TLDR: signal content in Apple notification can be retrieved even after signal app deletion.
I saw from this reddit thread: Signal messages retrieved from iPhone after uninstalling app. : signal
Referencing this news article: Pretti Killing May Affect ICE Prairieland “Antifa Cell” Terrorism Trial
The mention of signal is in court documents here: March 10: Federal Trial Day 12 - Support the Prairieland Defendants
Signal chat evidence from Sharp’s device (Exhibit 158):
Messages were recovered from Sharp’s phone through Apple’s internal notification storage — Signal had been removed, but incoming notifications were preserved in internal memory. Only incoming messages were captured (no outgoing).
Honestly I have a much much much MUCH MUCH bigger issue with the fact that it is an American and Centralised service.
FBI still can’t access it though.
Is there a good decent e2e messenger not in the US? Would love an alternative.
Good? No.
I think it is telling about Signal, though, that despite being in a privacy-unfriendly jurisdiction, federal authorities can only extract data from it when its users mess up.
I don’t think you’ll get much better until some of these other services mature more. Some of them seem painted into a corner where improving them further seems to involve rewriting big sections of them, like Matrix, so I am less optimistic about those.
As of now the most complete alternative (albeit controversial) is the decentralised SimpleX Chat. But it’s not as easy to use as Signal.
There’s Matrix which is selfhostable but “good” is pushing it and the cryptography is a bit iffy (probably more incompetence than malice). Though selfhosting it means you don’t need the end to end encryption quite as much… until the court gets involved of course.
– Frost