The drama this week over the Trump administration Signal group chat about a strike on Houthis in Yemen in which The Atlantic Editor in Chief Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertently included has been popcorn-worthy, if you're into that sort of thing. But beyond the resultant posturing between screw-up bureaucrats and pompous politicians, we learned something of value from the incident: Government officials use the popular encrypted messaging app because the intelligence community considers it secure. While the political class argues over the details, the rest of us should consider that an endorsement of this technology.
Is It Snoop-Resistant?
Encryption software is widely used by businesspeople, journalists, and regular folks who don't want to share the details of their lives and their finances with the world. But there's always been speculation about how secure apps like Signal and Telegram are from government snoops who have the resources of surveillance agencies behind them. Are we just amusing the geeks at the NSA when we say nasty things about them to our colleagues via ProtonMail or WhatsApp?
