
Ninety-eight percent of our users are outside the U.K. “The reality is, our users all around the world want security. But we’ve never seen a liberal democracy do that. We’ve recently been blocked in Iran, for example.

“Some countries have chosen to block it that’s the reality of shipping a secure product. “There isn’t a way to change in just one part of the world,” Cathcart told the newspaper. The draft legislation, which has reached the committee stage of scrutiny in the House of Lords, puts a duty of care on digital services to protect users from a range of harms and contains powers for the U.K.’s internet regulator, Ofcom, to block noncompliant services in cases of serious infringement - in addition to a regime of hefty fines (of up to 10% of global turnover) and even the threat of jail time for law-breaking senior execs under recently expanded criminal liability. legal requirement to weaken the level of encryption it offers its users - and would instead prefer to be blocked by U.K. He also suggested the platform will not comply with a U.K.

Speaking to the BBC and the Guardian yesterday, WhatsApp’s head, Will Cathcart, described the OSB as the most concerning piece of legislation in the Western world. Meta-owned WhatsApp, the not-for-profit Signal Foundation behind the Signal app, and Element, which operates the decentalized Matrix protocol, along with end-to-end encrypted email providers like Proton (ProtonMail) are warning the draft legislation contains measure that risk the security of robust encryption - a technology they say is vital to keep web users’ comms safe. government’s Online Safety Bill (OSB) they argue will do the opposite of promoting online safety by undermining the robust encryption web users rely upon to safeguard their communications. Now, add the Signal repository to your system: echo "deb xenial main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt//signal-xenial.Secure messaging apps are lining up to oppose measures in the U.K.

If you're running any of the following distros: Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and the likes, you can install Signal Desktop using APT.įirst, get the GPG keys using wget to safely download the Signal Desktop app: wget -O- | sudo apt-key add. Let's start with APT since it's the most preferred package manager of choice for most people and comes pre-installed on all major Linux distros. Once done, you are ready to install Signal Desktop on your Linux machine. However, if you're new to Signal, you'll have to download it on your mobile phone and set up an account using your phone number. If you're an existing Signal user, you probably already have the app on your Android or iOS device.
