this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2025
1 points (100.0% liked)

Australia

5024 readers
9 users here now

A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.

Before you post:

If you're posting anything related to:

If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News

Rules

This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:

Banner Photo

Congratulations to @Tau@aussie.zone who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition

Recommended and Related Communities

Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:

Plus other communities for sport and major cities.

https://aussie.zone/communities

Moderation

Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.

Additionally, we have our instance admins: @lodion@aussie.zone and @Nath@aussie.zone

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
lodion@aussie.zone
bestusername@aussie.zone
eatham@aussie.zone
Nath@aussie.zone
1
Signal boss warns app will exit Australia if forced to hand over users’ encrypted messages (www.theaustralian.com.au)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by maniacalmanicmania@aussie.zone to c/australia@aussie.zone
82 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Signal president Meredith Whittaker is prepared to withdraw the privacy-focused messaging app from Australia — saying she hopes it doesn’t become a “gangrenous foot” by poisoning its entire platform by forcing it to hand over its users’ encrypted data to authorities.

Ms Whittaker says Signal would take the “drastic step” of leaving any market where a government compelled it to create a “backdoor” to access its data, saying it would create a vulnerability that hackers and authoritative regimes could exploit, undermining Signals’ “reason for existing”.

Pressure has been mounting on Signal and other secure messaging platforms. ASIO director general Mike Burgess has urged tech companies to unlock encrypted messages to assist terrorism and national security investigations, saying offshore extremists use such platforms to communicate.

archive.today

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] naught101@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I can totally see Australian politics being OK with signal leaving, since that would push users on to other less secure/more compliant apps

[–] shads@lemy.lol 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

You might be right, but its going to get harder for them to crow about the wins ASIO is making when competent people are spinning up more bespoke solutions they have even less hope of compromising. Plus when people go down the current path that the UK populace is what are ASIO going to claim next, VPNs have to be banned. You know Australia lacks the technical competence to implement that correctly, suddenly every business is having their workflow broken to appease a bunch of "intelligence" wonks. The further they over reach the more likely they will trip themselves up.

[–] naught101@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

A messaging app is extremely hard to "spin up bespoke solutions" for, because a solution's success is 99% dependent on the network effect.

Perhaps when a protocol like signal but decentralised is available, then we might be able to say that.

[–] brisk@aussie.zone 0 points 10 months ago

There are already a bunch of them, including XMPP and Matrix which both implement Signal's double ratchet encryption (via OMEMO, in XMPPs case)

[–] maniacalmanicmania@aussie.zone 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I think that the number of folks who will run bespoke solutions will be so small that it'll be insignificant. Signals benefit is its ease of onboarding. If Signal leaves ASIO knows there's nothing else out there for 99% of it's users.

[–] shads@lemy.lol 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

With the irony being I am sure I read an article a few months back about the rise in small scale private encrypted chat applications that some groups are spinning up because they don't trust things like signal.

I concede the point, maybe I am a bit blindsided by the level of knowledge I can bring to bear on this as I wouldn't find it at all difficult to spin something up.

I mean how trivial would it be to insert encrypted packets using a one time pad into meme images, half the conversations between my wife and I would look suspicious under those circumstances, a straightforward sequence of pre shared DSA pairs and the odds of ASIO being able to break it are miniscule.

[–] maniacalmanicmania@aussie.zone 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If you remember the article please share.

[–] shads@lemy.lol 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I can 100% commit to that, but I would suggest that its likely quite unlikely. I have a feeling it was offline on actual dead tree somewhere.

[–] Insane_Turnip@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

the number of folks who will run bespoke solutions will be so small that it’ll be insignificant

For the vast majority of people, you are right. But for the very few malignant actors, that is the thing they'll do. It will make ASIO's job harder as they're now trying to trace foreign VPN's, custom-made encryption programs and other stuff that I personally don't know about (I'm not overly knowledgeable about such computer things).

The >99% of Signal users forced into the sunlight aren't the threat. It's the <1% of Signal users who 'go underground' that are the threat.

[–] quokka@aussie.zone 0 points 10 months ago

Personally, I'll spin up a Mastodon (or similar) instance for my kid and his mates.

[–] quokka@aussie.zone 0 points 10 months ago

You mean apps that they'd really like you pass age verification by having MyGovDigitalSurveillanceDefinitelyNotTrackingYou app?