
Signal Foundation - conroy
https://signal.org/blog/signal-foundation/
======
cs702
This is freakin' awesome:

A non-profit foundation with $50 million in the bank dedicated to providing
usable encryption to the general public, with no other agenda other than the
public good.

Go read the blog post by Moxie and Brian Acton (who is joining Signal). Very
exciting!

~~~
cornholio
I hope they eventually develop a _federated_ , privacy oriented messaging
protocol, once the rapid technological evolution settles down.

I know Moxie's position on federated protocols [1], but I think we must
eventually agree that an open environment with a multitude of providers and
implementations is the only way to provide long term privacy - any single
provider is vulnerable. It would also be a very useful tool in the context of
regulating communication platforms and breaking up monopolies.

[1] [https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-
moving/](https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/)

Edit: emphasize federated, not open, Signal is indeed an open protocol.

~~~
sneak
Users don’t want federation.

See also: Adoption failure of Google Talk XMPP, massive adoption of Facebook
Messenger and Whatsapp, and AIM before it.

I wish it were different, too.

~~~
jkarneges
I think users would prefer federated systems. Who wouldn't? Even though most
people have probably never heard the word before, they almost certainly use
and appreciate federated systems like phones and email.

Do people want federation enough to have to take a principled stance in order
to force change? Heck no. And that's the problem: there's no reasonable way
for their desire to impact the producer side of the market. Can't vote with
your wallet since public IM service is universally free, plus network effects
are strong.

Users are being worn down, too. I remember when Pidgin, Adium, Trillian, etc
were rather popular. Now most people don't even use those kinds of
consolidation apps either, and resign themselves to literally running many
separate apps.

This is a crazy mess we got ourselves in, and there is no easy fix. Time
machine to 1980 to get a standard out before ICQ, maybe.

~~~
chme
> Now most people don't even use those kinds of consolidation apps either, and
> resign themselves to literally running many separate apps.

IMO that is really one personal hell for me. I blame android and apple for
this. I was happy with my N900 where you got one chat application that
supported SMS, Skype, XMPP, AIM, ICQ, whatever. The world was so simple back
then. Now everything has to be a separate "app", where previous there where
just plugins. Such a decline in usability.

~~~
Fnoord
Pidgin (formerly known as GAIM) and its subproject libpurple is the one to
thank for. Telepathy [1] and Bitlbee [2] are based on that. I used all of
these throughout the '00s. Before the Nokia N900, I used a Nokia E71 with
Nimbuzz (basically proprietary but it runs something like Bitlbee under the
hood on their servers).

Some of these protocols are open, some are reverse engineered. Problem with
the current generation is that they're focussed much more on security features
such as E2EE. Although before GAIM, we had other applications which did
multiple protocols we also had loads of single purpose applications for all
these protocols you mentioned and a whole lot more. Back in the end of '90s if
you wanted to run MSN and ICQ and AIM on Windows, you had to use a client for
each of these. Its basically a cat and mouse game. Look at the history of the
Skype support for an example of that.

[1] [https://telepathy.freedesktop.org/](https://telepathy.freedesktop.org/)

[2] [https://www.bitlbee.org](https://www.bitlbee.org)

------
mapgrep
This is very very good news.

As a heavy Signal user, from where I sit I personally see the following clear
needs:

-Better group support. Right now, to do a group in Signal you have to name the group, which makes it kind of a pain to create ad hoc quick groups. I'm forever naming them "John Sue Bill" or "Jane Roger Amanda". iMessage, by contrast, just automatically makes a group without a name. You get a thread for that group, so you can follow the discussion clearly, and you can leave the group, but it hides the nuts and bolts of the fact that a group has been formed. Also, Signal has no per-group notification settings, so if you're in a "noisy" group your only option is to turn off notifications universally (including one-on-one messages and other groups) or live with it. Lastly, you cannot form a group from Signal Desktop.

-Better support for long messages (or a new product using the same network and security). Signal was clearly designed for short session lengths — brief messages that are composed quickly. But as it has become the catch-all app for encrypted comms — "just use Signal! PGP email sucks!" — many people, at least that I deal with, are trying to use it for email-type purposes. Long messages with arbitrary attachments. It would be nice if, like, putting a line break in a long message didn't mean hitting Control-Enter or Command-Enter. It might even be nice if you could have multiple threads with the same recipient. You know, like email. I am not holding my breath on this one. But if people could email as securely as they chat, using Signal protocol, it would be a huge leap forward in keeping the NSA out of our business. Not to mention Google/Gmail's ad clients etc.

-Ability to search. I can't full-text search my messages, even within Signal. As I use it more and more, this is a hindrance.

-Group video chat. This is very pie in the sky. But a lot of sensitive comms involve groups — think of people organizing a protest, or a corporate takeover, etc. And right now there are few private options.

~~~
jakebasile
I'd love to use Signal, but in order for me to do so there's a lot that has to
be added.

\- Real multi device support. I want my messages on all my devices, without
having to have my phone on.

\- An iPad app.

\- A desktop app. I'd pay for a native one, without Electron.

These things are basically table stakes for competing with Facebook Messenger,
Telegram, and iMessage. If Signal's goal is to bring encryption to the masses
they have to solve things like this, since regular people care less about
security and more about convenience.

~~~
amedvednikov
> \- A desktop app. I'd pay for a native one, without Electron.

I'm working on a native app that supports Signal, Slack, Twitter etc. It's
only 90 KB (!).

[https://eul.im](https://eul.im)

*edit Signal support is coming in early March.

~~~
throwaway613834
Although you claim Wireshark, etc. can be used to verify the lack of external
communication, the fact of the matter is that it only verifies you aren't
sending data to third-parties all the time. It does _not_ mean that it won't
do so occasionally, or that (say, if triggered via a message in an existing
platform) it won't suddenly send your credentials to someone else and then
erase its tracks, or do anything more sophisticated than the naive approach
you illustrated. The reality is that open-source really _is_ necessary to
prove that nothing nefarious is going on, as unfortunate as that is. I hope
you can open-source it in the future so that it enjoys full adoption.

~~~
amedvednikov
It will be open-sourced at some point within the next 2 years without a doubt.

Like I explained in the FAQ, the plans and the potential are huge, and it
would be really silly to risk it all just to become another data miner. Even
if it's very sophisticated, and there's a 0.01% change it's found out, why
risk everything? Besides, it's simply illegal. All the information about me
and the company is public.

I wonder if you have the same concerns about other closed source software like
Sublime Text.

~~~
throwaway613834
> I wonder if you have the same concerns about other closed source software
> like Sublime Text.

This was an unnecessary personal jab, but I'll respond. Sublime? I don't use
it. Software that deals with my credentials just like you do? Yeah, I
definitely do. That's why I don't trust closed source password managers
either. Text editors? Mine are open source so the thought has never crossed my
mind. Other random software like my OS or Visual Studio? Depends; e.g.
Microsoft is a huge corporation that has nothing to gain and a lot to lose
from keylogging my passwords, but e.g. I wouldn't trust Facebook not to record
my audio or fish out my contacts behind my back. Smaller utilities? Yeah, but
again, they don't have my credentials at their fingertips, or need Internet
access at all for that matter (I turn off auto updates so I can just block
internet access for them entirely).

All of which is to say, yeah, I'm not picking on you specifically, but this
isn't about me, or about you. I'm just a messenger. Verifiability is the
requirement many people have for software that manages their credentials;
pinkie promised aren't enough. For some of them, you can make up for some of
it by having a big enough reputation to lose, and criminal history to
jeopardize in their jurisdictions. For others, you can't. In your case, you
don't seem to have that going for you either.

~~~
amedvednikov
This was not meant to be a jab, sorry if it came out that way. English is not
my native language.

I was genuinely interested, and I expected this answer. This is a very valid
point of view. I hope you'll use it once it's open-sourced.

------
weinzierl
> Over the lifetime of the project, there have only been an average of 2.3
> full-time software developers, and the entire Signal team has never been
> more than 7 people.

This is awesome. Amazing what an excellent small team can build.

~~~
tomc1985
Don't tell SV!

~~~
spullara
When WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook for $19B they only had a little over 50
people.

~~~
TremendousJudge
is it known how many of those 50 were devs?

~~~
mtmail
"When WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook for $19 billion, the popular messaging
app had about 35 engineers and 450 million users."
[http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-f8-whatsapp-
engineer...](http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-f8-whatsapp-
engineering-2016-4)

~~~
tomc1985
35 still seems high to me

~~~
sitepodmatt
You forgot the /s

------
Arathorn
Congratulations to moxie and the Signal folks from the Matrix.org team :) The
world wouldn't have the increasingly pervasive E2E encryption we enjoy today
if not for the double ratchet algorithm, and it's fantastic that they can
continue that work as a 501(c)(3)!

~~~
no_identd
>The world wouldn't have the increasingly pervasive E2E encryption we enjoy
today if not for the double ratchet algorithm

Too bad the Signal Protocol doesn't actually implement the double ratchet
algorithm but a derivative of it that fails to protect metadata making the
Signal Protocol leak metadata. Granted, it only leaks metadata leaked by the
transport layer anyway, but this makes it pointless to implement the Signal
Protocol over something like Tor, i2p or GNUnet.

------
meowface
Moxie is and will continue to go down as a legend of the digital age. He
carved his spot way back with work like sslsniff/sslstrip, and has proven
himself to be a real philanthropist. Kudos to him.

------
faitswulff
This is a bit of a tangent, but I first heard of Intel SGX (Secure Guard
Extensions) via Signal's blog post about secure contact sharing[0], so it's
almost relevant :p From what I've read[1][2][3], Intel SGX is vulnerable to
Spectre exploits. Does anyone know if this has changed Signal's approach to
security at all? Granted, contact sharing was a technology preview, but I'm
curious if SGX is still considered a feasible, "good enough" security measure
for Signal Foundation.

[0]: [https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-
discovery/](https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/)

[1]: [https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/intel-software-
guard...](https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/intel-software-guard-
extensions-intel-sgx/topic/754168)

[2]: [https://github.com/lsds/spectre-attack-
sgx](https://github.com/lsds/spectre-attack-sgx)

[3]: [https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/176635/how-
does...](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/176635/how-does-
meltdown-spectre-impact-intel-sgx)

~~~
porjo
Regarding the SGX enclave and contacting sharing, the blog post announcement
dated 26 Sept 2017 says 'deploying into production...over the next few
months'. Can we assume that's happened already? Or are contacts still being
exchanged in a way that would allow a middle man to reconstruct an
individual's social graph?

~~~
gsch
Given that it now takes an order of magnitude more time than it used to for
newly added contacts to appear in my list of Signal contacts, I assume
/something/ has changed with the way they exchange contact data.

------
rfreytag
Since you are in the US how do you keep the US government from interfering
with your mission because Signal uses strong encryption?

How do you address the EARs (Export Administration Regulations) and ITARs
(International Traffic in Arms Regulations)?

These regulations look like a tar pit to me.

~~~
loeg
Why do you think strong encryption will have an export problem now when it
hasn't for decades? Keep in mind that Signal is already open source and the
algorithm is already widely distributed. Any restriction on export at this
time would be closing the barn doors after the horses have all escaped.

~~~
rfreytag
Quora article on issues in US export of products using strong encryption =>
[https://www.quora.com/What-regulatory-issues-have-to-be-
cons...](https://www.quora.com/What-regulatory-issues-have-to-be-considered-
when-exporting-or-building-products-that-heavily-use-cryptography)

I hate these regulations but EAR and ITAR with respect to crypto seem to be
concerned with the key length and algorithm. Over a certain strength the
software using the encryption seems to be still treated as a munition!? I've
heard of people who ignore this getting huge fines.

And any export to Cuba, N. Kora, Sudan, Syria, and Iran is banned by OFAC
(Office of Foreign Assets Control). Yes, the very countries that need Signal
the most are banned!

Hopefully I'm wrong and we are free of regulatory issues in the US so I'm
asking a serious question here - how does Signal solve this problem?

~~~
detaro
I think the US still requires cryptography products to be registered with the
Department of Commerce, but that's about it for non-military products.

~~~
rfreytag
I've tried reading the regulations (but IANAL) and am almost certain that over
a key-length for given algorithms its a munition and an export license or
similar is required with regular updates.

And then still there is the issue of the OFAC banned countries list.

I'm hoping Signal's compliance can show other hackers how to also comply
without hassle or fear.

~~~
JetSpiegel
I think this is the one:
[https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/documents/regulations-
docs...](https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/documents/regulations-docs/federal-
register-notices/federal-register-2014/951-ccl5-pt2/file)

> You must submit a classification request or self-classification report to
> BIS for mass market encryption commodities and software eligible for the
> Cryptography Note employing a key length greater than 64 bits for the
> symmetric algorithm (or, for commodities and software not implementing any
> symmetric algorithms, employing a key length greater than 768 bits for
> asymmetric algorithms or greater than 128 bits for elliptic curve
> algorithms) in accordance with the requirements of § 740.17(b) of the EAR in
> order to be released from the “EI” and “NS” controls of ECCN 5A002 or 5D002.

------
y03a
Any reason Signal isn't available through F-Droid? It may be unjustified but
I'm not a big fan of installing privacy conscious apps through Play.

Edit: Wait, haven't installed anything yet, but I read the getting started
guide. I have to sign up using a phone number? That throws all expectation of
anonymity and thus privacy out the window.

~~~
skrowl
Telegram is available on F-Droid. It's similar to Signal with more
functionality and greater ease of use -
[https://f-droid.org/packages/org.telegram.messenger/](https://f-droid.org/packages/org.telegram.messenger/)

You need a phone number that can receive texts for the initial setup, but once
you're set up people can add you by @username and never need your number.
Stuff like
[https://www.textnow.com/downloads](https://www.textnow.com/downloads) works
just fine for the initial text. Once you have a single device set up, it
messages your existing devices rather than sending SMS when you try to connect
another device.

One of the main people behind Signal actually tried to spread a bunch of FUD
about Telegram years ago, saying the crypto was weak, but it's really not. No
working POC code was provided to decrypt anything, just FUD.

Protocol details here:
[https://core.telegram.org/mtproto](https://core.telegram.org/mtproto) They
just released MTProto2 in the last year.

~~~
tptacek
Telegram isn't remotely similar to Signal. Telegram communications aren't
encrypted by default, and Telegram group chat messages aren't encrypted _at
all_.

~~~
skrowl
This is 100% false. EVERYTHING that goes over the wire is encrypted, always,
just like when you're on a TLS website such as your bank.

Group chats aren't end-to-end encrypted, and 1 on 1 chats are only end-to-end
encrypted if you make it a Secret Chat.

~~~
tortasaur
Did you really think they were talking about SSL in this context? Of course
they meant E2E.

~~~
skrowl
To say there's no encryption AT ALL when it's fully encrypted over the wire is
still false. Not having E2E encryption is different than not having encryption
AT ALL.

~~~
idlewords
They are encrypted in the same sense that the Sesame Street website is
encrypted.

------
4bpp
I hate to be the one naysayer, but it seems to me like the benefits of this
influx of funding and scope has very few tangible benefits, while predisposing
them to a standard failure mode of large and well-funded tech activist
organisations where the means (the organisation) are confused for and
eventually put ahead of whatever goal they were founded for: see e.g. Mozilla
support for EME, the continuing negative news pertaining to Pocket and trying
to collect user data. (On the ground, part of the problem may be something of
the form: imagine you are the CEO of $foundation, are employing dozens of
people and hundreds of volunteers who you have to keep motivated and now you
are supposed to tell them they can't do the one thing that might keep their
employer going and relevant just because of some philosophical considerations
about how compatible it is with the core mission.)

~~~
bad_user
It's easier to criticize than it is to build.

Mozilla has been doing a lot of awesome stuff and people keep forgetting that
their direct competition and threat are Google, Apple and Microsoft, the
world's largest tech companies. Mozilla basically had no choice with EME, but
to comply.

When the majority of HN's userbase has been using Chrome for years, power
users, nay, freaking developers which should know what EME means, when Chrome
is approaching the monopoly of IExplorer, good luck selling your values to the
general public, who don't give a shit as long as their Netflix stream ain't
working.

Open Whisper Systems has been delivering the best encrypted chat protocol to
the masses, their tech being used now in WhatsApp for example.

So you can be the naysayer, but IMO these foundations are building and
releasing products with a measurable positive impact on the world, whereas
most of us here don't ;-)

~~~
4bpp
I understand the case in the case of Mozilla, because a browser is an
intrinsically absurdly complex product. In the case of Signal, the benefits of
having a foundation like that seem unclear to me. What exactly is it that they
want to do but couldn't before they had a $50m foundation? The linked page
seems very vague about this.

------
Inflatablewoman
Could this mean that Flock will be making a return?

[https://signal.org/blog/flock/](https://signal.org/blog/flock/)

------
anonytrary
As a complete layman, I don't understand why this is different than WhatsApp
(they claim to fully encrypt stuff, right? Is it worse than this?). If I don't
understand encryption and computers, why should I be sold on this? It seems to
be aimed towards CS majors who understand the backend benefits. To an end
user, it looks like an ordinary chat app. Am I wrong? This seems to have been
heavily upvoted; is there a 10x improvement I'm missing?

~~~
Zhenya
While whatsapp messages are, apparently, e2e encrypted - your phonebook and
metadata are slurped up by facebook.

Signal does not have that goal and have been shown by courts documents to not
store the metadata.

~~~
anonytrary
The Signal app asks for a ton of permissions. Apparently this isn't
decentralized either, so how is it different than Facebook? Did they prove it
was mathematically hard/impossible for them to see any of the (meta)data? Have
they proven that they are a 100% oblivious broker?

~~~
distances
The courts not getting any data, as parent just mentioned, is very strong
proof for that.

~~~
anonytrary
> The courts not getting any data

I don't know what that means.

------
Asdfbla
Pretty amazing and absolutely deserved. After the failures of systems like
PGP, which aren't really suitable for the masses, the Signal protocol did a
great job at spreading end-to-end encryption. I'm happy to hear that they got
some philanthropic funding, even though I don't doubt that Moxie and the
others did the work out of principle anyway and might have continued to do so
even without the money.

~~~
acct1771
IMO, saying PGP has failed is like saying cryptocurrencies have failed.

~~~
emodendroket
Considering the diversity of opinions on cryptocurrencies, this post leaves me
with no idea what you think about PGP.

~~~
acct1771
The verdict is still out on both, because, as a society, we aren't ready to
make use of them/the UX haven't been made easy enough for the unwashed masses
yet.

------
kodablah
Like probably everyone else, I have an idea on how to use the money:
Distributed, persistent, group-possible, configurable chat. What's the
difference between person-to-person chat, group chat, twitter, reddit, HN, a
discourse forum, etc? Configuration, if you ask me. But distributed is the key
though I understand identity, disk, and peer management are difficult.

------
pspeter3
I'm really excited about the possibility of a better client. I want to switch
to Signal with my friends but the clients feel so behind Facebook Messenger

~~~
windexh8er
I've assimilated most friends and all family very easily by educating them
about the why. Not to mention if you're a parent explicitly banning sharing of
photos with relatives via social media. People accept any small inconvenience
or lack of feature quickly. But at this point I'm not following on the "so
behind" comment. Care to elaborate?

~~~
antimatter
On top of the myriad of missing features that for example Telegram has, the
UI/UX for Signal (at least on the iOS app) is far behind. The app feels laggy
and slow in comparison to Telegram or Messages (only other apps I use). It has
giant text bubbles with large padding which IMO looks terribly ugly. Also,
Telegram now has dark mode which I find very useful. And as mentioned, as
silly as gif support is, it's a nice feature to have. If only Telegram used
Signal's encryption by default.

~~~
windexh8er
On Android... Slow and laggy: not in the least, maybe this is IOS specific.
Giant text bubbles: again on Android this is not a problem. Dark mode: Signal
has had this for well over a year at this point. GIF support on Android has
been there for almost a year as well.

The downside to Telegram? I don't trust it - so even if any of the above we're
true they're all subjective and in my mind not worth compromise.

------
Klasiaster
That an account is linked to the phone number is the major problem for me
because once you are in another country where you can't receive SMS with that
number, you need to create a new account! Matrix is more friendly in this
regard, but not as good as Signal in terms of privacy features.

------
canjobear
Maybe they can use their $50,000,000 to make it possible to sign up for their
service without a phone number.

The hype around Signal is insane to me considering this lack of basic
functionality.

~~~
emodendroket
Also considering questions like "why does this app want all my contacts?" or
"how do I know I can trust the implementation? or, critically, "how much does
it even matter when the OS itself might be compromised?"

------
xwvvvvwx
Huge congratulations to Moxie and the team. Signal is a wonderful project and
I'm super excited to see what they achieve with such serious resources behind
them :)

------
walterbell
What is Signal Foundation's vision for interoperable, open-standard E2E
messaging between different central services?

~~~
carussell
A null vision. Moxie is against federation, and he's against interoperable
clients.

[https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-
moving/](https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/)

[https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37](https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37)

~~~
baby
I don't think he's against federation, it just doesn't make sense to federate
an experiment. Once you've got something really really really solid, then it
does make sense.

They've been able to iterate their protocol really fast thanks to it not being
an RFC or something.

~~~
mashedvikings
Fully agree and I want to elaborate. After SHA-1 broke, IETF's OpenPGP work
group have failed the community by wrestling hand over what hash function
should be in 5th revision of fingerprint protocol. When they couldn't reach an
agreement, the development of the next standard was abandoned, leaving all
users vulnerable with no date for fix.

And FFS, it hasn't even got anything to do with protocol, it's something the
client can do by itself. Having worked on secure messaging apps, I would never
go to federated protocols. Signal's infrastructure allows rapid improvement of
protocol and fast elimination of insecure protocol revisions. That's where we
need to be at. Just look at the history of TLS and the potential in downgrade
attacks. Old revisions die slowly. Signal can easily monitor what versions are
still running, push updates to users and ensure codebase isn't bloated by code
that merely represents insecure protocols.

Signal succeeds because of it's "closed" ecosystem, it doesn't suffer from the
tyranny of the majority that occurs when there's disagreement about e.g.
seriousness of some attack, when some feature might be risky. With Matrix, I
worry developers of clients can affect choices, and the protocol is already
dangerous, to ensure (backwards) compatibility with older clients and (other)
protocols, Matrix is not end-to-end encrypted by default. I will eat my hat
with mustard the day I see all Matrix clients support only end-to-end
encryption for everything.

------
lawnchair_larry
Hopefully they fix the huge privacy problem that requires people to give out
their phone number in order to exchange messages. It still amazes me that they
don’t see why vulnerable people, or even most women, are not ok with doing
this. Even Apple lets you use an email address.

------
JoeCoder_
I'm hoping they can use some of this cash to make a better desktop client:

1\. That can be minimized to the system tray.

2\. That can be used when behind an http proxy server.

3\. Doesn't require a phone to use.

4\. Doesn't take 200MB ram to run.

~~~
mashedvikings
So, what are you using the 15,800 MB of RAM for?

~~~
JetSpiegel
100 tabs on Chrome?

~~~
baby
Without tree style tab?

------
grizzles
I hope they rebadge an android phone the way Fairphone has.

Signal would only need to make a small profit to keep it sustainable and that
would bring down the handset retail cost pretty significantly. It would be
like the Raspberry PI of phones.

Signal guys: if you are toying with this idea, hit me up (email in profile),
I've put way too much time into researching how to do this as quickly and
miserly as possible.

------
OoTheNigerian
Anytime I hear about signal, I try to sign up and my verification code never
comes.

It may be something this simple that is holding it back from adoption.

~~~
ycmbntrthrwaway
Report here please: [https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-
Android/issues/6027](https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/6027)

~~~
OoTheNigerian
Done [https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-
Android/issues/6027#issu...](https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-
Android/issues/6027#issuecomment-367470856)

------
roadbeats
Moxie seems to be the right person in the right position. I’m excited and
happy for him.

------
mightybyte
This is great news. Now maybe they'll have the resources to ditch your phone
number as your identity. Traveling overseas is really frustrating when you get
a new sim card and your Signal identity changes.

~~~
lorenzhs
You don't need to re-register Signal when you pop in a different SIM card.
I've successfully used it abroad with a foreign SIM card without issue. Of
course people won't be able to add you by any phone number other than the one
you used to set it up, but that's hardly a concern when travelling.

------
hi41
Kudos to Signal! I derive great inspiration from projects such as Signal but
as an average developer I just don't know how to take that inspiration, make a
plan and become good programmer.

------
mi100hael
_> Starting with an initial $50,000,000 in funding_

O_O holy smokes that's a lot of "initial funding"

~~~
yeukhon
I'd like to know how though. They are not VC funded. I supposed Brian Acton
funded it?

------
alexnewman
Maybe now they can afford to have some features, or group chat that's not the
worst in the biz.

------
nickpsecurity
Like I recommended for Mozilla, they could use this money to acquire and/or
create highly-usable alternatives to many products that are about handling
communications or data in trustworthy way. Things like SpiderOak, VPN’s,
backup apps for iOS/Android, HSM’s, payment services, paid email… anything
that unscrupulous businesses have been a problem for with insecure solutions
or them just cheating customers. Each one is turned into a commercial product
either shared source or dual-licensed GPL/AGPL. The money coming in improves
each both for new features and 3rd party review. Release code as GPL either on
component level as they are built or as a whole after development cost was
paid for. Many businesses will still pay for GPL-licensed code just to know
someone is responsible for it.

Such models will gradually increase the number of trustworthy goods available
through trustworthy suppliers over time. That’s the basic concept anyway.

------
alborzmassah
I don’t think I feel good about this. The comments are nice and seem true, but
whenever there is so much money involved, even a non profit label I would be
suspicious. Are all funding and allocations going to be made public for the
organization? People always seem to have a hidden self interest, especially
when money is involved.

~~~
a_imho
I'm neutral, but I was never convinced by Signal's PR pieces. Call me a
skeptic but a lucrative field like messaging is always about money. Signal's
gimmick was privacy to gain market share, but even if they had a slight edge
there back then, the majority did care.

 _even a non profit label I would be suspicious_

Could be about account optimization purposes. The 50M funding was probably
deducted from taxes to begin with.

------
alexnewman
Who funded the foundation

------
beaconfield
Hella awesome news!

------
nvr219
awesome

------
alberth
Even though I’m excited, I really hope this isn’t one of this XKCD “Standards”
moments.

[https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png)

------
grooling
Let's hope they don't backdoor it like they did with WA. Probably already has
one. Long time signal and WA user here

~~~
r3bl
WhatsApp was never backdoored.

Even The Guardian backed down after a review of its research process:
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/commentisfree/2017/ju...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/commentisfree/2017/jun/28/flawed-
reporting-about-whatsapp)

Quote:

> The most serious inaccuracy was a claim that WhatsApp had a “backdoor”, an
> intentional, secret way for third parties to read supposedly private
> messages. This claim was withdrawn within eight hours of initial publication
> online, but withdrawn incompletely. The story retained material predicated
> on the existence of a backdoor, including strongly expressed concerns about
> threats to freedom, betrayal of trust and benefits for governments which
> surveil. In effect, having dialled back the cause for alarm, the Guardian
> failed to dial back expressions of alarm.

------
meritt
Kudos to Signal for taking this approach and not jumping on the sketchy ICO
bandwagon.

------
pishpash
The longest list of required permissions I've ever seen on Android and tying
your identity to a phone number you own?

------
SeaDude
Hm. $50 million when the team has already been successful. Why, when only $1M
would suffice? What on earth could $50M do? Remember the old saying: "Mo money
mo problems" B.S.

~~~
arglebarnacle
Foundations are supposed to be self sustaining without actually selling
anything, so they require large endowments to endure. That $50M could
sustainably spit off as much as $2.5M/year, funding ongoing development
indefinitely.

------
gburt
So, where did the $50 million come from?

That is a significant amount of money for what has been a handful of people,
not taking venture capital, now operating as a nonprofit to "secure
communications."

~~~
darkstar999
The article isn't directly explicit, but

> Today, we are launching the Signal Foundation, an emerging 501(c)(3)
> nonprofit created and made possible by Brian Acton, the co-founder of
> WhatsApp

Brian Action funded it himself.

~~~
mashedvikings
Makes sense only if he didn't spend the $19,000,000,000 on one go when FB
bought WhatsApp.

------
mtgx
When is the ICO?

No, I'm not kidding. Look at Telegram. Who would've thought an open source
project would ever get close to _a billion dollars in funding_?

I don't want Signal to wither away or forever remain a niche chat application
because of lack of funding, especially if Moxie one day decides he wants to
pursue some other dreams of his and doesn't have time to deal with Signal
anymore.

~~~
rrdharan
This seems like a much better setup - $50M and setup as a 501(c)3 - rather
than taking on the weird regulatory risk and all the other weirdness
associated with Telegram's (IMO crazy) ICO:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2018/02/17/teleg...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2018/02/17/telegram-
ico-scam-among-cryptocurrency-scams/#5e4b33fd1cf0)

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _taking on the weird regulatory risk and all the other weirdness associated
> with Telegram 's (IMO crazy) ICO_

To make this more tangible, doing an ICO means a prosecutor can personally
threaten anyone on the team with violating securities laws. That's a stupid
risk to take if you know, as an organization, you're going to fight the U.S.
government in court one day.

