The article reports on Signal president Meredith Whittaker's firm opposition to the UK's proposed Online Safety Bill, which would mandate backdoor access to encrypted messages. Whittaker characterizes encryption backdoors as 'mathematically impossible' and fundamentally dangerous, citing real-world harms such as the Nebraska abortion case where Facebook DMs were used in prosecution. The content strongly advocates for privacy rights and secure communication as essential to human dignity and security.
Governments seem to want to have it both ways. As new technologies are introduced they assume that capabilities and practices available to analogous predecessors must remain available to them (e.g. wire-tapping phones => undermining cryptography) but they don’t feel the same way about public benefits or rights associated with other technology that is being replaced (anonymous cash transactions => ???)
It also seems like there’s a tendency to relitigate battles that are lost. I assume the UK had some equivalent to the 90s crypto wars in the US where attempts to weaken and backdoor crypto by legal means were pretty decisively defeated.
It’s sad that precedents should only accrue to one side’s benefit.
Her television interview with the former(?) minister responsible for this abomination of a law was urgent and necessary. These legislators know what they are doing, and that it is unethical. Let Signal leave the UK market. If the people want freedom, let them take it themselves. Perhaps before this generation of young men are rounded up for another one of history's meat grinders in Ukraine, as a means to further reduce domestic resistance to the new agenda.
What new words can be written that would suddenly enlighten the managers of that government and deter it from its course of fully atomizing its citizens? I'd suggest the greatest service Signal could do for the people of the UK is to suspend operations in the market preemptively. Turn into the torpedo. The thing about totalitarianism is that the longer people believe they are safe from it, the deeper its roots dig in.
Who persuades politicians it’s a good idea for the security services to be able to scan all their messages? I am absolutely certain that the politicians have absolutely no clue what they’re being asked to implement.
> “I think what has happened over the you know, handful of decades in which the surveillance business model has interpolated our core infrastructure — to the point that we’re surveilled in to an extent we don’t have a sense of — is that that choice has been made for us,” Whittaker said.
This is an honest question: did she mean to say "infiltrated", or is this usage of "interpolated" a valid one that I just don't understand? I expected a [sic] or an edit from the article.
The water flowed under this bridge 20 years ago. This whole discussion seems like it’s happening in the wrong decade.
The issue now is that it’s so easy to collect circumstantial information that is constantly leaked by GPS-enabled apps, searches, card purchases, clicks, cell phone tower data, etc. that governments don’t really need the actual contents of messages any more.
I’m still glad Signal exists, but it’s part of a very complex world of privacy and not magical armor.
Hasn’t Apple already shown it’s possible to add another party silently to an encrypted exchange?
> Passwords: Users can now create a group to share a set of passwords. Everyone in a group can add and edit passwords to keep them up to date, and since sharing is through iCloud Keychain, it’s end-to-end encrypted.
So there goes the backdoor encryption argument, it’s possible to add another member to a group of people with on device access?
It’s good that Whittaker is taking a stand, but it would be nice to not have to take her word for it. Reproducible builds would help, but I don’t think we have those on iOS yet?:
This is the lasting legacy of Apple’s CSAM photo scanning debacle. Apple mainstreamed the concept, demoed the dystopian tool, and legitimized the discourse of this dystopian insanity.
Apple executives should be ashamed of their direct role in this.
Presumably that it won't appear in the Apple App Store or Google Play?
Presumably that's more of an issue for the iOS ecosystem... But for android you just switch from using play to FDroid or an APK, right?
I presume a sufficiently irked UK wouldn't be able to do anything more, as Signal already as ways of circumventing traffic blocking within specific states?
Doesn't this just stop less motivated or technical folk getting signal... But for anyone motivated, or with nefarious intent, I don't see how this prevents anything the bill targets as a harm.
I'm still banking on the hope that governments incompetence at dealing with other issues transfers to this one and delays it long enough for someone with some sense to come into office and rip it up. You'd hope that they'd at least try to deal with the cost of living crisis and the war in Ukraine first.
Then again, Labour and almost all the major opposition parties have been quiet on this, not really doing the job of opposition, so even with that delay I'm not sure how much will change.
I wonder if the Signal app would be automatically uninstalled from existing iOS and Android devices?
Hopefully the signal ban will demonstrate to enough people that they don't really own the phone in their pocket - if they don't control what's on it, they are just renting it.
It's a strange thing, today's world. There exists, right now, a realized panopticon in suspension. The only reason we don't have one is that we don't want one.
Sometimes I think that politicians wait for a time when weighty things are on the table to erode our rights. Who is going to be a one-issue voter for something barely understood? And yet, in terms of governance, what issue is more important than this?
I fail to understand what the uk is trying to achieve with its current ubiquitous surveillance. Crime in london is rampant, theft is nearly decriminalised in some areas, and now they want to monitor what people do on the internet? Other than docile tax payers what other potential goal is there? Services are steadily degrading, cost of living is out of control, quality of life dropping. Do they just want obedience, and apathetic population and nothing else?
Of course. It's a class war. When you say the words "class war" far too few people think about the isomorphism to "actual, real" war, but it's there. Sure, the government isn't dropping bombs on London, but the ends are the same.
The MP, Damian Collins, "who formerly served as a junior Minister for Tech and the Digital Economy in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport":
> but they don’t feel the same way about public benefits or rights associated with other technology that is being replaced
When the government creates a law within recorded history — something like a wiretapping law — then the spirit of the law is well-known at time of creation. Usually, that "spirit" is that it's created to explicitly grant a capability to the government to do a thing for the benefit of the public under a certain circumstance. So if technology changes, the spirit that the original law was defined under is expected to be upheld by the court when interpreting the law to suit cases outside its original scope.
The problem with "legacy" common law — things like "being able to transact anonymously using cash" — is that there is no clear "institutional memory" of the spirit that created the law. The people who invented "using gold coins as a common exchange for barter" weren't thinking about anonymity — and so it's not clear whether anonymity is a necessary or desirable part of the spirit of cash transactions, something the public would desire to be preserved in a replacement system; or whether it's just an "implementation detail" of the way cash happened to need to work given technology, something that would make no sense to port over to the new system.
Then these governments have forgotten that they serve at the pleasure of the people. We permit them to exist specifically for the purpose of protecting our rights, not expanding their own. The rights we possess are inherent and automatic because we're human beings, they are not granted by government or anyone else, and if a government fails to aid us in preserving them, that government is no longer legitimate.
Jefferson said all this far better than I ever could:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it."
That’s a less common meaning of the word interpolated, meaning to change, usually with the connotation of corrupting. Typically I see it used to describe text, but it makes sense here too.
Most of them are what the majority of non-politicians would consider “evil”.
Those who go into that profession are longing to control other people by means of the monopoly of violence that the government has.
That MP in the interview is what happens when you give the power to knock down doors and arrest people to somone who likes to get into argument about ethics with people in the news site comment section.
Your insinuation that the UK will implement a Ukraine war draft in order to advance a totalitarian agenda is weird, unnecessarily conspiratorial, and dilutes your point.
I encourage you to make one point and to make it well.
Oh, politicians' messages won't be scanned. They'll make sure of that. Only the peons will have their messages scanned.
The French law that makes it legal for the government to hack your phone has a bunch of exceptions so it's not legal for the government to hack important people's phones.
I wore a "this t-shirt is a munition" tee back in the day. With a quarter century of hindsight, I think encryption as a privacy tool may not have been a solution, but a sedative that prevented the smartest people from seeing how bad things really were and applying their courage to those problems.
Goodness, I hate to be this guy, but do these petitions ever actually help? I can’t think of one that I’ve followed up to the debate that has been successful in anything except getting a solid “no” from the sitting government.
Direct action, enough to be villainised by the media, seems to be the only way that politicians will actually listen — though even then its a massive uphill struggle.
Signal could block all UK IP addresses from accessing its messaging server. UK could require ISPs to block access to Signal messaging servers. Both of these are fairly trivial (my understanding is that UK already forces filtering on ISPs for e.g. pornography).
Of course you are correct that anyone motivated and/or technical enough could still access Signal. However, their less motivated/less technical contacts won't be using it any longer.
The government is basically asking the bad actors to self-identify through their continued use of Signal.
It's more symbolic than anything else. The Signal folks don't really care how effective this action would be. Sure, they can pull the app from the app stores for the UK region, disable any accounts registered with a UK phone number and/or block connection attempts from UK IP addresses. Some people will work around it, but many won't have the technical know-how to do so. The end result that's important, though, is that the Signal Foundation will be able to announce "due to anti-privacy laws enacted in the UK, Signal can no longer provide service in the UK".
Can we set up an automated monitor on all the traffic cams and licence plate readers and facial recognition systems just to catch cops and politicians breaking laws or just to track their movements and associations the way they do to everyone else? Can we access the same cam footage that the state uses to accuse you of something, to clear you instead?
Only occasionally and incompletely.
For instance you might have access to whatever they submit as their proof, but they had access to the full footage and from many sources, and if you had that same access, maybe you'd find proof that you were elsewhere at the same time, or that the subject came from somewhere that isn't your house, or see them getting dressed just before going to commit the act, or was even the very cop bringing the charge, or show the greater context that when you drove through that red light, you had already waited 10 minutes and the light was actually broken, or the lights were out but the timer/switing mechanism was still ticking over so the cam just assumed the driver was shown a red light, etc.
What’s happening right now is much worse than the first crypto wars. In that case the government was just trying to gain occasional access to suspected criminal communications, usually with a warrant. Systems like the Clipper chip even codified mechanisms to limit access to communications. What’s happening this time around is very different: policymakers are demanding the ability to perform real-time scanning of messages, without a warrant. This is technically very different and also has very different implications for privacy down the line.
These laws were in the works for ages before Apple proposed its CSAM scanning tool.
That was an attempt to get out ahead of it and neuter the pressure for those laws. But there was so much opposition that Apple's strategy failed.
Editorial Channel
What the content says
+0.85
Article 12Privacy
High Advocacy Framing
Editorial
+0.85
SETL
+0.90
Core article. Editorial content strongly advocates for privacy rights and opposes mass surveillance. Signal frames encryption as protecting private communication. Whittaker argues surveillance has become 'socially accepted' and backdoors are 'mathematically impossible' while fundamentally dangerous.
Observable Facts
Article's central claim: Signal opposes mandated backdoor access for government surveillance
Whittaker: 'You cannot create a back door that only the good guys can go through'; such access is 'mathematically impossible'
Article: surveillance has become 'socially accepted' despite being invasive
Signal position: 'end-to-end encryption protocol ensures messages remain strictly confidential, accessible only to trusted recipients'
Whittaker: 'What is right is we don't let one massive corporation with very little oversight determine the surveillance society we live in'
The entire article advocates for the right to private communications and opposes mass surveillance systems
By defending encryption, the article supports individuals' fundamental right to privacy in communication
The Nebraska case illustrates real harms of surveillance access—showing privacy violations enable prosecutorial overreach
Fortune.com's Mixpanel tracking while publishing pro-privacy content represents structural-editorial tension (SETL): the site publishes privacy advocacy while simultaneously collecting user behavioral data
+0.70
Article 3Life, Liberty, Security
Medium Advocacy
Editorial
+0.70
SETL
ND
Directly advocates for security protection by arguing encryption backdoors would undermine both personal and infrastructure security
Observable Facts
Whittaker: backdoors would 'undermine the security of our core communications, core infrastructures'
Article frames end-to-end encryption as 'ensuring messages remain strictly confidential, accessible only to trusted recipients'
Whittaker characterizes backdoors as 'mathematically impossible' and fundamentally dangerous
Inferences
The article frames encryption protection as essential to personal and systemic security
By opposing backdoor access, the article advocates for maintaining security protections against coercive intrusion
+0.60
Article 1Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood
Medium Advocacy
Editorial
+0.60
SETL
ND
Advocates for equal human agency and dignity by opposing surveillance systems that diminish individual choice and autonomy across all populations
Observable Facts
Whittaker: 'choice has been made for us' regarding surveillance integration into infrastructure
Article frames encryption protection as defending individual autonomy against systematic diminishment
Inferences
The framing of surveillance as an imposed choice reflects concern for equal human dignity and personal autonomy
Defense of encryption protections implies commitment to equal treatment of all individuals' communication rights
+0.50
PreamblePreamble
Medium Advocacy
Editorial
+0.50
SETL
ND
Article implicitly affirms human dignity by opposing normalization of surveillance and advocating for privacy protection as fundamental to human autonomy
Observable Facts
Meredith Whittaker states surveillance 'choice has been made for us' over decades, implying loss of human agency
The article frames privacy protection as essential to dignified human existence
Inferences
By defending privacy rights, the article affirms the human dignity underlying the UDHR Preamble
Whittaker's concern about normalized surveillance reflects concern for preserving dignified human agency
+0.50
Article 30No Destruction of Rights
Medium Advocacy
Editorial
+0.50
SETL
ND
Article opposes government backdoor mandates that would reduce privacy protections, thereby defending against interference with Article 12 rights
Observable Facts
Signal vows to 'exit the U.K. market if it becomes law' rather than implement backdoor surveillance
Article frames the 'anti-encryption, sort of regulatory agenda' as alarming and threatening to privacy
Inferences
By defending against surveillance system expansion, the article defends against interference with fundamental privacy rights
+0.40
Article 19Freedom of Expression
Medium Advocacy
Editorial
+0.40
SETL
ND
Encryption enables freedom of expression in private communication. Article frames encrypted messaging as protecting private thought and communication, indirectly supporting freedom of opinion and expression.
Observable Facts
Article describes Signal as essential for secure communication by journalists, government officials, and entrepreneurs
Article defends encrypted communication as preventing surveillance of private thoughts and expression
Inferences
By defending encryption, the article indirectly supports freedom of expression by protecting private communication from state surveillance
Mention of journalists relying on Signal illustrates encryption's role in enabling freedom of expression
+0.30
Article 7Equality Before Law
Medium Advocacy
Editorial
+0.30
SETL
ND
The Nebraska abortion case exemplifies potential unequal application of law through surveillance—a mother faces prosecution based on private messages obtained via government search warrant
Observable Facts
Article cites Nebraska case where mother facing prosecution for providing abortion pills, with prosecution aided by Facebook DM evidence obtained via search warrant
Inferences
The example suggests surveillance tools can enable discriminatory legal application against vulnerable populations
+0.30
Article 9No Arbitrary Detention
Medium Advocacy
Editorial
+0.30
SETL
ND
The Nebraska case demonstrates how surveillance access enables government action against individuals without adequate safeguards
Observable Facts
Law enforcement obtained private Facebook messages via search warrant for use in prosecution of mother and daughter
Inferences
The case illustrates how surveillance access enables potential arbitrary government action against specific individuals
+0.30
Article 10Fair Hearing
Medium Advocacy
Editorial
+0.30
SETL
ND
Nebraska case demonstrates use of private surveillance evidence in prosecution, raising fair trial concerns about process and evidentiary standards
Observable Facts
Prosecution aided by private Facebook DMs obtained through government search warrant
Inferences
Using private messages obtained through government surveillance in prosecution raises fair trial and due process concerns
ND
Article 2Non-Discrimination
ND
Article 4No Slavery
ND
Article 5No Torture
ND
Article 6Legal Personhood
ND
Article 8Right to Remedy
ND
Article 11Presumption of Innocence
ND
Article 13Freedom of Movement
ND
Article 14Asylum
ND
Article 15Nationality
ND
Article 16Marriage & Family
ND
Article 17Property
ND
Article 18Freedom of Thought
ND
Article 20Assembly & Association
ND
Article 21Political Participation
ND
Article 22Social Security
ND
Article 23Work & Equal Pay
ND
Article 24Rest & Leisure
ND
Article 25Standard of Living
ND
Article 26Education
ND
Article 27Cultural Participation
ND
Article 28Social & International Order
ND
Article 29Duties to Community
Structural Channel
What the site does
-0.10
Article 12Privacy
High Advocacy Framing
Structural
-0.10
Context Modifier
-0.05
SETL
+0.90
Fortune.com uses Mixpanel analytics tracking (visible in page code) to monitor visitor behavior, contradicting the article's privacy advocacy and representing structural practice contrary to Article 12 principles.
ND
PreamblePreamble
Medium Advocacy
Article implicitly affirms human dignity by opposing normalization of surveillance and advocating for privacy protection as fundamental to human autonomy
ND
Article 1Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood
Medium Advocacy
Advocates for equal human agency and dignity by opposing surveillance systems that diminish individual choice and autonomy across all populations
ND
Article 2Non-Discrimination
ND
Article 3Life, Liberty, Security
Medium Advocacy
Directly advocates for security protection by arguing encryption backdoors would undermine both personal and infrastructure security
ND
Article 4No Slavery
ND
Article 5No Torture
ND
Article 6Legal Personhood
ND
Article 7Equality Before Law
Medium Advocacy
The Nebraska abortion case exemplifies potential unequal application of law through surveillance—a mother faces prosecution based on private messages obtained via government search warrant
ND
Article 8Right to Remedy
ND
Article 9No Arbitrary Detention
Medium Advocacy
The Nebraska case demonstrates how surveillance access enables government action against individuals without adequate safeguards
ND
Article 10Fair Hearing
Medium Advocacy
Nebraska case demonstrates use of private surveillance evidence in prosecution, raising fair trial concerns about process and evidentiary standards
ND
Article 11Presumption of Innocence
ND
Article 13Freedom of Movement
ND
Article 14Asylum
ND
Article 15Nationality
ND
Article 16Marriage & Family
ND
Article 17Property
ND
Article 18Freedom of Thought
ND
Article 19Freedom of Expression
Medium Advocacy
Encryption enables freedom of expression in private communication. Article frames encrypted messaging as protecting private thought and communication, indirectly supporting freedom of opinion and expression.
ND
Article 20Assembly & Association
ND
Article 21Political Participation
ND
Article 22Social Security
ND
Article 23Work & Equal Pay
ND
Article 24Rest & Leisure
ND
Article 25Standard of Living
ND
Article 26Education
ND
Article 27Cultural Participation
ND
Article 28Social & International Order
ND
Article 29Duties to Community
ND
Article 30No Destruction of Rights
Medium Advocacy
Article opposes government backdoor mandates that would reduce privacy protections, thereby defending against interference with Article 12 rights
Supplementary Signals
Epistemic Quality
0.74
Propaganda Flags
3techniques detected
loaded language
Use of 'mass surveillance' and 'dangerous trend' to describe surveillance systems and regulatory agenda
appeal to authority
Quotation of Meredith Whittaker (Signal president, former FTC advisor) and mention of prominent users like Elon Musk
appeal to fear
Nebraska abortion case presented as illustration of surveillance harms and government prosecutorial overreach
Solution Orientation
No data
Emotional Tone
No data
Stakeholder Voice
No data
Temporal Framing
No data
Geographic Scope
No data
Complexity
No data
Transparency
No data
Event Timeline
17 events
2026-02-26 20:02
dlq
Dead-lettered after 1 attempts: Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law
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2026-02-26 20:01
eval_failure
Evaluation failed: Error: Unknown model in registry: llama-4-scout-wai
--
2026-02-26 20:01
eval_failure
Evaluation failed: Error: Unknown model in registry: llama-4-scout-wai
--
2026-02-26 20:01
dlq
Dead-lettered after 1 attempts: Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law
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2026-02-26 19:59
dlq
Dead-lettered after 1 attempts: Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law
--
2026-02-26 19:59
eval_failure
Evaluation failed: Error: Unknown model in registry: llama-4-scout-wai
--
2026-02-26 19:59
eval_failure
Evaluation failed: Error: Unknown model in registry: llama-4-scout-wai
--
2026-02-26 19:59
rate_limit
OpenRouter rate limited (429) model=llama-3.3-70b
--
2026-02-26 19:58
rate_limit
OpenRouter rate limited (429) model=llama-3.3-70b
--
2026-02-26 19:57
rate_limit
OpenRouter rate limited (429) model=llama-3.3-70b
--
2026-02-26 19:48
rater_validation_fail
Validation failed for model llama-4-scout-wai
--
2026-02-26 19:46
eval_success
Evaluated: Neutral (0.08)
--
2026-02-26 19:39
rater_validation_fail
Parse failure for model llama-4-scout-wai: TypeError: raw.trim is not a function
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2026-02-26 19:12
dlq
Dead-lettered after 1 attempts: Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law
