> No, intentionally spoiling evidence — or “spoliating,” to use the legal term — is definitely not legal. > Neither is hacking somebody’s computer, which is wh

> No, intentionally spoiling evidence — or “spoliating,” to use the legal term — is definitely not legal. > Neither is hacking somebody’s computer, which is what Signal’s blog post is saying a “real exploit payload” could do. It said, “a real exploit payload would likely seek to undetectably alter previous reports, compromise the integrity of future reports (perhaps at random!), or exfiltrate data from the Cellebrite machine.” All of those things are a violation of the federal anti-hacking law known as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or CFAA, and probably also of many state-law versions of the CFAA I'm not sure if that will hold in court. You can argue that the Signal app has built in hacking defenses. A more common case would be that Signal app detects that it is being hacked by Celebrite and self destructs (i.e. deletes all data) -- that's what an iphone does, if you make too many passcode attempts. In this case Signal jokes that it might counter hack even, but since it's a defense to being hacked in the first place, it shouldn't illegal.