I don’t think you can have messaging without some level of trust, but I agree that the Signal Foundation isn’t very trustworthy.
As for the communication protocol… there are some 3rd party clients that connect to the Signal servers (Axelotl, signald etc.) which have not been banned from connecting for quite some time now. Not sure why, but at least that shows that the protocol in general works as intended. Together with reproducible builds for the official client this at least makes it likely that the unmodified official client works as advertised (although there could still be some caveats in the shared libraries).
But who knows what the server does and supply chain attacks that substitute the official client for a modified one are still easily possible when Signal controls all distribution channels (they will tell you this is to prevent supply chain attacks, but only those of most 3rd parties, not those originating from within Signal & Google/Apple).
I mean trust specifically in the context of the technology. Things need to be independently verifiable. And thanks for correction regarding the clients, I was under the impression that you could only use the official app with their server. If you can use an open source client that addresses my concern regarding verification.
At the very least we can know that the protocol works as advertised. Since it’s E2E, I think it’s probably reasonable to assume that at least the messages themselves are secure.
I don’t think you can have messaging without some level of trust, but I agree that the Signal Foundation isn’t very trustworthy.
As for the communication protocol… there are some 3rd party clients that connect to the Signal servers (Axelotl, signald etc.) which have not been banned from connecting for quite some time now. Not sure why, but at least that shows that the protocol in general works as intended. Together with reproducible builds for the official client this at least makes it likely that the unmodified official client works as advertised (although there could still be some caveats in the shared libraries).
But who knows what the server does and supply chain attacks that substitute the official client for a modified one are still easily possible when Signal controls all distribution channels (they will tell you this is to prevent supply chain attacks, but only those of most 3rd parties, not those originating from within Signal & Google/Apple).
I mean trust specifically in the context of the technology. Things need to be independently verifiable. And thanks for correction regarding the clients, I was under the impression that you could only use the official app with their server. If you can use an open source client that addresses my concern regarding verification.
At the very least we can know that the protocol works as advertised. Since it’s E2E, I think it’s probably reasonable to assume that at least the messages themselves are secure.