My chat with a journalist in Brazil changed how I see encryption laws

She said cops there demanded her Signal keys after she covered a protest, and she had to flee the country for a week. Has anyone else had a real world run in with a government trying to break your encryption?

3 comments

3 Comments

henry_palmer2421d ago

Signal's whole thing is they can't hand over keys even if they wanted to, isn't that the point? The journalist probably had her phone confiscated but the keys themselves aren't something Signal stores on their servers.

janac5921d ago

I mean, not really though. Signal might not keep the keys on their servers, but they still log when you send a message, who you sent it to, and the IP address you did it from. So if law enforcement gets a warrant for that metadata, they can still see a whole lot about your communication patterns. And that journalist's phone getting confiscated means the keys are right there on the device itself, so if the cops have legal authority to access her phone, they get everything. The whole "we can't hand over keys" thing is a nice marketing line, but it only protects you in very specific situations. Take it from someone who worked in a hospital and saw how many patients got caught up in digital evidence cases, the real weak point is always the device in your hand, not the app's backend.

sean_park821d ago

You're totally right about the keys not being stored on Signal's servers. That's the whole beauty of how they designed the app, they literally cannot hand over what they don't have. It really makes you think about how other apps might be giving up way more than we realize behind the scenes. I feel for that journalist, having your phone taken is scary enough without worrying about all your private conversations being exposed. Honestly it just shows how much we all need to protect our digital lives right now