Moving from WhatsApp to Signal is an important action, right now. WhatsApp’s parent company, Meta, has been involved in several cases of election interference: America in 2016, Trinidad and Tobago …
I will use the opportunity to remind that Signal is operated by a non-profit in the jurisdiction called “the US”. This could have implications.
A somewhat more anarchist option might be TOX. There is no single client, TOX is a protocol, you can choose from half a dozen clients. I personally use qTox.
Upside: no phone number required. No questions asked.
Downside: no servers to store and forward messages. You can talk if both parties are online.
You can use Signal with a different client. Signal being operated within the US has no effect. As of now the jurisdictions that I know of to be worried about are:
The White House both in Trump’s first term and in Biden’s presidency were pro-encryption. Signal and Tor were US government funded projects. That’s not to say the US is great on encryption, and there have been laws in the past that did/were proposed to limit it. But, as of now, it seems that the US is the most hospitable jurisdiction for encrypted messaging non-profits.
I will use the opportunity to remind that Signal is operated by a non-profit in the jurisdiction called “the US”. This could have implications.
A somewhat more anarchist option might be TOX. There is no single client, TOX is a protocol, you can choose from half a dozen clients. I personally use qTox.
Upside: no phone number required. No questions asked.
Downside: no servers to store and forward messages. You can talk if both parties are online.
You can use Signal with a different client. Signal being operated within the US has no effect. As of now the jurisdictions that I know of to be worried about are:
The UK, where Apple was recently ordered to remove end-to-end encryption features, and have been gagged from talking about it
Sweden, where a law is proposed to add an encryption backdoor
The EU, where leadership is pushing for an encryption backdoor
My understanding is that the Indian government under the BJP and Congress has been pretty consistently anti-encryption, and violated privacy rights
France arrested the founder of Telegram for using end to end encryption in Telegram
Australia in 2018 passed a law that enabled the government to require communications platforms add a backdoor for government decryption. The Director of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) said that “privacy is important but not absolute”. Which reminds me of “this is not about human rights, this is about human life.”
WhatsApp was previously suspended in Brazil for refusing to hand over decrypted messages.
China and Russia are very obvious problems. Here’s an easy one of many examples
The White House both in Trump’s first term and in Biden’s presidency were pro-encryption. Signal and Tor were US government funded projects. That’s not to say the US is great on encryption, and there have been laws in the past that did/were proposed to limit it. But, as of now, it seems that the US is the most hospitable jurisdiction for encrypted messaging non-profits.