Signal Veterans Want to Encrypt Slack, Google Docs, and Basically Every Other App
A research project called 'Encrypted Spaces' aims to bring end-to-end encryption to collaborative applications like Google Docs and Slack. Developed by experts from Signal, Microsoft, and Harvard, the project seeks to provide infrastructure for developers to build privacy-preserving tools.
Why it matters
This initiative addresses growing concerns over data privacy and surveillance in centralized cloud services used by journalists and activists.
A team of developers, including the co-creator of the Signal protocol and contributors from Microsoft and Harvard, are building out open-source software that can help bring the sort of hardened privacy and security offered via Signal’s end-to-end encryption (E2EE) to more collaborative types of apps, such as Slack, Google Docs, and Discord. The project is known as Encrypted Spaces , and although it is currently described as being in a “Research Preview” phase, code already exists on GitHub .
The article provides a balanced overview of the project's goals and the technical context without taking a political stance.
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