Politicians to Ditch Signal for Homegrown Apps

https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/politicians-to-ditch-signal-for-homegrown-apps

Publish Date: 2026-05-22 10:49:00

Politicians to Ditch Signal for Homegrown Apps

European governments are trying to move their politicians away from encrypted messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp and toward sovereign encrypted messaging solutions. This won’t be as safe and secure as they think it will, but at least they’ll have sovereign control.

Back in 2020, the European Commission (EC) told its staff that Signal had been “selected as the recommended application for public instant messaging.” The idea at the time was that it would be used for communications between staff and people outside the commission. There were already encrypted ways to send sensitive information internally, like encrypted internal email, but they were relatively inconvenient and clunky.

Signal is easy, and adopting it for that relatively narrow use case was a good thing. From a security point of view it was a massive step up from alternatives such as SMS or email, which are more vulnerable to interception and keep plaintext copies lying around on servers.

However, there has been a lot of scope creep since then as Signal’s convenience as an app on personal smartphones became the universal “good enough” solution for basically everything. Signal, and to a lesser extent WhatsApp, has become the de facto global communications infrastructure for politicians and bureaucrats worldwide.

Despite this, the European Union’s diplomatic service advice is that these chats should not discuss sensitive information and should be used only for “informal exchanges” like arranging meetings.

It’s great advice, but absolutely nobody will follow it. The reality is Signal is used for statecraft. In 2024, for example, French President Emmanuel Macron even used Signal to raise concerns about a trade deal with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyden.

Of course, this isn’t just a European phenomenon. In the U.S., senior members of the Trump administration were using Signal like crazy and accidentally invited…

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