Image of Delta Chat on a phone

The FBI wants you to stop texting, but switching to WhatsApp, Facebook, or Signal would be stupid, too.

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There are tons of articles out right now about how the FBI suggests that you stop using text messaging on your phones due to security concerns with Chinese hackers. Unfortunately, a lot of these articles have suggestions that are even more stupid than text messaging and I’ll tell you why.

The original news comes from this post on Twitter from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency:

 

Some articles out there are suggesting to use WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Signal, iMessage, or Telegram for encrypted messaging instead. Yes, those may be slightly better than using telephone company based text messaging; SMS (Short Message System), but it’s still stupid because all of those listed messaging systems are centralized and closed-source (Yes, even Signal).

Why is that bad? 

Well, it’s just like what the Chinese want to do with their citizens except with American companies. Chinese messaging system, WeChat, is completely controlled by the government. The government can scan your communications, censor whatever they want, and even make you disappear if you disagree with their rules too much. The USA would love to do the same thing to their citizens and the best way to do that is through controlling your communications.  With text messaging, that’s easy, everything goes through your centralized phone company.  With WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram… again, very easy, because everything goes through a billionaire social media company in the USA. Signal used to be the poster child for privacy, security, and open source transparency, but they sold out in 2021 by adding proprietary components to scan user communications. 

Who cares if the Chinese can see my cat videos?

They can do a lot more than that! There’s a reason the USA constitution has a 4th amendment about privacy. A government or company or external government that can easily search and analyze communications has a huge advantage in controlling and manipulating that society. You can actually direct a population into war and/or genocide like Facebook already did with the Myanmar killing of millions of Rohingya people. 

Relationships can be mapped, gullible targets can be found, trusted contacts can be impersonated, one time passwords for your bank accounts can be intercepted, other account passwords can be guessed or reset, the locations and schedules of your children can be collected. 

Do you think it’s safe to leave the door to your house unlocked while you go away on vacation? Is it okay for your landlord to go in your apartment whenever they feel like it and look around?  That’s basically what you’re allowing with centralized communications systems.

A big thing to look out for is the fact that whomever controls our communications can also control who dies, who’s a target, who goes to the concentration camps, etc.  If you’ve ever disagreed with something the government did, you probably shouldn’t be discussing it using a communications system that you don’t control.

  • Removing the right to privacy within phone calls and postal mail was one of the first things Hitler did with the Reichstag Fire Decree. 
  • China has already removed the right to privacy with their nationwide centralized WeChat communications app.  (See: How China controls its citizens through social media)
  • Apple has allowed China full control over Apple iOS devices in the country (See: How Apple Stays on the Good Side of Chinese Authorities – The New York Times). Apple can easily do this elsewhere.
  • It’s easy to control society with centralized communications systems like phone companies, Apple (everything about the ecosystem is designed for control), Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp, Telegram, etc.  It’s more difficult with Signal since that has a lot of encryption, but Signal is still a centralized service with a single point of failure that can be commandeered and changed. 

There’s some precedence already with Facebook and how they promoted a genocide of Rohingya people in Myannamar in 2017. (See: Meta in Myanmar (full series), Facebook and genocide | MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale, U.N. investigators cite Facebook role in Myanmar crisis | Reuters )  Facebook and Instagram messaging is definitely not private (See: Facebook is Openly Hostile to Smaller Platforms).  Whatsapp still pretends to be private, but end-to-end encryption doesn’t mean much when someone else owns both ends and manages the keys (they can change things whenever they want).

How can I actually keep my communications private?

First of all, don’t use centralized systems. Use something that you can control yourself! That’s probably a hard thing to think about because you don’t know about any communications methods that isn’t already controlled by corrupt or corruptible billionaire companies. Pretty much anything that involves tech is already controlled by something designed to take advantage of you. 

But, if you and I were at the park, we could speak to each other face to face without any influence from outside corporations. So the ability to think for ourselves and control our own communications is possible.

There are several communications projects out there that actually do seek to give us full autonomy and control over our own communications if we want it while still being able to use the internet. Here are three that I like along with reasons why they’re good. None of these collect any type of personal data and all use in-person QR code encryption key sharing to create contact connections for the upmost security.

  1. Delta Chat.  This is a client for the most widely-used electronic communications system ever created and it’s also completely open and decentralized (email), thus making it the ideal system for self-agency and democratic control. Not all email systems are as secure as they could be, though things have improved a lot in recent years with the proliferation of better encryption & security capabilities.  Delta Chat is an email app that is leading the way in more security and privacy while maintaining the decentralized, open, and “for the people, by the people” nature.  The app also works with standard email accounts and servers, but there’s a new “chatmail” server that adds some good features.  For info and a video about how to use it, see: Using Delta Chat with Chatmail servers for decentralized, open, secure, private messaging.  
    • Delta Chat has apps available on Android, Windows, Linux, MacOS, and iOS.  There is also a growing ecosystem of alternative apps that support the same encryption tech which is a testament to its sustainability.  (It’s more likely to last.) 
    • It’s important to note that the iOS version of Delta Chat has less privacy since Apple does not allow external apps to use the standard IMAP IDLE push notification technology and requires servers to use their proprietary Apple Push Notification Service (which the chatmail servers do support) for instant delivery notifications.  
    • Delta Chat nicely supports multiple devices just like email does, so conversations are easily portable like they are with centralized systems without the disadvantages of centralized systems.
    • Delta Chat can work with regular email to communicate with 5 Billion people (largest user base of any electronic messaging system ever), but Chatmail accounts can only send to accounts with Autocrypt encryption keys so as to guarantee security.  So you can have your regular email account for partially encrypted stuff & unhindered communications in the app as well as a Chatmail account for fully encrypted stuff in the same app.
    • Would be practically impossible to shut down with millions of compatible servers already out there.
  2. Briar.  This one can be completely serverless with only peer-to-peer connections. It can work with no internet at all as well since it has the direct WiFi and Bluetooth mesh network connection capabilities (but in those cases you need to be physically close to other Briar users). For info and video about how to use it see: How to keep communicating when your internet is disrupted.  
    • Ideal for when the internet is completely shut down as some countries like to do.
    • This only works on Android, Windows, Linux, and MacOS.  Apple’s iOS does not allow for this kind of technology from developers other than Apple. Also the app has to be running for things to work, so messaging isn’t as reliable as something with a server like Delta Chat or SimpleX below. 
    • Annoyingly each device needs a new account and new contact connections.
  3. SimpleX. Similar to email in that it uses open-source federated servers for transferring messages, but it uses a new protocol that isn’t dependent on the domain name system. The website says that it doesn’t have any IDs, but it does (so that you can add contacts). It’s just that they are different for each conversation which makes figuring out which person is which much more difficult.
    • Works on Android and iOS. Desktop versions for Linux, Windows, MacOS require a phone that also has the app installed to be on the same local network
    • This is the newest one at only 2 years old so there’s a very small ecosystem of apps and support so far.

Conclusion

Freedom isn’t free! Yes, learning how to encrypt your communications and being responsible for your own privacy is probably kind of daunting, but it’s not that different from keeping the keys to your house and your car in your pocket so that only you (and other authorized people) are able to get into those private places. It’s just that the keys are digital QR codes. 

Further Reading:

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