Signal is a government op
Signal was created and funded by a CIA spinoff. It is not your friend.
Yasha Levine
Jan 16
Signal the privacy chat app favored by the worlds leading crypto experts
is trending again. In the wake of Twitter and Facebooks MAGA Maidan
Internet purge (which was followed by Facebooks announcement that it was
gonna start siphoning data off its WhatsApp property), Signal shot up to
being the top downloaded messenger app on the planet.
The New York Times is writing about it. Edward Snowden is tweeting about it,
telling his fans that Signal is the only reason hes able to stay alive (and
not the fact that hes being protected round-the-clock by Russias security
apparatus.) Hell, Even Elon Musk is out there telling people to go Signal.
So many people are flooding the app that its been crashing.
Elon Musk @elonmusk
Use Signal
January 7th 2021
48,655 Retweets363,262 Likes
Given that the app is blowing up, I figure its a good time to roll out my
periodic public service announcement: Signal was created and funded by a CIA
spinoff. Yes, a CIA spinoff. Signal is not your friend.
Here are the cold hard facts.
Signal was developed by Open Whisper Systems, a for-profit corporation run
by Moxie Marlinspike, a tall, lanky cryptographer who has a head full of
dreadlocks and likes to surf and sail his boat. Moxie was an old friend of
Tors now-banished chief radical promotor Jacob Appelbaum, and hes played a
similar fake-radical game although hes never been able to match Jakes
raw talent and dedication to the art of the con. Still, Moxie wraps himself
in air of danger and mystery and hassles reporters about not divulging any
personal information, not even his age. He constantly talks up his fear of
Big Brother and tells stories about his FBI file.
So how big a threat is Moxie to the federal government?
This big: After selling his encryption start-up to Twitter in 2011, Moxie
began partnering with Americas soft-power regime change apparatus
including the State Department and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (now
called the U.S. Agency for Global Media) on developing tech to fight
Internet censorship abroad. That relationship led to his next venture: a
suite of government-funded encrypted chat and voice mobile apps. Say hello
to Signal.
If you look at Signals website today, youll find all sorts of celebrity
endorsements Edward Snowden, Laura Poitras, and even Jack Dorsey. Youll
also find a donate button which, by the way, you shouldnt press because
Signal has plenty of tech oligarch cash on hand these days. What you wont
find is an about section that explains Signals origin story a story
that involves several million dollars in seed and development capital from
Radio Free Asia, a CIA spinoff whose history goes back to 1951 and involves
all sorts of weird shit, including its association in the 1970s with the
Moonies, the hardcore anti-communist Korean cult.
Exactly how much cash Signal got from the U.S. government is hard to gauge,
as Moxie and Open Whisper System have been opaque about the sources of
Signals funding. But if you tally up the information thats been publicly
released by the Open Technology Fund, the Radio Free Asia conduit that
funded Signal, we know that Moxies outfit received at least $3 million over
the span of four years from 2013 through 2016. Thats the minimum Signal
got from the feds.
Three mil might not seem like much these days, especially because Signal
recently got a huge infusion of WhatsApp oligarch cash to keep its operation
going. But its important to know that without this early U.S. government
seed money, there would be no Signal today. And that makes you think: If
Signals super crypto tech truly posed a threat to the feds and to our
oligarchys power, why would the feds bankroll its creation? And why would
Facebook and Google rush to adopt its super-secure protocols? Hmmmmm
As you can see from the way Parlor was shutdown last week when our
imperial oligarchy wants to cancel an app, it can do so instantly and with a
vengeance. But Signal lives on and thrives, despite it being a supposed
threat to the almighty surveillance powers of the United States of America.
Signal was seeded by this Radio Free Asia?
________________________________________
What is Radio Free Asia and the Open Technology Fund? And why would the U.S
government fund crypto tech like Signal? On top of that, why would Silicon
Valley built as it is on for-profit surveillance embrace Signals
supposedly unbreakable privacy tech?
Ive written at length about the deeper history of Signals government
backers and the way in which crypto fits into Americas imperial machine. In
fact, I dedicated two whole chapters of my book to the subject. I wont
reprint it here. But if you want to know the whole story, you can pick up
Surveillance Valley at your local bookstore. Or you can check out some of
the articles Ive written on the topic over the years. The two mains ones
are:
In The Crypto-Keepers: How the politics-by-app hustle conquered
all, I do a profile on Telegram and survey the field of our tech obsessed
privacy culture and the bankrupt libertarian-neoliberal politics that
underpin it.
In Internet Privacy, Funded By Spies I tell the history of the
U.S. government regime change apparatus that funds privacy apps like Signal
and Tor.
But beyond just Signal and its government money trail, what interests me are
the politics embedded in our cultures obsession with crypto and privacy
tech. People are obviously concerned about the all-pervasive surveillance
that surrounds us. But instead of instead of seeking political solutions to
surveillance, our culture has become obsessed with technological and
technocratic solutions not just Signal, but apps like Telegram and email
providers like ProtonMail. Cryptography is an area normally reserved for
warfare and espionage between powerful states. Theres nothing grassroots
about it. Its an arena where people power is destined to fail.
Maybe using Signal and other secure apps can protect you from your local
police department if youre buying molly off our neighborhood dealer that
is, if the cops dont get ahold of your phones. But if you think you can win
a privacy arms race against our imperial tech oligarchy by using apps that
are run and developed on property owned and controlled by this very same
imperial tech oligarchy
well, you know the answer to that.
Yasha Levine
PS: When I was working on my book, I found out through a FOIA request that
my early reporting on Tor and Signal immediately got the attention of the
top people in Americas regime change apparatus. That included Libby Liu,
the head of Radio Free Asia. She got freaked out that my exposé on the
millions in government funds that were flowing to grassroots
anti-government crypto tech like Signal and Tor was going scare away the
privacy community. Lucky for her and the U.S. government, she was wrong. The
top privacy activists of our age including the people from Tor didnt
care that their main backer was an old school CIA op. Thats what shocked me
when I came across her email. Here was the head of Radio Free Asia talking
about privacy activists as if they were are all the governments pocket. And
the thing is, they were and are.