Even State Department-funded Human Rights Watch admits that authorities combine legal and illegal methods to obtain convictions: https://text.hrw.org/report/2018/01/09/dark-side/secret-origins-evidence-us-criminal-cases
Combining dragnet surveillance with device hacking is intended in the design of both tools. Hence, State Department-funded Signal dupes you into handing over your identity as part of the population-centric mapping. In custody, your phone will be hacked when it is taken away if it’s important.
https://xcancel.com/hannahcrileyy/status/2034273723667161480#m
All giving out your number provides is that you have ever used Signal.
They’re saying ever using a private chat service is terrorism. That’s not really on Signal.
All your phone number provides is that you have ever used signal? Not what tower you’re connected to and therefore approximate realtime location? Your full identity via your telco? Social graph and history of your calls and texts?
I’m not saying it’s their fault or that they are volunteering any information, but that’s how it is for any US-based corporation (doesn’t matter if it’s a nonprofit, any legal entity that can be subpoenaed)
If the only data surfacable from Signal is the phone number, not the crypto conversation, they didn’t source you on signal and get your number, they got your number through other means and used it to prove you use signal.
They can’t see the conversation to contents to supoena the number to id.
The government already has access to every phone number in existence. They can already track every phone to figure out who attended a protest or whatever. Filtering down to “all phone numbers who’ve ever connected to Signal” doesn’t exactly narrow anything down. They don’t have any metadata about who you were chatting with.
They used to publish them in big books, even
that’s precisely why you should not trust services that require it as private. phone number = identification.
plus apparently you government considers you a terrorist if you do.