Signal & the Broadcasting Board of Governors

/e/OS Foundation & Community Data Privacy
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Check out this great article on Telegram and Signal: the-crypto-keepers-levine

I understand that this may be a divisive topic but I have been following the investigative research by journalist and author Yasha Levine who wrote a excellent book called Surveillance Valley and has been looking into the ongoing of the Broadcasting Board of Governors which is a US government agency that overseas it’s soft power networks like Radio free Asia and Europe etc. What people may not know is that this agency also funds the privacy message app Signal through its Open Technology Fund (around 3 million dollars since 2013). Not sure what people think about this but its a big red flag. For example if it had happened to turn out perhaps that /e/ was being funded by some government agency you would be quick to question its true intentions especially since if said agency isn’t a some national science research agency like nasa but one set up to oversee US propaganda and influence citizens in nations outside it’s borders.

The developers of /e/ may want to reconsider the inclusion of signal as a default application, at least until it is open and clear about it’s funding sources and independence from US intelligence.

Edited: for clarity on a part mentioned below, which was supposed to be as a example :slight_smile:

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Hi @television…first things first /e/ is not sponsored by the Government. We are funded by the users and this is the page where you can also contribute :slight_smile:
Second point is we had run a survey for users feedback on which app they would prefer as their default sms app - QKSMS or Signal. As you can see there are a number of users who prefer Signal while other like QKSMS. we also have other options being proposed. Users still share their comments and views on the subject.
The plan for /e/ is to come out with a set of simple default apps that will be available on the ROM. Not only that users will be given the option to uninstall some of these default system apps. We are still putting in the code changes for all these features. No ETA’s for now.
You could add your comments about Signal to the survey here.
Closing this thread as multiple threads on the same topic will be confusing.

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