13 ms·
SignalGate Is Driving the Most US Downloads of Signal Ever
- bentobean 2y agohttps://archive.ph/28qJL https://archive.ph/28qJL
- freejazz 2y agoProbably because people are realizing that it has the auto-delete feature that the Whitehouse is DEFINITELY not relying on in having senior staff communicate on this platform.
- duskwuff 2y ago> that the Whitehouse is DEFINITELY not relying on No need to speculate; The Atlantic has the deets. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/signal-group-chat-attack-plans-hegseth-goldberg/682176/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/signal-... From the first screenshot: "Disappearing message time was set to 1 week."
- hypeatei 2y agoI think GP means "relying on" in the "avoiding official record keeping" sense rather than the feature being used literally. You could explain away the latter as a bug or accident, BUT given the brazen corruption of this admin, they're probably using it intentionally to skirt existing laws or procedures.
- freejazz 2y agoYes!
- alabastervlog 2y agoThere is zero reason for them not to just blatantly avoid keeping legally-required records. They illegally fired the watchdogs put in place after Nixon (practically the only fucking useful thing we did about that—the laughably weak handling of the Watergate affair, and, shortly after, Iran-Contra, sent us well down the path we're possibly seeing the end of now) as one of their first acts, and nothing bad happened. Nothing they've done to evade legally-required scrutiny and oversight has brought them any trouble at all so far. Why would they stop?
- cozzyd 2y agoyeah, I mean if you can accidentally added to group chats where you can obtain classified information...
- egberts1 2y agoFinally, a positive form of Streisand Effect!!!
- ingohelpinger 2y agoI think this is also due to Skype announcing it's shutting down.
- satisfice 2y agoExactly. That has driven me and several colleagues to Signal. Plus, you never know when a MAGA will share incriminating info with you. Extra bonus!
- jeffbee 2y agoDisappointed to see that even Wired is falling into the frame of the scandal being the accidental inclusion of a member of the public in a sensitive chat. Once again, Wired, the scandal is that the VP and the members of the cabinet are categorically forbidden from using Signal for any reason.
- alabastervlog 2y agoAFAIK they can use it for stuff they're not legally required to keep records on. ... which very much does not include most of the contents of the exchanges in question.
- jeffbee 2y agoThere is literally nothing that can transpire between the VP and the SecDef that would not be subject to the PRA.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lenerdenator 2y agoIf I didn't know any better, I'd say these people were acting like they were picked by a convicted felon who acts like he's above the law, mainly because his experience tells him that he is.
- mywittyname 2y ago> his experience tells him that he is. Well, also the entire government said as much, including the the AG, whose belief is a sitting President can't be indicted, and SCOTUS, who claims basically, that the President can't engage in illegal acts. The only theoretical mechanism left is impeachment, but if the impossible happens and Congress does vote to remove, the administration will ignore it, or have SCOTUS rule against it. It just depends on how above board they care to pretend to make it look.
- 2y ago
- k310 2y agoTo every veteran and aerospace engineer who honored the classification of information, this incident and likely prior ones, is horrendous and criminal. Violators are immediately arrested and charged. I hate to see top-level exceptions to both record-keeping and mishandling of classified information. That's where they do the most damage. As others have noted, the flaw in using Signal on consumer phones is due to vulnerabilities in the phone itself. And it was wrong to use consumer phones. That said, I was recommending Signal to friends in order to have online discussions, using the conferencing feature, since it is cross-platform and cross-device. However, one friend lost their Apple login and can't install software on their phone. I sent a very long explainer on how to reset it. Guess I'll try face-time conferencing, which works on Apple Devices [0] and will work with others via web [1]. Requires ios 15 or Monterey to initiate. We have been using free, limited, zoom sessions. [0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/111767 https://support.apple.com/en-us/111767 [1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/109364 https://support.apple.com/en-us/109364
- jonny_eh 2y ago> We have been using free, limited, zoom sessions. How secure are those?
- lazide 2y agoVery insecure.
- toyg 2y agoYou can be secure in the knowledge that the Chinese Communist Party can and will eavesdrop on any session.
- KennyBlanken 2y agoSignal is end-to-end encrypted. Signal makes it very difficult to even tell what parties are talking to each other (though if you have nation-state-level internet tracking, you can probably tell.) Signal doesn't know anything about you except your number or screenname, when you signed up, and when you were last active. Zoom is none of those things and the grandparent commenter has no idea what they're talking about.
- Vinnl 2y agoThe main question is whether this will lead to a flywheel effect, where adoption is self-reinforcing. Because we've been seeing that in the Netherlands, a small country that is nevertheless now in the top 5 countries with most Signal users, where growth is now 25 times the usual rate. That is still a quite higher rate than: > the week’s rate of adoption has been twice that of a typical week for 2025, which in turn was twice that of a typical week the same time last year. Market penetration here is getting significant enough for more and more people. [1] https://signalapp.nl/signal-app-nieuws/nederland-top-5-land-voor-signal-veel-meer-gebruikers-dan-gedacht/ https://signalapp.nl/signal-app-nieuws/nederland-top-5-land-... [2] https://signalapp.nl/signal-app-nieuws/nederlanders-kiezen-massaal-voor-signal-dagelijkse-registraties-met-2500-gestegen/ https://signalapp.nl/signal-app-nieuws/nederlanders-kiezen-m...
- upofadown 2y agoIf Signal gets too popular then server costs will become significant. Signal needs a viable business model to survive. The big weakness here is that there is only one entity that can run the servers. If that server goes away then any attempt to start it up again would have to do so at the high level of usage that originally killed Signal. Signal is, alas, merely a project. It will never morph into something like email that can withstand server running entities disappearing. So huge popularity could actually be a bad thing...
- chimeracoder 2y ago> If Signal gets too popular then server costs will become significant. Signal needs a viable business model to survive. Signal is an incredibly lightweight design. If all users donated $0.60/year, or 5¢/month, that would sustain operations and overhead. Compared to most other services, that's an insanely low cost per user. EDIT: It's actually way less than even what I remembered - they only need about $0.60/user/year in order to break even, not $3/user/month.
- jacksnipe 2y agoSure, but how would they go about capturing that money?
- yalogin 2y agoThe more interesting part for me is, this is just one instance we found out because they screwed up. I am sure there are many many more of these channels where national security details are discussed. Signal still is hosted in the US, do we know how much they will fight if the government asks it to retrieve someone's messages? I don't know if I trust messaging apps that are already pandering to the administration to keep my data safe or fight to not decrypt my data.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Vinnl 2y agoTheir shtick is that they won't have to fight much, because they can't turnover someone's messages. Here are some examples of where they were legally compelled to turn over everything they had, and they did - but it was roughly nothing: https://signal.org/bigbrother/ https://signal.org/bigbrother/
- Xelynega 2y agoThis schtick is just that, a schtick thats only as strong as whoever is fighting against it... https://www.devever.net/~hl/webcrypto https://www.devever.net/~hl/webcrypto
- vluft 2y agoWhat does that article have to do with Signal?
- Xelynega 2y agoSignal is an app whose distribution is controlled by the same people that say they don't have access to your data. They could at any point push an update that decrypts your messages locally and pushes them decrypted to a server. The only way to prevent this would be to verify each binary update to signal matches the source code, and no modifications have been made to the source to do this. Is that part of your "signal update" routine?
- Mr_Eri_Atlov 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- sleepybrett 2y agoI don't understand why someone, under guidance from the NSA and others, hasn't built a hardware/software platform for secure communications for yahoos like this. Leak any classified data on a normal phone even in an e2e encrypted app, straight to jail. Get your phone rooted by pegasus or whatever the newest chinese/israeli/whoever 0 click exploit and your fancy signal data is wide the fuck open. It's literally insane to me.
- ponector 2y agoTheir boss (president) is a convicted felon. Do you expect them to go to jail for such incident?
- Vinnl 2y agoAs I understand it they do all have a hardware device they can use for secure communications. Presumably, it's just more of a hassle.
- beng-nl 2y agoYeah, they refer to it as “high side” in this group chat..
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bastard_op 2y agoWell if it's good enough for the president to discuss with chiefs bombings and his latest grift, than I suppose it's good enough for me.