Think about it: A privacy‑focused app the government dislikes used by activists and dissidents gets dragged into a scandal it didn’t technically cause and that scandal becomes political justification for scrutiny and possible investigation
When something protects privacy, shields activists, can’t be surveilled, and is widely used by people the government considers “enemies,”
then any incident, especially a dumb mistake by a public figure becomes an opportunity to push the narrative that “its bad”
Hegseth literally invited a journalist into a private Signal group. The app didn’t leak. He did.
But the public takeaway is shaping up to be:
“Signal is unsafe.”
Activists, dissidents, and “uenemies” use Signal heavily. When an app becomes central to organizing or communication for groups the government dislikes, it moves up the target list.
TL:DR, “This scandal feels like it’s being weaponized to smear Signal and justify government pressure
Signal is not privacy respecting at all when it still requires a phone number for signups and there are no third party servers.
Their app also links with google play services on android (there is a degoogled release called Molly that I use instead of the main app).
The main benefit of signal is just having access to a un-facebooked WhatsApp that is easy enough to get other people on. I use signal for this reason.
People should check out GNU Jami as a p2p messaging application that requires no signup at all. Or just check out XMPP which requires no phone number or additional credentials besides a username and password.