Amazon Warns Signal’s Creators Of Breaching AWS Terms Of Service
Last updated June 14, 2021
- Amazon is saying that Signal's anti-censorship system violates AWS' Terms of Service.
- Open Whisper Systems strongly disagrees with this statement.
- OWS notes that we're lacking a safe space on the Web that is censorship-free.
For a long time, Open Whisper Systems (OWS) has been playing it smart with different ways to provide a censorship-free zone for their users around the world. And the struggle to keep their messaging app called Signal safe from spying was always big in certain parts of the world that wanted to repress political dissent.
Today, Amazon has warned OWS that Signal's way of fighting against censorship is actually breaching Amazon Web Services (AWS) terms of service. This supposedly happens, as Engadget reports, if the Signal app hides the true origin of its traffic by using a domain that belongs to AWS. For example, this might happen if Signal uses a domain "Souq.com" which is owned by Amazon. This chat service doesn't have any right to use Souq's internet domain for any kind of purposes.
Image Courtesy Of The Register
On the other hand, OWS responded to these claims by disagreeing with Amazon. According to them, the Signal app is not disguising the origin of the traffic when their users are using Amazon's service so there is no breach of the terms of service. OWS also states that the company is using its own web security certificate so there is no need for the app to exploit other internet domains.
After Google made changes in early 2018, it forced OWS to move away from Google's cloud service in order to avoid their data being monitored. The company has found a safe space under the Amazon's roof. However, if this deal goes off, which might happen since Amazon is questioning it for the valid security reasons, OWS will have to come up with a new system to protect its users' data online. Until this day, Signal app has been vastly used in countries like Egypt, UAE, and Oman, mostly by those opposing the current regime in these countries.
