The contention that some encrypted instant messenger might be better than encrypted email has not aged very well with Cellebrite's cheerful reminder that even l

The contention that some encrypted instant messenger might be better than encrypted email has not aged very well with Cellebrite's cheerful reminder that even low level attacks like forensic boxes get saved Signal messages. Things like Signal depend on a forward secret protocol in concert with a user willing to immediately delete their old messages to prevent such data exposure. It turns out that such users are rare. Encrypted email can be done exclusively in very safe places and the secret key that protects both the transferred and saved messages can be protected very well. This is entirely because of the difference in the mediums. Email can be completely locked up in any sort of dangerous environment because it is inherently offline. Something like instant messaging has to expose the secret stuff all the time to produce all the time access. There might be people who like to LARP their encrypted email and that is a legitimate thing to do. There are people that actually need the level of security that can be provided by an asynchronous messaging system like encrypted email.