[busrf]

This is interesting, thanks for posting it.

On the one hand, there is nothing on a technical level that Signal can do beyond what they’ve already done (linked in the twitter thread, set a flag that the installed keyboard may or may not respect). Anything beyond this is venturing into providing a general computer security 101 course and/or telling you how your mobile OS permissions work and/or region-specific opsec advice. I’m not sure they’re equipped to do that or if they are even the right people to do that. They are a small team and they most definitely do not have somebody embedded in activism of any kind in the sinosphere, which I think is what it would take for them to actually responsibly give region specific opsec advice.

On the other hand, I think it may be quite reasonable for them to say, very clearly, “use your system IME to input text”. It’s a very simple guideline with reasoning that I think can be understood easily by most people. They have a privacy/security section in the FAQ on their site; something like this could go there.

But of course if they did that, they would have to keep managing expectations around how much to delve into the security model of every platform they run on, and how many resources they can reasonably dedicate to usage scenario support. Their mission and product and user requirements are really unique; I’d love to be a fly on the wall of a signal product management meeting lol

I’m basic and use my iOS system IME to text in chinese, but also I’m a basic overseas chinese. Maybe I’ll have to survey my friends and family for what keyboard they use...

[TaylorAlexander]

Yes. I think at this point Naomi is seeking official recognition from Moxie that this is a flaw in the overall system. I think she feels that she has been unfairly ignored, and she also knows people who she believes have been kidnapped by her government because of this flaw. So it’s a very real and visceral issue for her and she is also a very high profile person so it seems wrong to ignore her. I believe her recent Twitter frustrations started when she noticed that Signal responded to questions from some very small Twitter account, but still hasn’t responded directly to her.

If, due to factors outside of their control, Signal cannot actually guarantee that your conversations are secure, it may be irresponsible of Signal not to make that more clear. But one can understand why they might prefer to avoid the issue...