Snowden, why Google Play Service?

So you recommend Signal as a secure IM app. I\’ve tried it and guess what? It\’s demand the most updated Google Play Service to create my account. I\’m not kidding. Snowden, you know what I\’m talking about didn\’t you? GPS (coincident acronym to Google Play Service) is the default Google spyware used to track you and all your data down.

Visiting Open Whisper Systems I found your picture subtitled by \”Use anything by Open Whisper Systems.\” and I mean, WOW! What a statement! So I trust you, I found Signal app in aptoide.com and I installed it. Did I mentioned that I don\’t have a Google account? Well I didn\’t. So I use F-droid and Aptoide as players to get apps installed on my Android.

Signal installed as expected and ask me to input my phone number. Once I pressed the send button this alerts pop up: \”This application require last version of Google Play Service\”. So beside it\’s a GPL 3 licensed software I can\’t use it, I can\’t trust it and I have to say that I\’m very disappointed with you for recommend such software.

But there is something that bothers me a lot: if I remember right you where a NSA spy, so I\’m pretty sure you know that use a device with Google Play Service on it is absolutely insecure. Then why? Why did you do that? Why Google Play Service?

I\’m a Free Software Activist for a long time now and I know that the simple access to the code is not enough. Stand for privacy, anonymity and humans rights takes much more. This includes take a lot of care with the private social networks such Facebook and take care with traps like software dependencies like this. I\’m convinced that there is a lot of activists and people that are really concerned about privacy using Signal under your recommendation that is not aware that GPS is spying on them. They probably already got a Gmail account and already got their devices under surveillance in a way that they wouldn\’t alerted about the Google Play Service demanding.

Why didn\’t you and Open Whisper Systems alert about this issue? Why didn\’t you made an app Google Free? There is a lot of apps that don\’t require GPS to work, why did yours?

Just let me ask you to treat this issue under a valuable point of view: privacy protection. Market sharing, productivity, mass adoptions and all this enterprise bullshit will not be nice to take as an answer. Those are the enemies arguments.

I really want to be wrong and I want to be criticized by wright this letter. Why? Because right now the conclusion I got is that you are playing along with the mass surveillance you say you\’re opposed to.

Free Regards!