Even State Department-funded Human Rights Watch admits that authorities combine legal and illegal methods to obtain convictions: https://text.hrw.org/report/2018/01/09/dark-side/secret-origins-evidence-us-criminal-cases
Combining dragnet surveillance with device hacking is intended in the design of both tools. Hence, State Department-funded Signal dupes you into handing over your identity as part of the population-centric mapping. In custody, your phone will be hacked when it is taken away if it’s important.
https://xcancel.com/hannahcrileyy/status/2034273723667161480#m
I was putting my kid on Signal to join the family chat, he didn’t have service, so we just used wifi. I don’t know for sure that this hasn’t changed, but when I tried, they refused a google voice account and also refused an sms api acct. I dug into it some more and it appears you have to install it on a phone with cellular service, it needs to read your phone’s ID.
I tried deactivating my phone, activating his acct on my phone with Google Voip, then moving it to his tablet. It would work for about a week then stop.
I dug through a bunch of reddit and group threads on it, you simply could not activate it without a real SMS and a cellular link with all the ID’s.
We eventually got him an apple watch with service, and it allowed that SMS in concert with my phone. Then I installed on his tablet and put my phone back to me. Once in a blue moon, it’ll make him reverify with SMS from the watch, but it works and doesn’t require my phone with service anymore.
It might just be something about google’s voip which a lot places refuse, but it also refused twillio.