[rodgerd]

Yes, I think this will be the way that Google satisfy e.g. the Australian government's mandate to aid intelligence and law enforcement agencies to surveil in a targeted way. Not "everyone gets a subverted copy of Signal", but "these three people get a subverted copy of Signal."

[smartbit]

And also the European anti-encryption proposals [0]

Lawfull intercept was done on IronChat, PGP-SAFE and Ennetcom that gave direct access to the communication of criminals which are now successfully used in court. In the most recent case, the tacktic of subverting all copies was successfully used by the police to decrypt Sky ECC and get access to .5 billion messages used primarily by criminals.

In this comment [1] regarding Sky ECC the question was raised

> How could I get a court order to get blanket access to Signal?

To which we now know the answer: On Android you don’t, you ask a court order for a list of specific phones you want to listen onto.

I’m baffled that Human Rights & Cilvil Liberty organisations are not standing up more fiercely against the new Play Store policy.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25940566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25940670

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26468437#26483634

[heavyset_go]

> I’m baffled that Human Rights activists & Cilvil Liberty organisation are not standing up more fiercely against the new Play Store policy.

They might not be aware. Can't hurt to send some of those organizations emails about this.