for the answer to this question.

Is the whole internet tainted due to it having its root in a US goverment funded project?

Or she'll lead Signal on the same path Mozilla went after Mitchell Baker took over where political signalling has taken the place of product market share - not to mention personal remuneration taking the place of development funding. The fact that she gained name recognition through political activism does not bode well in the former respect, as to the latter we´ll just have to see.

I will keep on using Telegram with XMPP (prosody running on the server-under-the-stairs) as a backup for when they go bad. If Signal truly opens up, adopts federation and the client ends up on F-Droid I may reconsider but until such a time I'm happy where I am right now.

Why not Matrix?

I agree the way Brendan Eich was treated is a disgrace, and Mozilla's governance and misplaced priorities are at the root of its increasing irrelevance.

Not Matrix because I've been running XMPP since it was a thing, also because it is a standard which works everywhere. I'm not opposed to Matrix but XMPP+OMEMO do quite well for now so I have not had a reason to jump ship. If I feel that need Matrix is one of the options, as is something like Delta Chat which uses SMTP and as such interacts with everyone and his dog without the need to convince them to install some app or open an account on some site.

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