Signal’s Katherine Maher Problem

[Valin]

Christopher Rufo Substack

Is the integrity of the encrypted-messaging application compromised by its chairman of the board?
Christopher F. Rufo
May 07, 2024

The encrypted-messaging service Signal is the application of choice for dissenters around the world. The app has been downloaded by more than 100 million users and boasts high-profile endorsements from NSA leaker Edward Snowden and serial entrepreneur Elon Musk. Signal has created the perception that its users, including political dissidents, can communicate with one another without fear of government interception or persecution.

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he other potential problem is the Signal Foundation’s current chairman of the board, Katherine Maher, who started her career as a U.S.-backed agent of regime change. During the Arab Spring period, for instance, Maher ran digital-communications initiatives in the Middle East and North Africa for the National Democratic Institute, a largely government-funded organization that works in concert with American foreign policy campaigns. Maher cultivated relationships with online dissidents and used American technologies to advance the interests of U.S.-supported Color Revolutions abroad.

Maher then became CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation in 2016, and, earlier this year, was named CEO of National Public Radio. At Wikipedia, Maher became a campaigner against “disinformation” and admitted to coordinating online censorship “through conversations with government.” She openly endorsed removing alleged “fascists,” including President Trump, from digital platforms, and described the First Amendment as “the number one challenge” to eliminating “bad information.”

According to the insider, a woman named Meredith Whittaker, who became president of the Signal Foundation in 2022, recruited Maher to become board chair because of their mutual connections to OTF, where Maher also serves as an advisor, and to nonprofits such as Access Now, which “defends and extends the digital rights of users at risk around the world,” including in the Middle East and North Africa. Whittaker, like Maher, is highly ideological. She previously worked in a high position at Google and organized left-wing campaigns within the company, culminating in the 2018 “Google Walkout,” which demanded MeToo-style sexual harassment policies and the hiring of a chief diversity officer.

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We’re entering a dangerous period in political technology, and Maher is in the thick of it. Under her ideology, “Internet freedom” is a tactic, not a principle, and “fighting disinformation” means speech suppression, including here at home. When people tell you who they are, believe them.