Comment by sotix
2 days ago
I just read that they changed their stance, but for a long time, they were against implementing RCS and said users should be using another tool like Signal. That ignores real world scenarios where users ended up using SMS rather than RCS, which was encrypted with Google messages. Of course, there's more nuance to the discussion, but I found myself a few years ago having gone from encrypted messaging on an iPhone by default to encrypted messaging on stock Android with RCS to unencrypted messaging on GrapheneOS. I thought that was certainly less secure for myself and likely the average user.
But they did share valid concerns about their reasoning and most other aspects of the OS certainly have a great focus on security.
GrapheneOS never had a stance against implementing RCS and has supported RCS at an OS level for years. The issue was that the only available RCS app in practice is Google Messages and it requires privileged access for Google Play services, which goes against the sandboxed Google Play approach. We worked around it by making it so that the access granted to Google Messages when it's set as the SMS/MMS/RCS app also applies to Google Play services where part of the implementation is done.
iOS does not currently implement end-to-end encryption for RCS. End-to-end encryption for RCS is exclusive to conversations between Google Messages users. Apple has said they'll implement the new MLS end-to-end encryption for RCS but has not done it and has provided no timeline for doing it. It took them a very long time to implement basic RCS support and this will likely take a long time too. Google Messages has not yet moved to the new MLS encryption, but it will need to do that too in order for iOS implementing it to provide end-to-end encryption across them.
I appreciate the response and how you're proactive about following things! That's great to know RCS is now possible on GrapheneOS. That's very pragmatic.
For now, I have switched back to iOS due to a significant majority of my contacts using iMessage, so I'm back to encrypted chats again. Hopefully the future of RCS changes things while America struggles with using a unified messenger. I dream of using a dumb phone with RCS.