Surveillance ‘existential’ danger of tech, says Signal boss

Whittaker said people were now seeking out apps like Signal because they appreciated the ‘real existential dangers of placing their most intimate thoughts, their locations, their friend networks in the hands of corporate and state surveillance actors’. — dpa

LISBON: The mysticism that has allowed tech firms to make billions of dollars from surveillance is finally clearing, the boss of encrypted messaging app Signal told AFP.

Meredith Whittaker, who spent years working for Google before helping to organise a staff walkout in 2018 over working conditions, said tech was “valorised” and “fetishised” when she first began in the industry in 2006.