DISINFO: The Signal messaging app was developed and kept afloat with US intelligence funding
SUMMARY
The Russian internet watchdog Roskomnadzor has restricted access to the CIA-linked messaging app Signal, citing legal issues. Signal has long been promoted as a secure messenger, but critics have warned that it was developed and kept afloat with US intelligence funding.
RESPONSE
The claim that Signal is linked to the CIA is unsubstantiated.
Signal was developed with funding from a number of foundations including the US Open Technology Fund (OTF), an organisation that states to be devoted “to advance internet freedom in repressive environments” and receives the majority of its funding from the US government via the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM). This public funding has always been openly acknowledged by all the parts involved, and it is very different from being linked to any member of the US intelligence community.
Allegations are an attempt to discredit the app in order to justify its blocking in Russia (and possibly in Russia’s ally Venezuela). This blockade is part of a planned, years-long expansion of restrictions and control of the internet and social media in Russia, which when this disinformation story appeared in August 2024 had just been extended to YouTube.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that the West uses technology platforms for geopolitical ends, that as in Operation Mockingbird, the CIA keeps its Russophobic influence over media, that a Twitter campaign against Evo Morales may be run by the CIA, or that the European Union has always been a CIA project.