I agree that it's somewhat a deflection, too, and I wish the Telegram team wasn't so stubborn about at least studying the Signal protocol and perhaps making its

I agree that it's somewhat a deflection, too, and I wish the Telegram team wasn't so stubborn about at least studying the Signal protocol and perhaps making its own version, if it doesn't trust it by default. I don't know if their "math Ph.Ds" would know how to do that, though. That said, I think it's pretty clear that WhatsApp does have a way to allow the FBI to snoop on users: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/13/whatsapp-backdoor-allows-snooping-on-encrypted-messages https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/13/whatsapp-... I know it's controversial and many don't believe WhatsApp would actually use it like that, but I don't buy it. Either they already use that "feature" as a legal intercept or they're about to do it at least in the UK, where Snoopers' Charter passed and the law is vague enough to force them to do something like that. It may happen in Australia, too, if the new anti-crypto bill passes. I still trust Signal for now, but I'm not sure whether or not their server-based solution will be so backdoor-proof against future bills, and I think they should be prioritizing decentralizing Signal somehow. EDIT: Sigh, Germany, too: http://fortune.com/2017/06/14/germany-fingerprint-children-spy-messages/ http://fortune.com/2017/06/14/germany-fingerprint-children-s...