These are all exact reasons I have never used Signal.
Additionally I find concerning the choice to bet the farm on SGX which has been repeatedly broken with repeated opportunities to extract the keys, at which point cracking small numeric pins is trivial.
Moxie simply promised they always patch right away and never take the keys when they have such opportunities to do so.
I do believe him, today, but I don't believe he is above being threatened or coerced tomorrow or that he won't get replaced by someone that cooperates better with state powers as happened with VK and countless others.
I also took issue with Signal having central network metadata chokepoints his DCs or ISP could do timing heuristics on even if he does not.
I tried to engage with Moxie about these issues but he dismissed each as things we will mostly have to accept because he feels it is not possible to create and rapidly improve a privacy focused communication tool for the masses that isn't produced and controlled by a single large company.
Moxie is brilliant, and his contributions to cryptography and bringing education on privacy and end to end encryption to millions can't be overstated.
The problem is Moxie and Signal are struggling to engineer best efforts under an assumption they treat like a law of nature: No end to end end encrypted messaging platform can succeed without complete centralization.
I operate under a different assumption: No centralized platform will ever escape censorship and control by the government it operates under.
Moxie has said before he is happy to be proven wrong.
I hope as Matrix and others continue to prove him wrong with his own cryptography research that he comes around and rejoins the fight for a decentralized internet with irrevocable privacy.
Additionally I find concerning the choice to bet the farm on SGX which has been repeatedly broken with repeated opportunities to extract the keys, at which point cracking small numeric pins is trivial.
Moxie simply promised they always patch right away and never take the keys when they have such opportunities to do so.
I do believe him, today, but I don't believe he is above being threatened or coerced tomorrow or that he won't get replaced by someone that cooperates better with state powers as happened with VK and countless others.
I also took issue with Signal having central network metadata chokepoints his DCs or ISP could do timing heuristics on even if he does not.
I tried to engage with Moxie about these issues but he dismissed each as things we will mostly have to accept because he feels it is not possible to create and rapidly improve a privacy focused communication tool for the masses that isn't produced and controlled by a single large company.
Moxie is brilliant, and his contributions to cryptography and bringing education on privacy and end to end encryption to millions can't be overstated.
The problem is Moxie and Signal are struggling to engineer best efforts under an assumption they treat like a law of nature: No end to end end encrypted messaging platform can succeed without complete centralization.
I operate under a different assumption: No centralized platform will ever escape censorship and control by the government it operates under.
Moxie has said before he is happy to be proven wrong.
I hope as Matrix and others continue to prove him wrong with his own cryptography research that he comes around and rejoins the fight for a decentralized internet with irrevocable privacy.