People have been arrested for merely using an anti-censorship proxy in my side of the world. There is a real danger, even if you have never witnessed one.

> I doubt the Iranian government has the resources or will to trawl their entire net for these proxies and trace their physical locations.

The proxies are necessarily run outside of Iran, as Signal is blocked inside of Iran. I think the (tenuous) argument is that the government could see that user X is connecting to proxy host Y (outside of Iran), and then themselves connect to proxy host Y to verify it's a Signal proxy, and then take action (including potential violence) against user X for connecting to it (and presumably block further connections from within Iran to proxy host Y).

It's overblown, I think.

> Both the Signal team and this anti-censorship BBS strive towards the same values, and the only thing drama and indignation does is to crack and weaken the effect of the community as a whole.

This is precisely why I'm so curious about why this happened. It's easy to dismiss it as simple douchebaggery, but at least one of the accounts harassing Moxie on twitter about it have the classic hallmarks of sockpuppets, and the whole over-the-top PGP signing thing (and opening of multiple issues, and seeking press) makes me think this is a bit more of a coordinated smear campaign.

>It's overblown, I think.

https://freedomhouse.org/country/iran/freedom-net/2019

>Several harsh prison sentences were handed down during the reporting period in retaliation for online activities. Mostafa Abdi, an editor of the news site Majzooban Noor, was sentenced to 26 years in prison and 74 lashes in August 2018. Five other journalists at the outlet received sentences ranging from 7 to 12 years (see C3).

Did they draw the government's attention because they were connecting to banned websites or because they were running a high-profile news outlet?

It's seems unlikely to me that the Iranian government would be able to prosecute even a small fraction of instances of the former, whereas there's only a small number of high-profile news outlets at any given time.

Due process is not really a thing in Iran. If the Government wants you in prison, they will throw you in on flimsy pretexts. Which is why journalists need to be extra careful: they don’t just need to hide their activities but need to hide any trace or hints of participating in those activities. Outspoken people will be monitored closely, and even an attempt to access signal (say) could be used by the Government to imprison the user.

Some where jailed just for being Instagram "influencers". So it doesn't seem to be just high-profile news outlets.

Signal is end-to-end encrypted. The only thing the network surveillance would be able to determine is that you were connecting to Signal via an open Signal proxy, not the people you were talking to, or the content of your messages.

When proxying, who you're talking to can be determined from large-scale network surveillance. You look for patterns of messages sent from your device and messages of the same size received by another device immediately after.

The whole point is that, in countries in which Signal is forbidden, the mere fact to connect to it can lead to big troubles.

However I acknowledge that the problem solved here by Signal team is orthogonal to the one of hidding the users.

Yes? To some people just that fact would be revealing of needing to use Signal, it could be used in prosecution. Especially in the case where most people would not be using it at the moment.

Revealing the fact that one uses Signal can be an issue on itself.

> classic hallmarks of sockpuppets

I doubt it, the two main researchers behind it both have an extensive history of contributions on Github. The correct explanation is most likely the simplest: egos mixed with typical programmer idealism proved to be a Molotov cocktail that flared into drama.