Comment by bsimpson
8 months ago
This sounds less like a Signal problem than an information organization problem. Signal can only show what's in its datastore (your contact list).
I just checked on Android - if you try to add someone to a group chat, it shows their name and profile pic.
One potential Signal-side wrinkle is that it allows you to add people to a group chat who are in another chat you're in, but who aren't in your contacts list. There are strangers I was apparently at a dinner party with years ago who are eligible to be added to a group chat. If Jeffrey Goldberg has his Signal profile name set to JG and he wasn't in Mike Waltz's phone with a more specific name, that could lead to this mistake.
Then it's a good thing there's not an Abdul-Malik al-Houthi in the administration, as they might have included the wrong person on the private group chat.
They should add one then, because the operation described is illegal under international law and should not have been executed. They are punishing Yemen for resisting the US backed Israeli genocide in Gaza. It is ghastly.
I have empathy for civilians, but you’re having empathy to self-declared murders and terrorists. It’s in their Houthi motto. That’s ghastly
3 replies →
> This sounds less like a Signal problem than an information organization problem. Signal can only show what's in its datastore (your contact list).
Signal's insistence on punting on the trust/identity problem is a Signal problem IMO, particularly when its advocates make such a fuss (when it suits them) about being a properly end-to-end cryptosystem and not just a toolbox of algorithms. Most of the systems it's competing with make at least some attempt at providing a chain of trust so you don't have to individually verify everyone you want to talk to.
Skype solves it with an invite link. If you want to send an account, you take its invite link and send it, thus making a manual web of trust without search.