Signal calls on Germany to vote against ‘Chat Control,’ saying it would leave EU market

If they do leave, would it still be possible to use Signal? I wonder if they will just block EU residents from downloading the app.

Of course, the nightmare scenario is if Signal is blocked entirely by European ISPs. Nothing that its built-in censorship evasion feature can’t fix, but we don’t really know how would a Signal exit work.

Update: Germany (well more so the ruling CDU/CSU coalition government) has confirmed they will not support Chat Control whatsoever. Still keeping this up since there is a non-zero chance it will be reintroduced again for the next few years

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@KevPham In that scenario, users could install the Signal TLS Proxy https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-TLS-Proxy.

But I fear, unless a trustworthy organization runs the proxy, the barrier of entry here would essentially kill Signal in EU.

I’m guessing what this really means is that they will stop making the app available in these markets? I won’t be surprised if they didn’t highlight that there’s an APK that you can still download and use to bypass, albeit, not in so many words.

What I do see or almost want to see is they release a web version of Signal. That really would take away the responsibility from them to the governments whether to block the app/website or not. And it would then be each individual’s decision to use a VPN or other means to still access and use Signal.

What I don’t know is how feasible and secure a web version of an encrypted chat app can be. If you’re a developer or an expert, please share your thoughts.

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I think what Signal means when they say they will pull out of the market to comply if such a law passes is that they will no longer even list the app in the app stores of those countries. That said, yes - individuals can download APKs and still use a VPN or a proxy to bypass.

@JG A web client would be pretty awesome. And doable; their desktop app uses Electron. If it's open source, which it should be, ideally, you could self host your own as well.

I like their reasoning: It would be like open all letters to check if something illegal is inside, which would clearly by unconstituational in most democratic countries (including Germany)

That’s been abundantly clear since the very beginning. Yet several countries keep pushing for this.

From what I'm told, web crypto is bad because it can serve a compromised version to specific people while still looking fine to everyone else.

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