Signal’s encryption wasn’t broken. But the FBI read the messages anyway. Here’s what actually happened — and the two-minute fix that would have prevented it.

The case seemed routine at first. A group of people accused of vandalizing and attacking an ICE detention facility in Alvarado, Texas on July 4, 2025. A federal trial in Fort Worth. Standard digital evidence.

Then, on March 10, 2026, FBI Special Agent Clark Wiethorn took the stand and described something that stopped the security community cold.

Investigators had recovered Signal messages from a defendant’s iPhone. Not because they hacked Signal. Not because they exploited some zero-day vulnerability. Signal’s end-to-end encryption was never touched. The messages were sitting in a completely different place — in Apple’s own internal notification database — and they had been there the whole time, even after Signal had been deleted from the phone.

...read more at massmux.org