This is why you go European even if the company is open-source
The encrypted messaging app Signal has stopped responding to requests from Ukrainian law enforcement regarding Russian cyberthreats, a Ukrainian official claimed, warning that the shift is aiding Moscow’s intelligence efforts.
What exactly is Signal supposed to do here?
They're not supposed to be able to help in any way, how would they determine if a specific user is using Signal for phishing or whatever without decrypting their chats?
Being European would make zero difference here, unless the European service is backdoored.
Yay, signal is great because they do everything in their power to not only not spy on you, but not be able to. But boo, they are bad, because they won't spy on other people for us!
People need to learn how E2EE (End to End Encryption) works. It's not that Signal refuses to cooperate with Ukraine, it's that they can't from technical reasons of E2EE.
Signal can't read or intercept messages, at best they can log IPs and that's about it. Which are useless if both parties are using VPN or other IP obfuscation methods.
It's same with ProtonMail for example. The most they can log are IPs, metadata and subjects that are visible to them. And that's it. They can't access or read messages unless they create backoors on login page that access users decrypted data locally. That's why creepy governments are so annoyed by encryption (looking at you UK you creeps as well as Australia and also Germany from recebt news and I didn't even mention ones like Russia...).
The article is about a change in Signal's behaviour.
Before, Signal responded to Ukrainian authorities reaching out to about how the app is being abused by Russians, including for phishing attacks and account takeovers targeting Ukrainian users; now they don't.
Signal didn't introduce E2EE just last week.
This seems to be the only source for this information, while on the other hand I'm seeing this;
Wired: A Signal Update Fends Off a Phishing Technique Used in Russian Espionage
Google warns that hackers tied to Russia are tricking Ukrainian soldiers with fake QR codes for Signal group invites that let spies steal their messages. Signal has pushed out new safeguards.
That's not how that works
The title indicates that Signal was cooperating with Ukraine in the past and decided to stop doing so. But that seems misleading if they were never able to cooperate in the first place?!
Edit: without more info on Signal’s previous responses, this article is not saying much.
“The encrypted messaging app Signal has stopped responding to requests from Ukrainian law enforcement regarding Russian cyberthreats, a Ukrainian official claimed”
This is basically just spreading FUD about Signal.
A company can't be open source, software can.
Of that software requires significant infrastructure provided by a company you can't rely on the overall service. If not you self host or find community implementations.
There are plenty of untrustworthy Europeans as well, we should not uncritically switch to a European company.
What messaging service would you giys recommend?
Obviously Telegram is out, sadly Signal is also not exactly shining ... where else is there to go though?
Like another commenter here said, what did Signal do wrong in this case? We don't want a third party to be able to see our encrypted messages, or to know who it is who is using the service. Which is desirable when I'm using it, but undesirable when an aggressor is using it. Unfortunately you can't have one without the other.
Matrix and Threema come to my mind.
I love the idea of Threema, but the reason I love it is also precisely why it's an extremely hard sell for casuals. Self-management of keys.
It's also not open source. Sure, the clients are, but the back-end isn't, and that arguably the most important piece.