I will watch the video later, but what does this ban cover?
If it's just government employees then that might be reasonable since record keeping is important?
I use Signal for almost everything, but work stuff stays on work devices. Ideally there would be a signal equivalent that allows for record keeping, but yea
An internal memo from the Prime Minister was leaked in which she asks cabinet members to stop using mainstream messaging apps and use Olvid (an app developped by a French startup) instead. She does not mention Signal specifically, but the implication is that other messaging apps have security flaws.
Meredith stresses that one may very well prefer one app to another based on different threat models, but that it is not fair to imply that an app is not secure without presenting proof.
From a government perspective, signal is 100% not secure for use.
It's entirely hosted operated and developed by United States entities.
It's not secure, not for french government secrets.
French Gov here,
It's 100% logical for a country to keep critical infrastructure, which secure messaging is, domestically independent from external influences.
Not to mention signal is centralized in the US, stores the master key in the cloud... Both of which are no goes if you're trying to maintain independent critical infrastructure.
The French government uses email, which is federated, and can be run independently.
So the real issue is the signal CEO is not moving towards protocol independent federation where the French government could maintain their own infrastructure, and talk to the signal foundations infrastructure. Saying my walled garden is a nice walled garden, they really should be in my walled garden, isn't really going to change the security threat model considerations at play here.