In City Journal, conservative activist and author Chris Rufo aim We asked the leadership of secure messaging app Signal, “Has the integrity of the encrypted messaging application been compromised by the Chairman of the Board?” This article follows a recent line of criticism. struggled NPR CEO Katherine Maher, who serves as Signal Foundation Board Chair, and Meredith Whitaker, Signal Foundation President. This article also raises concerns — echoed By Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey – On the app’s credibility given its ties to left-wing activists and US government seed funding.
While we agree with Mr. Rufo’s concerns about Signal’s leadership’s outspoken left-wing views and activities, we also acknowledge the app’s core security and broader Internet Freedom Program as a vector for domestic surveillance and censorship. I do not agree with his wariness of false characterization.
In contrast to Signal’s lone anarchist founder, Moxy MarlinspikeMeredith Whitaker and Katherine Maher are both unapologetically progressive activists. radical view About the information ecosystem, online discourse, and the values the technology industry should support.Before Signal, Whittaker gained attention as a leading employee agitator. strike Activities at Google and Stop The company works with the Department of Defense purge Kay Coles James, then-Chairman of the Heritage Foundation, on the AI Advisory Board;
Maher, who previously worked at the Wikimedia Foundation, Web Summit and the progressive advocacy group Access Now, has a similar ideological background.As a magazine “Reason” put that:
Mr. Maher’s past tweets would be difficult to distinguish from satire even if one came across them by chance. Her earnest, uncompromising wokeness — land acknowledgment, condemnation of Western holidays, etc. — sounds like it could have been written by a parody account like Babylon Bee or Titania McGrath.
Here, Mr. Rufo’s criticism is completely fair, and Signal’s board chooses a less controversial leader while promoting intellectual diversity to better reflect its global user base. You may benefit from this.
your enemy’s enemy
But the fact that Signal is run by anti-government, anti-business, privacy maximalists like Whittaker, who has built a career opposing cooperation between technology and government, also makes Signal a tool of the surveillance state. This tells us that the possibility is low (needless to say). (founded by an avowed anarchist). The involvement of leftists like Mr. Maher and Mr. Whitaker is best explained as a reflection of the tech industry’s coastal elite cultural bubble, rather than evidence of a specific conspiracy.
Let’s take a closer look at Signal’s alleged ties to the government. Open Whisper Systems, the original developer of the protocol, received a set of seeds. Subsidy From a State Department-funded initiative called open technology fund, a nonprofit organization that provides grants to support open source Internet freedom projects. OWS was later disbanded and incorporated under the Signal Foundation. However, its open source encryption protocol has been widely adopted, vetted by security researchers, and integrated into apps like Facebook Messenger, Skype, and WhatsApp.
OTF’s programs have supported many Internet freedom tools, including virtual private networks, the Signal protocol, and Tor. In addition, Intel, Tesla, Qualcomm, appleand Google.
The federal government has many legitimate policy interests in funding technological tools unrelated to surveillance, such as foreign policy, geopolitical security, and economic competitiveness. In particular, the U.S. government’s Internet Freedom Program is a direct result of Cold War anti-communist radio and television.
Ronald Reagan 1950s Crusade for Freedom commercial raises funds for radio Free Europe
www.youtube.com
These tools currently support journalists, opposition parties, and dissident movements operating in authoritarian regimes such as China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran.For example, during the Hong Kong democracy movement, the signal rose sharply To become the number one downloaded app.Similarly, signal usage increased rapidly During the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war. When used with a VPN, secure messaging access becomes a powerful freedom tool. Rufo’s article cites anonymous sources and claims that the State Department and OTF are “using open source Internet projects created by the hacker community as tools for American foreign policy goals.” surely. This is a feature, not a bug.
OTF has its origins in the project of Radio Free Asia, a sister organization of Radio Free Europe, which was founded in response to the Tiananmen Square massacre and the growing threat of communism in Asia. OTF was then spun off as an independent nonprofit organization chartered by Congress with funding from the U.S. Agency for Global Media under the Trump administration. USC 22 § 6208a.with Mission With the aim of “advancing internet freedom in repressive environments by countering censorship, combating repressive surveillance, and supporting technologies that enable all citizens to exercise their fundamental human rights online.” , OTF stands at the tip of the spear and helps support freedom movements around the world.
In the 20th century, America used radio and television broadcasts to spread freedom behind the Iron Curtain. In the 21st century, OTF has breached the Great Firewall, giving people living in authoritarian countries access to free and open information from around the world. OTF aims to fund internet freedom projects such as VPN, Tor, and Signal. Assure Journalists and dissidents have “unrestricted access to uncensored sources of information via the Internet.” OTF is legally required only to support technologies that are fully open source and auditable to ensure the communications security of the technologies it supports. O.T.F. enabling law requires “comprehensive security audits to ensure that such technology is secure and has not been compromised.”
If this isn’t enough, any government attempt to implant a secret backdoor would have to pass through a robust technical community and global security. researcherwho can review and verify its source code github. Maher, a non-technical executive who joined the board in 2023, is unlikely to have had any involvement in the company’s codebase.
For a federal agency like the State Department, learning of the existence of a backdoor can be Vulnerability equitization processIt requires federal agencies, including law enforcement and intelligence agencies, to disclose known exploits under certain circumstances that undergo independent review and pose a significant risk of misuse by foreign governments, criminals, or other bad actors. It is mandatory to do so.In the black market, Russian-backed hackers Recruitment Signal’s zero-day vulnerability cost as much as $1.5 million.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
To claim that Signal is insecure or untrustworthy because of indirect funding from the State Department fundamentally misunderstands the origins, mission, and practices of both Signal and the U.S. Internet Freedom Program. become. Importantly, such thinking risks driving people in the following directions: much less secure Alternatives like Telegram, SMS, iMessage, etc. Telegram’s CEO was an enthusiastic Signal; critic, messages on that platform are not yet encrypted by default. In addition to being open source and end-to-end encrypted, Signal also has the added benefit of metadata encryption, phone number hiding, and quantum-proof cryptography.
The Internet Freedom Program and its analog predecessor programs have historically had strong bipartisan support, including from Republicans like Newt Gingrich and Ronald Reagan. Ruffo’s criticism here should be a warning to internet freedom advocates against putting lightning rod activists in leadership positions and fostering a partisan ideological monoculture.
Considering the views of the federal government; length history From J. Edgar Hoover to the Patriot Act, a basic level of skepticism and even paranoia is understandable when it comes to the misuse of surveillance tools. Civil liberties advocates on both sides of the aisle are right to question and challenge the security of communications platforms, including Signal. But Signal’s role as an indirect instrument of U.S. policy goes beyond just an app for secure messaging. It strengthens American values and protects the freedoms that define an open society.
Created as open source software, minimize What you collect and run on hostile servers, who’s on your board of directors, where your funding comes from, etc. doesn’t really matter all that much. What matters is how it is used in the world. In this regard, Signal and related programs such as Tor, VPN, and OTF have been huge policy successes and are worthy digital successors to the programmatic efforts that helped bring down the Berlin Wall and end the Soviet Union. .
