Signal is a fantastic app that you should probably be using for much of your communication with your friends and colleagues, as I shared a few months ago. However, it’s been in the news recently for some misuse by the government. If Signal is a solid, secure app, then what’s the problem?
There are really two issues at play here:
- If you’re a government official, you shouldn’t be using standard devices like the rest of us use, which seems to be the case here. Even though Signal is secure, the use of an off-the-shelf phone in the hands of high-level government officials is not wise.
- The stuff that makes Signal really good, like their full encryption and ability to auto-delete messages, is not good for government record-keeping.
This was explained very well by Sanjay Parekh on a recent episode of the Tech Talk Y’all podcast, and I encourage you to check it out.
Hillary’s emails
For many, this brings back memories of the email scandal that Hillary Clinton found herself in a few years back. She had done something somewhat similar, using a private email server rather than the official government setup. There’s really no taking sides here, as both parties broke the rules: what she did was wrong, just as what our leaders did in the Signal case was wrong.
At the end of the day, though, this is proving how valuable Signal can be for you and me. Text messages are very insecure, so using Signal for most of your daily communication is a good thing (and you can find me on there if you’d like to reach out). Signal is free and you can find it here for Android, iPhone, Windows, Mac and Linux.
If you work for the government, though, maybe stick to the approved channels instead.
