- Signal, the encrypted messaging app, saw an increase in new users spurred by a growing appetite for online privacy, with endorsements from Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey and Edward Snowden.
- Signal is an unusual technology success story: it is a non-profit organization with no plan to raise venture capital or profit from its success. Its encryption protocol is open source and free to use.
- Signal CEO Moxie Marlinspike told Insider about the company’s plans for the future, including potential new product offerings, in an extensive interview for Insider’s 2020 Transformers series in August, with details of the full conversation not being published until now.
- “In fact, I think what we’re doing is extremely normal and everything else is absolutely insane,” said Marlinspike of Signal’s commitment to privacy.
- Visit the Insider home page for more stories.
The signal is undeniably taking a moment.
The encrypted messaging app topped the charts for free app downloads from Google and Apple app stores, where it floated for more than a week. More than 7.5 million people installed Signal between January 6 and 10 – an increase of 4,200% over the previous week, according to Sensor Tower – driven by changes in data policy on rival WhatsApp and name endorsements like Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey and Edward Snowden.
But Signal is an unusual technology success story. Owned by a nonprofit organization and funded by donations from names like WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton and the Knight Foundation, the app’s maker has expressed no plans to raise venture capital or profit from its popularity. All the code he writes, including his main encryption protocols, is open source and free for anyone to use.
Signal’s strength is its simplicity, according to co-founder and CEO Moxie Marlinspike. Signal’s open source encryption allows people to send messages to individuals or groups that no one else – including Signal himself – can read, and the company also does not share any data about its users with third parties or sell ads. This commitment to privacy is increasingly rare among messaging applications.
“In fact, I think what we are doing is extremely normal and everything else is absolutely insane,” said Marlinspike.
In an extensive interview in August, Marlinspike told Insider about the origins of Signal and its meteoric rise last year, as well as its plans for the future. Excerpts from the interview were included in Insider’s 2020 Transformers series, but Marlinspike’s full comments have not been published so far.
Marlinspike wants Signal to be a bearer of privacy standards, since other applications are increasingly dependent on the monetization of people’s personal data. He sees a change in public opinion regarding technology companies, with the optimism of early 2010 usurped by the growing distrust of the consumer and the desire for privacy.
“When someone sends a message to a friend, the intention is not to send that message to a conglomerate of advertisers, hackers, big technology companies either. And people are always upset when they find out that this is not the reality,” said Marlinspike.
As Signal’s popularity grows, Marlinspike hinted that the company could eventually move on to other products in addition to a messaging app.
When asked if Signal is exploring privacy-focused products for functions such as web browsing, Marlinspike said that Signal’s “ultimate goal” is “to expand to address other aspects of the technology”, but declined to go into more detail.
For now, he said, Signal is focusing on meeting the moment, as hordes of new users flock to the app. The first remote company employed 36 people in October, and its job page lists vacancies for five new developer roles.
—Moxie Marlinspike (@moxie) January 14, 2021
‘The era of utopian thinking around technology is over’
Signal’s latest rise in popularity was driven by rival WhatsApp’s announcement that it can share users’ personal data with Facebook, its parent company. Telegram, another app that promises end-to-end encryption, saw a similar increase in the number of users after the WhatsApp announcement.
Prior to that, Signal downloads increased during the summer, as the app became a reference for organizers and protesters participating in the Black Lives Matter protests, one of the largest protest movements in the history of the United States. Marlinspike also believes that the move to online activity amid the COVID-19 blocks has accelerated people’s interest in online privacy.
“It is important to realize that the real change is taking place in privacy,” he said. “If you don’t have any really private space left, I think you are sacrificing a lot.”
Signal’s origins date back to 2013, when Marlinspike quit his Twitter job to found Open Whisper Systems. The non-profit organization focused on the development of an encryption protocol that used private keys to ensure that direct messages could only be accessed at the terminals – not intercepted by the owners of an application or third parties – without sacrificing the user’s convenience. The Signal app was first launched in 2014.
One of the first companies to express interest in the Marlinspike project was, ironically, WhatsApp. In 2013, WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton recruited Marlinspike to incorporate the Signal protocol into his app. Then, in 2014, Facebook bought WhatsApp and Acton ended up leaving the company in 2017 “due to differences around the use of customer data and targeted advertising”. Although WhatsApp messages themselves remain encrypted, the app tracks how often users log in and the phone numbers they use, among other data.
In 2018, Acton rejoined Marlinspike to co-found The Signal Foundation, a non-profit organization that owns and operates the Signal app. Acton personally injected $ 50 million into the foundation, which also received donations from The Shuttleworth Foundation, The Knight Foundation and the Open Technology Fund supported by the United States government. Individual users can also donate to the non-profit organization through its website.
Signal is not aiming to make money from its app, and Marlinspike sees the status of a nonprofit organization as crucial to ensuring that “you are not indebted to anyone, but to the interests of the Signal community”. He told Insider that he is concerned about the profit models of other popular apps, which record user data to get more money from third-party advertisers and data brokers.
“There is this insanity in how everything works now,” he said. “Only a handful of companies have a huge amount of data on everyone – it’s a dangerous equation.”
Consumers are getting smarter about protecting their own privacy online, said Marlinspike, which is reflected in Signal’s growing popularity.
“The era of utopian thinking around technology is over – people are no longer thinking of technology as something that will make it better and brighter tomorrow,” he said. “Instead, people are thinking more about the ways in which technologies are not serving them well.”
Rejecting new privacy threats
While Marlinspike is suspicious of how corporate incentives can lead technology companies to exploit people’s privacy, he is also suspicious of public sector-driven crypto threats.
For most of the past decade, federal law enforcement officials from the Obama and Trump governments have pressured technology companies to abandon end-to-end encryption.
At the request of former Attorney General William Barr, Senate Republicans introduced a bill that would require technology companies to break cryptography in response to subpoenas in the law, in an action that civil liberties groups warn would be disastrous for online privacy.
Signal itself has become a target of frustration for the security forces due to the fact that it collects little data about its users and, because of its own encryption protocols, is unable to read people’s messages even if it wanted to. The company has publicly released its responses to court orders, showing that it has little or no information to provide.
“On the one hand, there are people who are pushing to end cryptography, but on the other hand, there are people within the United States government at the highest levels who are using Signal to protect their own communications,” said Marlinspike. In August, he said he was aware that at least some US Senate, White House and Department of Homeland Security officials used Signal.
But despite his belief that privacy threats are approaching both private companies and governments, Marlinspike said he was optimistic that the technology could become more accountable to its users in the future. One trend that gives him hope is the recent wave of union efforts at Silicon Valley offices.
“People [are] organize around not just material goals for them and their colleagues, but around creative control and conscious use of the things they’re building, “he said.” This is making me more hopeful. “
Ultimately, Marlinspike wants Signal encryption to become ubiquitous. The nonprofit organization allows other companies to adopt its open-source payment-based encryption protocol as they wish, and he hopes that consumers’ obvious desire for privacy will encourage more applications to commit to encryption.
“I think people are concerned about privacy, this is becoming clear,” said Marlinspike. “We are just trying to demonstrate that it is possible to develop technology in a different way.”