back
3 comments
That's not an alternative to PGP. PGP is not meant for streaming data, it is for store and forward systems (traditional email, signing packages, etc.).

Alternatives to PGP should probably include S/MIME and Signify, depending on what you want to do with it.

> ...it is designed for the always-online mobile world

Soft disagree with that. Signal text and voice chat works just fine if all of your communicating party's machines are offline. (Well, I mean, obviously your voice call won't be answered, but otherwise...)

You can't use Signal without a smartphone running Android or IOS. Even the webapp requires a linked smartphone; a phone number is a hard requirement of Signal.
1. that's not a property of the protocol, it's the way they implemented verification

2. it absolutely doesn't require a smartphone, just a routable phone number, that can be a cell phone, a landline, a voip number or a google voice number: http://support.whispersystems.org/hc/en-us/articles/21247611...

> Even the webapp requires a linked smartphone; a phone number is [currently] a hard requirement of Signal.

I never said otherwise. What I said was:

> Signal text and voice chat works just fine if all of your communicating party's machines are offline.

This was in response to an assertion that Signal was designed for the "always-online" world. Signal works just fine when your contact is completely offline for extended periods of time.

The jolla store for sailfish has a patched version of signal that doesn't require the google play service.
moxie's stuff is great (I use it), but it's not ideal. Among the issues is that it essentially ignores some hard problems like identity (or seems to): AFAICT everything is keyed off of phone numbers; if I control a number then I control its identity, and anyone who talks to me has to use the identity Open Whisper Systems publishes, or not talk to me at all.