Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
Wow I didn't realize that Signal is run on Amazon's servers and that they contract with the CIA. This article has some interesting points to mitigate the privacy concerns of this real popular service: https://simplifiedprivacy.com/signal-messenger-guide-to-avoid-privacy-mistakes/
So.... Yes, Amazon has a contract with the CIA. They have for well over a decade now. In fact, I happened to work in AWS when that program first began.
It's called GovCloud and it's just a physically separated, hardened version of AWS. It's separate hardware to meet US govt requirements for handling data and the networks are not accessible from the public internet. Otherwise, it's just standard AWS stuff. The Men in Black want to use S3 too.
Anyway, yes, the CIA (like JPL and NASA and a bunch of non-scary orgs) makes use of GovCloud. That's not evidence that they're spying on Signal messages. And even if they are, they wouldn't have needed to set up a very public contract with Amazon. They'd just make a backroom deal and you and I would never hear about it. E.g. Even if signal switched to Azure is no guarantee.
Finally... If you're in the US, it's not the CIA you need to be worried about anyway. CIA is focused on foreign threats. The NSA is the group that spies on US citizens. And they have a massive data capture facility in Utah. They've got taps all over the backbone internet hardware in the USA. If anybody's watching your signal metadata, it's them. ...and they don't need Amazon's help to do it.