Hi, author here. I don't think LibreSignal or indeed Signal will ever be the dominant mobile messenger out there. There's simply a lot of inertia to fight against. It's the same reason why it's hard to convince e.g. Facebook friends to move to a different social network, why Google+ failed, etc. Whenever the social aspect gets involved, companies can very easily create lock-in by being early, and then the social aspect will prevent the majority of people from considering changing, because 'it works'.

I never said that LibreSignal will replace Signal, and frankly, LibreSignal itself is not the solution either. But maybe LibreSignal will be the catalyst to a better solution.

We all want to prevent people hanging from cranes, but crypto alone does not equal privacy, does not keep you safe, especially not in those countries, where rubber hose cryptanalysis (https://xkcd.com/538/) is much more common. In those dangerous situations/countries, good operational security practices are better to avoid detection/suspicion than using any 'magic' crypto messaging app.

You don't understand what I'm saying. I agree that crypto alone doesn't equal privacy --- it's table stakes. Clearly: it does not follow from that observation that crypto doesn't matter. If you cannot at least be cryptographically secure, the rest of what you do doesn't matter.

We now have two examples --- CryptoCat and Telegram --- of "secure messaging" systems being used by governments as a way of hunting down activists. Why do we need more? Can't the question be settled now?

As gently as I can, I'm going to push a little further. I poked around your site a little to get a sense of where you're coming from. Your post today opens up like this:

One of the things I do is cryptography and infosec training for investigative journalists who have a need to keep either their sources and communications confidential so they can more safely do their work in the public interest.

Can I ask what your qualifications are in training journalists in keeping their communications secure? Investigative journalists working in hostile regimes, even in smaller countries, are facing adversaries that are better funded than almost any other imaginable threat. Cryptography is incredibly hard. Elsewhere on the thread, you said "I'm not a cryptographer". Neither am I! I've spent the better part of 10 years getting decent at breaking cryptosystems for clients, and I still refuse to do privacy implementation work, because I'm simply not up to the challenge. Are you sure you are?

Regarding qualifications: I spent years building secure technology (publication platforms, websites) for whistleblowers including Ed Snowden himself (I built his official website (https://edwardsnowden.com) for the Courage Foundation (his official defence fund) plus the tech behind it that supports it. This allows our editors to submit anonymously to the site through the Tor network.

I used cryptographic software as an end-user for many years, like GPG for instance, and agree that it's hard, and we need to train people to use correct security habits (infosec and opsec), to minimise exposure to hostile elements.

I've tought at cryptoparties and other events, I have spoken to many intelligence whistleblowers, some of which I consider to be close friends, and they've told me about some of the techniques used on the national intelligence agency level and how wrong use of crypto and general bad operational security practices can expose you. So while I'm not a trained cryptographer, and do not claim to be, I have extensive experience not only building secure software, but also, thanks to whistleblowers know about some of the ins and outs of the intelligence industry re crypto and surveillance.

You really shouldn't have to show credentials. If tpateck had cared, he could easily have looked them up. And besides, arguments should stand on their own without credentials. Our hacker space recently defined a hacker ethos: one of the first things was that credentials or certificates or something don't matter.

One thing I wanted to add, regarding the tech: of course I do that in cooperation with other people some of who are indeed trained cryptographers.

Who are those people? There aren't many of them, in, like, the world.

True, they are rare. On another unrelated project I'm working together with Bill Binney, the cryptographer who wrote ThinThread at NSA. That's all I can currently say about it.

I see I haven't replied yet to your first point: here goes. Of course clearly an alternative has to be at least cryptographically secure. I fully agree with you on that. I'm not recommending something that isn't, and certainly am not recommending Telegram or Cryptocat.

An alternative needs to be as a bare minimum cryptographically secure. And then on top of that it would be very nice if there was federation, not tied to phone numbers and all the components being open source. Those last 3 points is where Signal fails currently. Federation is something that moxie tried, didn't work out, now he's basically not in favour of that, the phone number issue is of course well known, and the redphone server component is not open source.

Sounds like you're looking for https://matrix.org

Hits all your technical requirements. Setting up your own homeserver is cake. Federation is a key part of the core design. End to end encryption is just about to be finalized. History syncing between multiple clients. Bridges for pulling in other chat systems like slack and IRC. Completely open source. To me, this is the perfect messaging platform. Just needs some UI polish and I could see it really taking off. Had you seen this yet?

But you seem to be hand-waving away the problems Moxie had with federation [1]. Citing xmpp is not a counterexample. Some problems do not have solutions.

[1] https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/

Whilst some problems are not solvable, it doesn't mean that they are showstoppers. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12882181 elsewhere in the thread.

One of the problems I face when somebody comes along and tells me that they're now on Telegram, Cryptocat, Wire, or whathaveyou is that I might recall an issue but there doesn't seem to be a good up-to-date overview that answers the questions (1) should I trust these people (how bad was it; was it in their code or a dependency?) and (2) is it known to be far less secure than it advertises? (still?)

I recall e.g. that Moxie reviewed Telegram's security, found that none of it made any sense and that its authors didn't know what they were doing. https://tobtu.com/decryptocat.php looks like the cryptocat analogue of that. Have the two projects improved somehow? Have some people joined or others left?

Could you please also provide links for the claim that CryptoCat and Telegram are being used by governments to hunt down activists?

>We all want to prevent people hanging from cranes, but crypto alone does not equal privacy, does not keep you safe, especially not in those countries, where rubber hose cryptanalysis (https://xkcd.com/538/) is much more common. In those dangerous situations/countries, good operational security practices are better to avoid detection/suspicion than using any 'magic' crypto messaging app.

Then just put a TL;DR at the end of your article and say 'use iMessage/Facetime, it's probably good enough for operating in an unstable region' If it worked for Erdogan it will work for you!

EDIT: (While I intend to come off as cocky, I'm serious:

https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf page 41

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/turkey-coup-e...

)

The author of the post is making the point that Signal's tradeoffs/policies are eroding support from the privacy-conscious end of the user spectrum. Crypto-soundness is excellent but when you staple an infoleak to it (contact list) it's much less compelling. So you can start to make the case to an end user that sharing all your info with Whatsapp or Telegram is a Bad Thing, and here let's install this Signal thing that's much better, except hold on what's this permission list that it requires?

I see Signal as having positioned itself as a compromise that makes nobody happy.

What about all the other alternatives like Wire and Wickr? Wickr went through crypto reviews. Wire is open source.

They don't require using phone numbers so it's not really annoying to sign up without giving away anonymity.

Serious question: what does "went through crypto reviews" even mean? One of these messaging systems is designed and implemented by experts; the others, not, but they've gotten 1-2 person/weeks of attention by (one hopes) a crypto experts.

Regarding Wickr: isec partners spent 9 person-weeks https://www.wickr.com/about-us/blog/2014/08/08/isec-partner-...

this one spent 240 hrs: https://www.wickr.com/about-us/blog/2014/08/05/aspect-securi...

You haven't talked about Wire.

People have to trust someone. If you are not a crypto expert you have to rely on crypto experts to tell you if the protocol/app is sound.

I don't have to be a security expert to know that google can get the phone numbers of all the contacts I talk to on Signal. So the anonymity angle is lost completely.

Regarding privacy, I don't have to be a crypto expert to know that google services are running as root on my phone. They can easily replace the app itself. Avoiding using google proprietary services and still using Signal is a lot of pain.

Just a question - is Telegram secret chat after you verify keys still with inferior cryptography? And why?

> a long-term dependency on the telephone system for authentication

You can protect your Telegram account with a password (it's opt-in). Iran couldn't have compromised it then.