Why do people assume Signal messenger isn't spying on you? Yes, it has open source code, yes it uses end-to-end encryption. But we can't check which code runs in the version from Google Play or the App Store. And also their APK (IPA) build process is essentially a black box, it doesn't use GitHub Actions or some other transparent build system. I also heard from Techlore that they add a proprietary part to the apk to filter bots. The only thing I can assume is that people scanned the traffic coming from the app (Android), phone (iOS) and checked whether encryption keys were being sent to Signal or not. But it seems to me that this can be also circumvented. What do you think?
P.S. I myself use Signal to communicate with relatives and friends. Definetly not a hater.
This is only for retro-active cases. A judge can perfectly well order them to do live surveillance of users and put it all under a gag-order and have the police ex-filtrate the data so that Signal can still claim they are not storing any of it.
Like all centralized services their claims to privacy are very shallow and the FBI is known to have tried to get paid informants on these large messenger companies to ex-filtrate data even without the above mentioned legal way via a court order.
You are incorrect. They cannot be compelled into developing a feature that does not already exist.
First of all yes they can, and secondly that's not a new feature but any server has that built in by default. The question is just, is it stored or not.