Encryption Debate: Senate Staffers Can Now Communicate Through Encrypted App Signal

Popular encrypted messaging app Signal has been approved by the Senate sergeant at arms for use by Senate staffers.

The approval to use the messaging service was revealed in a letter sent from Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., to Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Frank Larkin. Wyden has been a vocal supporter of encryption.

Read: Encryption Debate: Domains of Senators Now Encrypted

“With the ... recent announcement by your office that the end-to-end encrypted messaging app Signal is approved for Senate staff use, I am happy to see you too recognize the important defensive cybersecurity role that encryption can play,” Wyden wrote.

Signal is widely considered the most secure encrypted messaging service. Its encryption protocol is used by other messaging apps including the Facebook-owned WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger’s "secret conversations” feature and Google Allo’s “incognito mode.”

A recent security audit performed by researchers from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, Queensland University of Technology in Australia and McMaster University in Canada gave the service rave reviews. “We have found no major flaws in its design, which is very encouraging,” the researchers noted.

ZDNet reported the policy change allowing Senate staffers to make use of the application was made in March but was first made public by Wyden’s letter.

Read: Is Confide Private? Research Shows App Was Vulnerable To Attack

The approval of Signal is just the latest in the Senate’s growing embrace of encryption. Earlier this month it was revealed the Senate was in the process of implementing an encrypted HTTPS channel for all its domains to allow for encrypted communications with Senate-related websites.

Use of encrypted communications services by government employees has been controversial. Earlier this year — prior to the rules change for Senate staffers — a number of Republican legislators requested an investigation into employees of the Environmental Protection Agency who supposedly used Signal to communicate.

Confide, another encrypted messaging app that allows users to send temporary messages to one another, gained popularity among White House staffers earlier this year, though may have fallen out of favor after reports of major security flaws that plagued the app and questions about the legality of government officials conducting business through a service that does not preserve communications.

The approval of Signal for Senate staff use presents a conflict for some lawmakers who have outwardly opposed strong encryption for civilian communication apps, arguing encryption makes law enforcement efforts more difficult.

Several senators, including Tom Cotton, R-Ark., have called for an end to strong encryption protocols used by private companies, and have urged those businesses to provide government and law enforcement agencies with backdoor access to encrypted communications to aid in criminal investigations.

Cotton has previously claimed encryption in apps like iMessage and WhatsApp would make those platforms “the preferred messaging services of child pornographers, drug traffickers and terrorists alike — which neither these companies nor law enforcement want.”

Cotton's staffers now will be able to communicate with one another through Signal, which provides the same encryption protocol found in WhatsApp.