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The recent incident involving the inadvertent inclusion of a journalist into a Signal group chat where US officials discussed sensitive military operations highlights the complexities governments face when using consumer messaging applications for official communications. Historically, various government administrations have used commercial messaging apps for official purposes. For example, Boris Johnson’s administration, and Macron’s team before France chose to standardise on Element.

The Trump administration’s spectacular security breach, in which it seemingly shared details of a planned military strike in Yemen with a journalist, highlights just what can go wrong if you use consumer messaging apps to run your government. It’s beyond all reasonable logic that any government would use a consumer messaging app for even the most mundane chat. That it’s commonly used by the highest echelons of government on the most sensitive of topics is simply mind-boggling.

Kudos to The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) which has produced an excellent report into the use of consumer messaging apps within the Australian government. Based on a survey of 22 government agencies, it is one of the few quantitative research papers addressing the issue.

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The Swedish Armed Forces (Försvarsmakten) has announced it will standardise on Signal for all non-classified communications via mobile devices. Signal has a strong security posture, encompassing end-to-end encryption, minimal metadata, and other privacy-preserving features. The decision underscores an ongoing shift among military and government entities worldwide towards adopting end-to-end encrypted communication solutions to protect unclassified yet sensitive exchanges.