This is the major downside of centralised app stores. On the plain old internet, nobody had to care about the whims of regressive governments. Worst case, the government would try to block the website and often fail and/or face public backlash. Now, the government can just tell google or apple that they don't like the app, and the problem is solved. This is quite tragic for an app like signal because it really does not deal with the country's currency in any shape nor does it have any presence in the country, but because google/apple have to do business in the country, signal takes the fall.
> “Signal has not complied with the guidelines. Services like iMessage do not fall under the traceability clause since the significant social media intermediaries in the nature of messaging services have to comply,” said an official, requesting anonymity.<p>What does “Services like iMessage do not fall under the traceability clause since the significant social media intermediaries in the nature of messaging services have to comply” mean?
It's well known that the Indian government is no friend of an uncensored Internet. Look at the great many well documented instances of them messing around with it:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India</a>
This is a quick way to further increase Signal's user base. If someone in India does not know about Signal, this type of "don't use it! it's noncompliant!" government behavior will drive more users to the platform.
>The new guidelines also mandate companies such as Signal and WhatsApp to share the details of the first originator of a message.<p>Well that seems pretty idiotic. It should be interesting to see how all this works out.
It sounds as if Signal could comply with this by removing the "forward" button in India, right? Then there is no "first originator" as seen by Signal.<p>There still is, of course. Cut and paste works, and android's share works, but both of those send the message out of Signal (and perhaps back into Signal).
They say that honest and nonviolent people have no need for self-keyed cryptography, that using it just enables criminals. This is true, but nobody is self-encrypting to help others to prey upon them. They are doing it to prevent becoming a victim. Guess who the predator is….<p>The cipherpunk future is fundamentally a dystopia. Trust in authority would be a wonderful thing. I actually thought the authoritarian future would be more subtle and well-tolerated, like “Brave New World”, but it’s shaping up a lot like “1984”, and I can’t understand why a central-authority would self-destruct like that, under no force of occupation.
On whitepapes, I surmised that WhatsApp is supposedly meta-connection secured (unless reconstruction is being done by WhatsApp backend).<p>All the while with Signal app, I’m fairly certain that message content is most secured (than Whatsapp) but is operationally resistant to providing meta-connection info.<p>Interestingly enough, I find that Matrix (Element iOS app) to be strongest in both aspect of connection metadata and secured message content.