Australia

Opening up private company communications to the government makes that data a huge target for foreign intelligence and criminal organisations. Even our allies will happily pass on valuable company secrets to their own companies. Everyone is out for themselves. The software our government uses to analyse data will generally be closed source and supplied by a foreign power and not sufficiently audited.

Unfortunately our politicians are dangerously ignorant about the techological risks to national sovereignty and our economy. So they rely on often dubious advice from parties with a vested interest that is opposed to the public interest.

It's pretty convenient for sharing new account/access passwords which is something I need to do occasionally. In the back of my mind I keep hearing a voice saying 'you could do this more securely if you thought about it for a moment' but I just ignore the zealot in my skull.

DiHydrogen Monoxide can kill you!

Stop, they night actually fall for this. Recently all my sense of normal and impossible behaviour had been called into question.

As our esteemed PM Malcolm Turnbull said way back in 2017:

"The laws of mathematics are very commendable but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia"

additionally if the app is compromised these "extremists" will just move to one that isn't.

I swear COVID made people forget that actions have consequences. You can't just change something and expect all other things to be equal.

There are a number of good alternatives. Signal wins because it's well known, easy to use and install. Governments are targetting private communications, not a specific app so their entire class is under threat and alternatives that can be backdoored will be.

It's all very short sighted. If you really want to stop private communications you have to outlaw all people with technical knowledge and access to general purpose computers. I can cobble something together that is secure enough for a criminal or terrorist to communicate with freely available software but it won't be full featured or nice to use.

Taken to the extreme this thinking ends with sending all the people with glasses to "work" some fields in the country because intellectuals challenge the security of the regime. That makes no fucking sense in a liberal democracy. So why even start down this path. Get a warrant and surveill people at the end points. It's the only acceptable solution.

Signal?

Just download the .apk directly from the signal website.

Or from the github repo

Or download it through f-droid

Or install Obtainium

Threema is a good option. Not an easy option, but a good one. It uses the Signal protocol, but your private key stays on your device, and you manaage which users you trust to save their public key for communicating with them yourself, including giving three levels of verification for (1) if it's a random person and you have no way of verifying who they are, (2) if it's a person whose ID matches someone in your address book, and (3) if it's someone you've met in person and scanned a verifying QR code.

Its just pressure from the ASIO chief (our NSA equivalent) at this stage. No legislation.

The Signal CEO is rightly firing back saying it'll never happen, and if push comes to shove they'll leave.

We're trying desperately to outdo the UK....

Yep. And meanwhile the kids will be chatting/abusing in Google Docs. Or IRC servers they spin up for free in AWS or whatever. Or, shock, SMS.

Yes it would be, let's hope more companies follow that example. The more companies that make it clear that Australian politics are never an excuse for compromising the privacy and safety of their users the more hope there is that the message will start to get through. Plus we could serve as a salutory warning for the rest of the world... "Wow go down the path of driving whole market segments out of your economy has bad effects on that same economy."