Signals and signs

Another reminder that this Government says one thing and does another. The Sun tells us that Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, Rishi Sunak and Alok Sharma are all using Signal, the new messaging service developed in Salt Lake City at the end of last year. It offers end-to-end encryption, and the ability to permanently delete texts.

(In September, Dominic Grieve asked for disclosure of all messages, including those on Signal, between Hugh Bennett, Simon Burton, Dominic Cummings, Nikki da Costa, Tom Irven, Sir Roy Stone, Christopher James, Lee Cain or Beatrice Timpson about the prorogation of Parliament.)

Another user, according to The Sun, is Home Secretary Priti Patel. This was the Home Office's position on end-to-end encryption at the end of last year.

"The Government supports strong encryption, which is used by billions of people every day for services such as banking, commerce and communications.

However, we are concerned that end-to-end encryption has created significant and avoidable barriers to companies being able to identify and prevent activity by terrorists, child abusers or serious criminals who are using their products or services to cause harm.

Facebook’s proposals to apply end-to-end encryption to its messaging platforms by default presents significant challenges. On 4 October 2019, the Home Secretary published an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg requesting that Facebook does not implement its proposals without ensuring that there is no reduction to user safety and without including a means for law enforcement to obtain lawful access to the content of communications."

Matthew Hopkins, a Professor of Cryptography at John Hopkins University, endorses Signal thus:
"After reading the code, I literally discovered a line of drool running down my face. It’s really nice."