- According to Whittaker, the bill requires the encrypted messaging app Signal to install so-called backdoors in the software.
Meanwhile, the Swedish Armed Forces recently decided to use Signal for secure communication: https://www.forsvarsmakten.se/sv/aktuellt/2025/02/forsvarsmakten-anvander-appen-signal-for-oppen-kommunikation-med-mobiltelefoner/
Half of the original article:
The Armed Forces, on the other hand, are negative and write in a letter to the government that the proposal cannot be realized “without introducing vulnerabilities and backdoors that can be exploited by third parties”, reports SVT.
So that’s covered.
There needs to be a messaging app which provides a backdoor for every government that requests it. Every time some dumbass legislator asks for a super-giga-secure-backdoor they promise not to misuse, they should be directed to that app.
Imagine the complexity of the encryption algo with 100 different custom made backdoors!
That’s the secret you give them all the same backdoor.
You just encrypt it with every key. It’s wasteful, but not all that complicated.
At that point, you just don’t encrypt things at all.
I’m not familiar with EU law, but wouldn’t this set a precidence across the whole EU?
no.
It’s worth noting that mullvad is based in Sweden
Mullvad has proven time and time again that they don’t log anything at all. Even if they give backdoor access, there’s nothing to record.
Literally the first sentence of the article: “The government wants Signal and Whatsapp to be forced to store messages sent using the apps.”
No wonder they pussied out and removed port forwarding
I don’t get how its supposed to work…they want to require messengers to include backdoors in their software? So when a program is FOSS, then you can literally just use it knowing there is no backdoor…also, what blocks you from using a server in different country? Wtf that even means…
Then politicians would simply require for “any technical measures to ensure the backdoor to be available” or something like that, meaning it would be Signals’ job to ensure the backdoor works. They don’t give a shit how something is done (IT is just too complex for most of them), only that it gets done somehow. For that very reason federal digital services are such a shitshow so often, they just don’t understand what they even ask for so professionals always have to work around politicians’ demands constantly breaking even the most basic security principles.
And now it starts. Programs specifically designed to be encrypted getting attacked.
“Now”? Apps like Signals are constantly under fire. Whitaker already told the whole EU it would just leave if they introduced the “chat control” legislation.
Apps like Signals
This was about a different app named ‘Signal’, I think, without the s.
Is this law broad enough to also catch up Proton and its services?
This attack by governments on encryption is getting more and more concerning.
Is this law broad enough to also catch up Proton and its services?
They don’t need a law, they already logged and complied on request
Proton is swiss
And gobbles Trump’s knob publicly.
They won’t need a law to force compliance.
Sci-fi writing in here I see
EDIT: For the downvoters:
- He clearly didn’t support Trump in general, but he did praise Trump’s pick for the antitrust position.
- Proton code for the clients is opensource, so it’s not possible to add backdoors without being discovered (encryption happens in the clients).
- Proton business model is inherently disincentivizing them to do so. They are a profitable company with a clear profile that would lose so many customers if they decide to do so.
- Proton is incorporated in Switzerland, it’s unclear what the benefit would be to “appease” Trump.
- Proton is controlled by a nonprofit. In the board of this nonprofit there are people like Carissa Veliz (author of “Privacy is power”) and Tim Berners Lee. So even if Andy Yen was a full on MAGA, he still wouldn’t have autonomy to decide that. Note that he ceded control himself.
- There is absolutely nothing in the history of Proton that suggests they would be open to backdooring their software.
- There is a long track record of choices to protect users’ privacy. This also includes yearly substantial donations to nonprofits who work in this space.
If this is not enough, I don’t know what is, but for sure the baseless accusations of a random user shouldn’t be enough as well.
I wanted to reply to your points but someone beat me to it.
Learn to think critically. Close the app for a day, cool off and re-read all of these replies.
Do you think we would all just dump on something for the fun of it or just to piss you off? This isnt reddit.
Cmon man, take a second, look around and understand that the taste of boot leather is not very pleasant. Proton is not here for your privacy … I mean it is, unless you’re a french journalist … or a person of interest for the right people.
He clearly didn’t support Trump in general
lie
so it’s not possible to add backdoors
lie
Proton business model is inherently disincentivizing them to do so. They are a profitable company with a clear profile that would lose so many customers if they decide to do so.
Didn’t work on you
Proton is incorporated in Switzerland, it’s unclear what the benefit would be to “appease” Trump.
Straw man
So even if Andy Yen was a full on MAGA, he still wouldn’t have autonomy to decide that.
being a non profit and him owning enough of it to do what he wants are unrelated.
There is absolutely nothing in the history of Proton that suggests they would be open to backdooring their software.
There is a long track record of choices to protect users’ privacy.
Tell that french activist they turned logging on for and gave up to the authorities.
Yes, what possible benefit could a Swiss company that sells privacy might receive from cozing up to a fascist state?
Lies about what the CEO said with the official account.
One of his direct statements btw:
"10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.”
Thinks non-profit is anything but a tax status. Hasn’t paid enough attention to all the “non-profit” companies switching to for-profit as soon as it’s financially convenient, much less the “non-profits” that only exist to funnel money to their overpaid executives.
Doesn’t realize that Proton’s biggest security vulnerability is Proton the organization.
Fucking lol. Actual clown shit trying to bait people into the honeypot.
Yeah, I don’t get if these are Proton PR bots, or they’re just heavily invested in the company and are in denial. They just take that PR, add some flourish then a bunch of unrelated BS.
“It is harder to convince someone they have been tricked than to trick them in the first place” and such.
Uuh… Ok? How is that relevant?
Directly.
They want less accountability for themselves so they can get away with more corruption.
I hope people take notes.
The “if” to that “then” being that if they pass a law that would make Signal illegal in Sweden, then Signal will leave Sweden.
Illegal unless they install the backdoors. They could choose to do that instead of leaving Sweden, but they are choosing to leave Sweden.
If they did that, Signal would no longer exist at all. Nobody anywhere in the world would want to continue using it.
I agree that it would destroy the reason many people use it, but they aren’t outlawing Signal specifically. What they are doing is arguably worse, but this isn’t an “anti-Signal” action.
I think you wildly misunderstand the average person’s motivations and how they weigh decisions.
We’re talking about Signal, not FB Messenger. People use Signal because of the encryption, and they would leave.
The “average person” you have in mind who obviously does not care about cryptographic security also does not use Signal.
There are a few people in my social bubble that are not technical at all, but heard a few bad things about WhatsApp and that’s why they are using Signal. Nothing more, they do not know how it works, they do not know who provides it.
And now they’ll hear something bad about Signal and move on as they did with WhatsApp, as per your example.
Seems to me one of the main things that got people to move away from Whatsapp en masse a few years ago was a rumour that they’d added a backdoor to it similar to the one Sweden is thinking of demanding. If an unfounded rumour did that much, the real thing might do substantial damage to Whatsapp as well if they were to go along with it. It probably wouldn’t completely demolish it, as it would for Signal — or at least its demise might take longer.
thats not the target audience, thankfully.
The target audience is everybody with a Smartphone.
The majority of people in my signal contacts are there because someone (sometimes me) pushed them to use it instead of WhatsApp.
While that’s generally true, one of the main reasons why people choose apps like Signal is the privacy. People that aren’t aware and don’t care generally wouldn’t have switched to Signal in the first place.
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I’m a bit surprised that the armed forces are openly opposing this, but good for them!
I mean beyond everything else, any group actually interested in the safety and security of citizens (so, not politicians or cops anywhere apparently), should be pushing everything to be encrypted everywhere. In the modern digital world anything not properly encrypted is at risk for ate tracks by bad actors.
Don’t know if it’s a trustworthy source, but:
https://cornucopia.se/2025/02/forsvarsmakten-infor-krav-pa-signal-for-samtal-och-meddelanden/
That is because they just decided to switch to use it for internal communications. This means that they would have to roll back that decision.
Technically only for non-classified internal communication. Classified stuff is restricted to fee discussed only using military approved locked down hardware. But still, issuing a strong recommendation for Signal above all other options when communicating using regular devices is a good thing. Lots of “regular” conversations can still leak more than you expect through metadata, timing, etc, so they trust Signal to protect that
It would have been good of the article to mention that important tidbit…
It happened like 2 weeks ago so I will forgive them for missing it.
I have to ask. If Signal “leaves” Sweden because it is deemed illegal without backdoor, how would this even work regarding enforcement? Your phone gets searched and if they find Signal you get a fee? Messaging being blocked somehow by Swedish ISPs, is that even possible?
Signal will be delisted from Android/Apple store. That’ll curb the majority of Signal use in Sweden. I suspect Sweden isn’t going to after individuals. They could if they wanted to. ISP blocking, probably not, but yes ISPs can block Signal by blocking all known Signal servers. That’s why Signal supports special proxies that allow individuals to run to allow people from blocked locations to access the Signal servers.
That’ll curb the majority of Signal use in Sweden.
…unless a bunch of users plan to actually do something illegal, in which case a delisting from the app store doesn’t stop anything. Once again, it’s just to enable data collection about as many ordinary citizens as possible.
The proposed law would require messaging apps to store copies of user messages.
The law isn’t targeted at users directly. It’s targeted at the service providers. If the cops can access your phone you’re already screwed.
Blocking Signal traffic might be theoretically feasible but it would be a game of whack-a-mole. Legally, Signal might have to stop serving IPs in Sweden but that’s Sweden’s problem and VPNs exist.
They will likely IP geofence Sweden to block connections to Signal’s servers being made there.
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The question was what Signal would do though …
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i am searching their link to Sweden
no link found yet, i will search again
.
https://signal.org/
© 2013–2025 Signal, a 501c3 nonprofit. “Signal”, Signal logos, and other trademarks are trademarks or registered trademarks of Signal Technology Foundation in the United States and other countries (more info here).
.
https://signal.org/donate/
Signal Technology Foundation is a nonprofit under section 501c3 of the US Internal Revenue Code..
“Leaving a country” for digital services usually means not providing services there anymore.
Yeah, but why do they feel forced to? I understand the EU is imposing fines on Meta and Google because they have branches in member states. But Sweden can do to Signal as much as the US could do to The Pirate Bay.
Thanks, this makes a lot more sense.
… i keep, time and again, searching for things, only to discover my “search goal” is not based in reality.
Nice PR move, but when do you announce leaving the US, which is the much bigger issue right now?
