Comment by tptacek
2 years ago
Signal:
* Gives the servers virtually no control over communications between parties.
* Goes through huge pains to minimize serverside metadata storage.
* Is a sealed system end-to-end; the client and the server are part of a single coherent design that together make promises about privacy and security that apply to every user of the system; Matrix is a protocol ecosystem.
A good example of this is group messaging: Matrix servers control group membership. In Matrix, group membership is key management; a Matrix server decides who can decrypt your group messages. That's not how Signal works! But I don't think anybody seriously thinks Signal is a replacement for a large Slack.
> * Goes through huge pains to minimize serverside metadata storage.
And yet uses AWS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39414322
And? It could run on NSA servers and it shouldn't in theory much of a difference. (I would not use Signal if it ran on NSA servers).
The threat model assumes attackers have maximal control of the server environment.
Assume US AWS servers are NSA servers.
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