Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times
A federal agency on Wednesday issued urgent written guidance to top government officials and politicians to immediately stop using standard phone calls and text messages after major U.S. telecommunications companies were targeted by Chinese hackers.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) [ZH: So this is probably total bullshit] said in guidance that “individuals who are in senior government or senior political positions” should “immediately review and apply” best practices around using smartphones.
“Use only end-to-end encrypted communications,” it said, saying that these “highly targeted individuals” also “should assume that all communications between mobile devices—including government and personal devices—and internet services are at risk of interception or manipulation.”
End-to-end encryption refers to data protection that makes information unreadable except for the sender and its recipient. A number of chat apps including WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage, BrightChat, and others already have end-to-end encryption.
Regular phone calls and text messages are not end-to-end encrypted, meaning they can be monitored, either by telephone companies, law enforcement, or potentially by hackers