Google And Amazon Are Looking Pro Censorship Based On New Signal Ban

Signal is a messaging app that is often used by populations under oppressive governments in order to evade censorship. Recently, the platform was sent an email by Amazon to end this practice and open its users to being censored by tyrannical regimes. This was after Google did the same thing early last month, which forced Signal to switch over to Amazon. That turned out to be a mistake.

The email that Amazon sent was published by the founder of Open Whisper System, Moxie Marlinspike, which is developed Signal. Apparently, the company is not very happy with how the messaging platform was using the method called domain-fronting, which basically made censoring messages using the app rather impossible.

“Yesterday AWS became aware of your Github and Hacker News/ycombinator posts describing how Signal plans to make its traffic look like traffic from another site, (popularly known as “domain fronting”) by using a domain owned by Amazon -- Souq.com. You do not have permission from Amazon to use Souq.com for any purpose. Any use of Souq.com or any other domain to masquerade as another entity without express permission of the domain owner is in clear violation of the AWS Service Terms,” the email reads.

The biggest advantage to domain-fronting is that governments would basically have to block all or at least a huge swath of the internet in order to block Signal, The Verge reports. Instead of reassuring online companies, however, it seems the prospect only scared them.

As a result, entities with the most to lose, which include Google and Amazon, have decided to take the side of the governments and gang up on Signal. It would appear that there are no immediate solutions either.

“In the meantime, the censors in these countries will have (at least temporarily) achieved their goals. Sadly, they didn’t have to do anything but wait,” Marlinspike writes.