Not everything government-funded must be government-backdoored, that is quite the conspiracy theory for an open source application. You can also download the A

Not everything government-funded must be government-backdoored, that is quite the conspiracy theory for an open source application. You can also download the APK directly from the website (not using Google's store), which will self-update, and will function also if you don't have Google Play Service on your device. There are caveats, like if you firewalled off Google services because outright removal will mess up other apps and an alternative ROM with µG means no more (proper) camera app: in that case Signal will detect Google Play, wait indefinitely for the push message via Google, and thus not function at all. So I don't like to defend them on this front, but it's simply not true that it's impossible to use without a Google backdoor on your phone.