We know our authoritative govt officials are using Signal to avoid official channels that document conversations.
Signal’s also a non-profit with a board of people who seem pro human rights https://signalfoundation.org/en/
Can we can ask Signal for help to:
block government officials from using signal
release conversations that promote authoritarianism (though it may be impossible to decrypt)
something else?
But also, what’s an actionable outcome of this.
If (1), they will find another app. If (2), leak to media to publish? but there’s no law enforcement anymore.
This may be grasping at straws, but is there something productive we can do here?
The Signal organization is not capable of doing these things. By design, the application is secure against the sort of attacks you propose.
- Signal does not collect information about its users that would enable it to determine who is a government official.
- Since Signal conversations are end-to-end encrypted, Signal does not have access to the unencrypted contents.
The way to protect against government officials misusing Signal is to not elect people who would misuse Signal to be government officials.