Comment by dijit
18 hours ago
I've been making this argument for a long time, and it's never popular.
People want to believe in E2EE, it's almost like religion at this point.
Protecting people is synonymous with E2EE, even if you cant verify it, and it can be potentially broken.
I was even more controversial and singled out Signal as an example: https://blog.dijit.sh/i-don-t-trust-signal/
There are good reasons to not trust signal. The very first line of their privacy & terms page says "Signal is designed to never collect or store any sensitive information" but then they started collecting and permanently storing sensitive user data in the cloud and never updated that page. Much more recently they started collected and storing message content in the cloud for some users, but they still refuse to update that page. I'm pretty sure it's big fat dead canary warning users away from Signal. Any service that markets itself to whistleblowers and activists then also outright lies to them about the risks they take when using it can't be trusted for anything.
Same, my default MO is assuming 'e2ee' is broken and unsafe by default. Anything that I truly don't want sent over the wire would be in person, in the dark, in a root cellar, underwater. Not that I've ever been in the position to relay juicy info like that. Hyperbole I know, but my trust begins at zero.