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

Australia

4414 readers
167 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 2 years ago
MODERATORS
lodion@aussie.zone
Fluid@aussie.zone
bestusername@aussie.zone
eatham@aussie.zone
Nath@aussie.zone
286
Signal boss warns app will exit Australia if forced to hand over users’ encrypted messages (www.theaustralian.com.au)
submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by maniacalmanicmania@aussie.zone to c/australia@aussie.zone
91 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 14 points 4 days ago (13 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 14 points 4 days ago (11 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.

[–] maniacalmanicmania@aussie.zone 2 points 4 days ago (6 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 5 points 4 days 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 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

If you remember the article please share.

[–] shads@lemy.lol 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days 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.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (8 replies)
load more comments (9 replies)