this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
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After the Tchap project based on Matrix, the French Prime Minister asks anyone in the gouvernement to use Olvid, the only app validated by the ANSSI, with metadata encryption and no centralised architecture nor contacts discovery. But only the front-ends are open source, not the back-end.

Source: https://www.politico.eu/article/france-requires-ministers-to-swap-whatsapp-signal-for-french-alternatives/

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[–] lysdexic@programming.dev 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

France wants backdoors into these apps, it’s not a lack of trust thing.

If it's trivial for a host nation to add backdoors to instant messaging services, you'd be agreeing with the government of France and you'd be pressing to migrate your communication out of the hand of third parties.

[–] plz1@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I’m not a proponent of any backdoors like this. I use Signal because it puts privacy first.

[–] lysdexic@programming.dev 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I’m not a proponent of any backdoors like this.

I'm not sure you got the gist of what I said. The point I made was that if being the host nation of an organization meant that their government can add backdoors at will, using any foreign service would automatically mean you'd be snooped by external actors.

Regardless of where you stand on whether you want to add your own backdoor or not, by your own logic using a foreign service means your services are already compromised.

If that's the case, wouldn't it make sense to simply run your own stuff?

[–] plz1@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

I agree. The challenge in running your own stuff is adoption. Having my item chat platform is kind of outlets if no one else is willing to switch to it for me. That’s the same problem I have with Signal when I decided to stop using anything Meta owns.