Talk:Open Whisper Systems

Please add: Who holds the key? Does it support perfect forward secrecy?
Please add information to the following subjects:


 * Who holds the encryption keys?
 * Do the systems support perfect forward secrecy?
 * Why is buggy SSL still supported instead of TSL only?
 * Why based on US soil where any governmental org can get a warrant for anything?

THANKS Michael Janich (talk) 08:52, 6 March 2015 (UTC)


 * The Electronic Frontier Foundation evaluated Signal, TextSecure and RedPhone in November 2014. According to the evaluation, the communications of all three apps are encrypted with keys that Open Whisper Systems doesn't have access to. All user communications are end-to-end encrypted, i.e. the keys necessary to decrypt messages are generated and stored at the endpoints (i.e. by users, not by servers). The evaluation also stated that all three apps implement forward secrecy. In October 2014, researchers published a protocol analysis of TextSecure. According to the analysis, "TLS is used for all connections between clients and server". --Dodi 8238 (talk) 12:12, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Michael, this might answer your last question; a paragraph of new content from the article:

"On October 4, 2016, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Open Whisper Systems published a series of documents revealing that OWS had received a subpoena requiring them to provide information associated with two phone numbers for a federal grand jury investigation in the first half of 2016.  Only one of the two phone numbers was registered on Signal, and because of how the service is designed, OWS was only able to provide "the time the user’s account had been created and the last time it had connected to the service".  Along with the subpoena, OWS received a gag order requiring OWS not to tell anyone about the subpoena for one year. OWS approached the ACLU, and they were able to lift part of the gag order after challenging it in court. OWS said it was the first time they had received a subpoena, and that they were committed to treat "any future requests the same way". " Ken K. Smith (a.k.a. Thin Smek) (talk) 14:41, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Tagging User:MichaelJanich. Ken K. Smith (a.k.a. Thin Smek) (talk) 16:57, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 20 January 2021

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: moved. No clear consensus on where to retarget the now-redirect "Signal Messenger", suggest taking that to WP:RfD for a discussion on retargeting. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:42, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Signal Messenger → Open Whisper Systems – Requesting a re-renaming of this article to its original name. Based on the amount of available sources, I believe Open Whisper Systems is notable enough to have its own article. It is also temporally distinct from Signal Messenger LLC, which was created five years after the formation of OWS, in 2018. Signal Messenger LLC is now a subsidiary of the Signal Foundation, which was also created in 2018. I think it would make more sense to have Signal Messenger be a redirect to the Signal Foundation article instead of Open Whisper Systems. Dodi 8238 (talk) 23:31, 20 January 2021 (UTC)


 * I would agree about the rename of Signal Messenger to Open Whisper Systems, since that is what the article is mostly about, but the article, from its current state, would need some revisions for this to be consistent.


 * Surely "Signal Messenger" refers to the software, so ought to redirect to the Signal (software) article - which in my view would be better named "Signal Private Messenger". There'll be plenty of crosslinks to get from one to t'other.


 * IMO, there ought to be an article/redirect for each entity - whether legal or software. That would give us:


 * "Open Whisper Systems" (a project/website) (rename of this article?)
 * "Signal Foundation" (a business entity) (as is, but could do with some material defining its relationship to OWS and a better description of its linkage to Signal Private Messenger software/app)
 * "Signal Messenger LLC" (a business entity) could be what you are thinking, Dodi, Signal Messenger needs to be redirected to Signal Foundation, but I would suggest that until Signal Foundation is expanded to say something about Signal Messenger LLC, a better 'home' would be this article - at least Signal Messenger LLC is mentioned here.
 * "Signal Private Messenger" (a software entity) (a rename of Signal (software)?)


 * Revisions needed to this article include:


 * 1. "Moxie Marlinspike founded the Open Whisper Systems project in 2013, eventually evolving it into the Signal App in 2015 after merging the functionality of RedPhone and TextSecure."


 * How can a project or a web site evolve into an app?


 * Maybe better would be:
 * "Moxie Marlinspike founded the Open Whisper Systems project in 2013, eventually merging the functionality of its two initial projects RedPhone and TextSecure into the Signal Private Messenger app in 2015."


 * 2. "In 2018 Signal Messenger was incorporated as an LLC by Moxie Marlinspike and Brian Acton and then rolled under the non-profit Signal Foundation."


 * If Signal Messenger is an app it cannot be incorporated. Maybe better would be:
 * "In 2018 Signal Messenger LLC was incorporated by Moxie Marlinspike and Brian Acton and then rolled under the non-profit Signal Foundation."


 * 3. "2018–present: Signal Messenger"
 * Except for an aside that Marlinspike will continue as CEO - clearly referring to the LLC as opposed to the software, this section does not otherwise mention Signal Messenger but it does refer several times to the Signal Foundation. I would therefore suggest that a better name for the subsection would be "2018–present: Signal Foundation".


 * 4. Under Section "Projects", the first sentence begins "Signal Messenger's active projects include:"
 * If the article is renamed as proposed, this would probably need to change to "Open Whisper Systems's active projects include:", however, it is not clear from any information in the various articles where the divisions are between Open Whisper Systems, Signal Foundation and Signal Messenger LLC, and which of the four listed projects, Signal, Signal Protocol, Signal Server and Contact Discovery Service might belong to which parts of the organisational web - if indeed there is any practical distinction from the point of view of software development. Hedles (talk) 01:54, 21 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the analysis, Hedles. I agree that most of those changes are also necessary to make this a bit less of a mess. To address your point about where the distinction lies between Open Whisper Systems, Signal Messenger LLC, and the Signal Foundation, I would say that the distinction is temporal: The development of the Signal app was started by the Open Whisper Systems group, and by the time the Signal Foundation was born, that is the only active project they had. As a distinct entity, Open Whisper Systems ended when the Signal Foundation was born, and everyone who was involved with Open Whisper Systems full time became a full time employee of Signal Messenger LLC under the continued direction of Moxie Marlinspike. I cannot find a source at the moment that says all of this explicitly, but I think it is clear from the way that the Signal app has now been developed during the last three years: Every mention of it being developed by Open Whisper Systems (such as copyright notices and app store descriptions) have been updated to say that it is developed by either the Signal Foundation or Signal Messenger LLC. --Dodi 8238 (talk) 07:35, 21 January 2021 (UTC) [edited 09:33, 21 January 2021 (UTC)]


 * PS: I disagree with the idea that the Signal (software) article ought to be renamed as "Signal Private Messenger". "Signal Private Messenger" already redirects there and the current name of that article is consistent with the usual convention regarding software articles. Of course, we could have that discussion on the talk page of that article if you disagree. As for "Signal Messenger", the current title is indeed referring to "Signal Messenger LLC". The "LLC" is just dropped because of the normal convention regarding the naming of such articles. I initially thought that "Signal Messenger" should redirect to the Signal Foundation article, but I see now that it could also redirect to the Signal (software) article. I do not think it should redirect to this article about Open Whisper Systems, because the Signal app is no longer developed by Open Whisper Systems. --Dodi 8238 (talk) 09:33, 21 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Another point that I would like to add is that Signal Messenger LLC. on its own is not yet notable enough to have its own article. I have now started a section about Signal Messenger LLC. in the Signal Foundation article and redirected Signal Messenger LLC to that section. I think we can now start rewriting this article to be exclusively about Open Whisper Systems (like it once was), rename this article, and then redirect Signal Messenger to another article. --Dodi 8238 (talk) 11:58, 21 January 2021 (UTC) [edited 12:00, 21 January 2021 (UTC)]


 * I have now rewritten most of the article so that it is fully ready to be moved to Open Whisper Systems. --Dodi 8238 (talk) 13:14, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

There is a clear consensus to move here, so what's the hold-up? I am now thinking that I should have just edited this article first and then requested an uncontroversial technical move instead, considering that it was me who originally moved this article incorrectly to its current name. Signal Messenger LLC should have been handled as a subtopic of Signal Technology Foundation from the beginning. --Dodi 8238 (talk) 16:15, 29 January 2021 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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