Encrypted App Signal Gets Green-Light to Be Used by Senate Staffers

Despite stirring some controversy a while back, the US Senate has approved the secure messaging app Signal for use by staffers. 

It seems that the approval was granted two months ago, but it was kept under wraps. The whole thing only came to light thanks to a letter written by Senator Ron Wyden.

The letter signed by Wyden thanks Sergeant at Arms Frank Larkin for the "recent announcement by your office that end-to-end encrypted messaging app Signal is approved for Senate staff use."

Wyden is a well-known advocate for online privacy, particularly with the help of encryption. His name has come up multiple times when such topics have been discussed, including back when the NSA scandal struck and it was revealed the agency commonly spied on people without any reason for suspicion.

"I have long argued that strong, backdoor-free encryption is an important cybersecurity technology that the government should be embracing, not seeking to regulate or outlaw. My own Senate website, which has used HTTPS by default since 2015, was the first Senate website to do so," Wyden adds.

"With the transition to default HTTPS for all of the other Senate websites and the recent announcement by your office that the end-to-end encrypted messaging app Signal is approved for Senate staff use, I am happy to see that you too recognize the important defensive cybersecurity role that encryption can play."

Embracing encryption, while intelligence agencies seek to destroy it

The news also comes in the context of the Senate switching every page on its domain to HTTPS by default, which is a more than welcome decision.

Signal has been the target of a bit of controversy recently, following one of Wikileaks' Vault 7 revelations which stated that the CIA could bypass its encryption protections. That, however, only happened because the agency managed to exploit a zero-day vulnerability in the mobile operating system and used this to bypass any encryption layers, including those in messaging apps. The list includes not only Signal but also WhatsApp and Telegram.