Politics
They were called gang members and deported. Families say their only crime was having tattoos
SAN SALVADOR — One is a former professional soccer player who, according to his lawyer, fled Venezuela after being tortured by the country’s authoritarian government.
The other, also from Venezuela, is a onetime shoe salesman and social media influencer who documented his journey from South America on TikTok.
Both were apparently among thousands of political asylum aspirants who entered the United States from Mexico legally via an immigration process scrapped by the Trump administration.
Both were detained, one in California, and deported. Now they are imprisoned in El Salvador, according to their families, who have been left in the dark about their fates in a penal system widely condemned for human rights abuses.
“This has been a torture for us, an injustice,” said Antonia Cristina Barrios de Reyes, mother of Jerce Egbunik Reyes Barrios, 36, the former professional goalkeeper. “My son is not a criminal.”
Jerce Egbunik Reyes Barrios, a former professional soccer player from Venezuela, was among the alleged gang members deported from the United States to El Salvador. “My son is not a criminal,” his mother said.
(Family of Jerce Reyes)
The social media influencer is Nolberto Rafael Aguilar Rodríguez, 32. He initially fled to Colombia, Venezuela’s western neighbor, out of desperation, said his sister, Jennifer Aguilar.
“We’re campesinos, we come from the fields,” she said. “We left Venezuela because we were starving.”
Reyes Barrios and Aguilar were among 261 people — the vast majority Venezuelans — expelled to El Salvador last week after the Trump administration alleged that most were affiliated with the Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua gang, which President Trump has declared a terrorist group.
The evidence of gang membership cited by the government is typically flimsy to nonexistent, defense lawyers allege, and largely based on tattoos and social media postings.
Experts say the administration’s outsourcing of detained migrants to a nation with an infamously repressive prison system has no precedent.
In El Salvador, “the United States now has a tropical gulag,” said Regina Bateson, a political scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder. “The notion that the U.S. government is paying millions of dollars to another government to violate these people’s rights is horrifying.”
The El Salvador operation is part of a deal between the Trump administration and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. Advocates have filed a federal lawsuit challenging Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act — a statute from 1798 previously only invoked during wartime — to expel most of the alleged Venezuelan gang members.
On Friday, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., vowed to “get to the bottom” of whether the Trump administration defied his order to hold off on the deportations while lawsuits challenging the expulsions played out in court.
Many relatives of the deportees deny their kin have gang ties or a criminal record, saying they were simply searching for better lives or escaping persecution in their turbulent homeland, part of the exodus that has seen millions flee Venezuela.
“We have no idea what’s going to happen to Jerce,” said Jair Barrios, uncle of the soccer player. “We understand and respect the laws of each country; but at the same time, we ask that, please, let justice be done and truly innocent people be released.”
Reyes Barrios was detained at the Otay Mesa border post in California in September, according to a statement from his attorney, Linette Tobin, when he appeared for his appointment under the Biden administration program known as CBP One, which facilitated U.S. entry for prospective asylum applicants and others.
According to Tobin, he was mistakenly accused of Tren de Aragua affiliation based on an arm tattoo and a social media post in which he made a hand gesture that U.S. authorities called a gang sign.
The tattoo — a crown atop a soccer ball, with a rosary and the word “Díos” — is actually an homage to his favorite team, Real Madrid, Tobin wrote. The hand gesture is a popular sign language rendering of “I Love You,” the lawyer added.
Reyes Barrios participated in antigovernment demonstrations in Venezuela in February and March 2024, Tobin wrote, and was subsequently arrested and tortured, enduring electric shocks and suffocation. After his release, he fled for the United States and registered for CBP One while in Mexico.
Tobin portrayed Reyes Barrios as a law-abiding person who had never been charged with a crime and wrote that he had “a steady employment record as a soccer player, as well as a soccer coach for children and youth.”
Once in custody in California, Tobin wrote, Reyes Barrios applied for political asylum and other relief. A hearing had been set for April 17 at immigration court in Otay Mesa.
Reyes Barrios was deported to El Salvador on March 15.
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, defended the government action.
Reyes Barrios was “not only in the United States illegally,” McLaughlin wrote on X, “but he has tattoos that are consistent with those indicating TdA [Tren de Aragua] membership. His own social media indicates he is a member of the vicious TdA gang.”
She added that “DHS intelligence assessments go beyond a single tattoo and we are confident in our findings.”
Reyes Barrios is a “respected person” in Venezuela, said his wife, Mariyen Araujo Sandoval, who has remained in Mexico with two of the couple’s four children.
“It’s unjust to criminalize someone because of a tattoo,” said Araujo, 32. She said she recognized her husband in the online videos of Venezuelans expelled to El Salvador.
Now dashed, she said, is her family’s dream of a reunion in the United States. She now hopes for a reunion in Venezuela — if her husband can ever get out of El Salvador.
“I’m too scared to even try to go to the United States,” said Araujo, who noted that she also has a tattoo, of a rose. “I’d be afraid that they would separate me from my daughters and put me in jail.”
The Venezuelans dispatched to El Salvador have no legal recourse for appeal or release, attorneys say, and may face indefinite detention.
“There is, of course, no law, rule or judicial standard in El Salvador to outsource the prisons,” said José Marinero, a Salvadoran lawyer. “These people have … no conviction, no debt to the Salvadoran justice system.”
Their predicament, activists say, highlights the erosion of democracy across the region, as well as the dramatic crackdown on migration pushed by Washington.
“There’s no real safe haven left,” said Michael Ahn Paarlberg, a political scientist who studies Latin America at Virginia Commonwealth University.
An image provided by El Salvador’s presidential press office shows prison guards overseeing deportees at a facility in Tecoluca on March 16.
(Associated Press)
The Trump administration has acknowledged that many of those deported under the Alien Enemies Act have no criminal records in the United States. But the government says they may still pose a threat.
“We sent over 250 alien enemy members of Tren de Aragua, which El Salvador has agreed to hold in their very good jails at a fair price that will also save our taxpayer dollars,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who brokered the deal with Bukele, declared on X.
Critics say that Trump, like Bukele, invokes crime as an excuse for suspending civil liberties.
“They’re using these particularly vulnerable people as test cases,” said Paarlberg, who added that the message appears to be: “If we can deport people who don’t have criminal records, people who are fleeing a regime that pretty much everyone and the U.S. government agrees is authoritarian, then we can deport anyone.”
Bukele, a former advertising executive who labels himself “the world’s coolest dictator,” dispatched video crews to record the arrival of the Venezuelans, who were led off deportation planes in shackles and had their hair shorn.
“This is a performative act of cruelty … to scare people into not coming, to scare people who are here without papers, to scare people away from protesting,” Paarlberg said.
News of the deportations has sent relatives of the expelled Venezuelans poring over videos and social media posts in an effort to determine if their loved ones were among those flown to El Salvador.
A photo provided by El Salvador’s presidential press office shows prison guards transfering deportees from the U.S. to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca on March 16.
(Associated Press)
The names of the deported Venezuelans appeared on a list leaked to the media. Included was Aguilar, who garnered more than 40,000 followers as he documented his northbound trek from South America on TikTok. His feed included images from the treacherous Darien Gap, the dense jungle separating Colombia and Panama.
Jennifer Aguilar described her brother as a hard-working family man who fled Venezuela for Colombia in 2013. He has three children: an 11-year-old girl in Venezuela and a 4-year-old girl and boy, 2, in Colombia. Aguilar’s sister says he got his tattoo, of playing cards and dice, to cover up a scar on his forearm from an accident he had at age 16.
Nolberto Rafael Aguilar Rodríguez, 32, is one of hundreds of Venezuelan migrants detained in the U.S. and sent to El Salvador.
(Jennifer Aguilar)
According to his sister, Aguilar made his way to Mexico and secured an appointment for U.S. entry via CBP One. On June 24, he posted a video of himself boarding a plane, apparently en route to the U.S.-Mexican border.
“Have faith in God,” he wrote in a caption. “Never put your head down. And trust yourself.”
Jennifer Aguilar said he got a job in a travel agency in the California border city of Calexico. For reasons that remain unclear, he was detained by U.S. immigration authorities late last year.
From Colombia, where she lives with her three daughters, Jennifer Aguilar has written about her brother’s plight on social media and sent messages to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and to Bukele, the Salvadoran leader.
Aguilar “has never been to prison in Venezuela or in Colombia,” she wrote to Bukele. “Believe me, if he was guilty I’d say: ‘Leave him there.’ Because we were taught to be honest and do good.”
Nolberto Rafael Aguilar Rodríguez chronicled his journey from South America to the United States on social media. He was deported and is now being held in El Salvador.
(Jennifer Aguilar)
“I’ve tried by all means … to be Rafael’s voice,” said the sister, adding that she doesn’t know anyone in El Salvador. “If I could be there, I would. I’m deeply sorry that I can’t.”
El Salvador has rounded up and imprisoned some 85,000 people — the equivalent of 1.5% of the nation’s population — since March 2022, when Bukele declared a state of emergency that effectively suspended constitutional due process rights. The Venezuelans were dispatched to the infamous Center for Terrorism Confinement, the centerpiece of Bukele’s mass incarceration agenda.
Times staff writers McDonnell and Linthicum reported from Mexico City while special correspondents Mery Mogollón and Nelson Rauda contributed, respectively, from Caracas, Venezuela, and San Salvador. Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed from Mexico City.
J. Bennett Johnston Jr., a Louisiana Democrat and four-term United States senator who helped shape America’s energy and science policies in an era of rising concerns over the perils of nuclear power and the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, died on Tuesday in Arlington, Va. He was 92.
His death was confirmed by his son J. Bennett Johnston III.
One of a new breed of polished Southern Democrats that included Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, Mr. Johnston served in the Senate from 1972 to 1997, a tenure that included Middle East conflicts that threatened American oil imports, and nuclear licensing and safety changes in the aftermath of the nation’s worst nuclear accident, the partial reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979.
A target of environmentalists’ wrath, he favored more nuclear power plants, although public safety concerns limited new construction for decades. But he won fights to sharply expand oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the major offshore petroleum-producing area for the United States, and sponsored laws to let coastal states share federal revenue from offshore drilling.
As chairman or a ranking member of the energy and natural resources committee from 1973 to 1996, he was involved in virtually all Senate energy legislation, from rewriting the nuclear licensing provisions of federal law to developing synthetic fuels and deregulating oil and natural gas prices to spur production. It was a delicate balancing act for a senator from a state with ferociously competing energy interests.
In a state also renowned for flamboyant politicians like Huey and Earl Long and corrupt rogues like former Gov. Edwin W. Edwards, Mr. Johnston was a notable exception — a quiet intellectual with finely honed political judgments who grasped the technical intricacies of energy exploration and production and could also lucidly discuss astrophysics, subatomic particles and tennis serves.
A trim, athletic man with receding hair, Mr. Johnston — an inveterate apple muncher who was said to be the Senate’s most avid tennis player in his 50s — was an approachable, friendly man, responsive to questions and easy to talk to or negotiate with.
His voting was not based on loyalties. Colleagues said he switched sides according to his views on the merits of proposed legislation. He advocated higher gas-mileage standards for auto manufacturers, but opposed President Ronald Reagan’s strategic defense initiative — a plan to use weapons in space to protect America from nuclear attack — calling it ill-conceived and too costly.
On international policy, he often sided with liberals in support of the United Nations and foreign aid. But he joined conservatives in opposing abortion and most gun-control measures, and championed a 1981 bill to limit busing for racial integration in public schools to five miles or 15 minutes. The measure died in the House of Representatives.
In Senate fights over candidates for the Supreme Court, Mr. Johnston helped lead a 1987 rejection of Robert H. Bork as President Reagan’s nominee, but broke with his party in 1991 to support confirmation of President George H.W. Bush’s nominee, Clarence Thomas.
In 1988, with Democrats in control of the Senate and Robert F. Byrd of West Virginia stepping down as their leader after a decade, Mr. Johnston and Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii ran for majority leader, the Senate’s most powerful post. Both lost to Senator George J. Mitchell of Maine.
Mr. Johnston’s support for higher education landed $110 million for five national research centers at universities in Louisiana. He crusaded for years for billions for the Superconducting Super Collider, a pure research particle accelerator, in Texas, to search for fleeting subatomic structures. “It was lynched by the know-nothings,” he said when the project was canceled in 1993.
“I’m interested in understanding where the universe came from and where it’s going,” Mr. Johnston told Physics Today magazine in 1996. “I’m interested in the Higgs boson, which high-energy physicists hope to find if it exists at all, and, like them, I also hope the search produces surprises.” (In 2012, scientists announced that they had discovered a new subatomic particle that appeared to be the Higgs boson.)
John Bennett Johnston Jr., who rarely used his first name, was born in Shreveport, La., on June 10, 1932, to John Bennett Johnston Sr., a lawyer, and the former Wilma Lyon. He graduated from Shreveport schools and attended the United States Military Academy at West Point and Washington and Lee University before graduating from law school at Louisiana State University in 1956.
He married Mary Gunn the same year. They had four children: J. Bennett Johnston III, Hunter Johnston, Mary Johnston Norriss and Sally Roemer.
In the Army from 1956 to 1959, he became a first lieutenant with the Judge Advocate General’s Corps in Germany. After practicing law in Shreveport for several years, he began his political career in 1964 with election to the Louisiana House of Representatives. In 1968 he won a four-year term in the State Senate.
In a state dominated by Democrats, with nominations tantamount to election, Mr. Johnston in 1971 ran for governor, but narrowly lost the nomination to Representative Edwin Edwards, who then won the first of his four terms as governor. Mr. Edwards later went to jail for eight years for bribery and extortion. In 1972, Mr. Johnston contested the renomination of United States Senator Allen J. Ellender, who had held his seat since 1936 as a protégé of the assassinated Senator Huey P. Long.
But Mr. Ellender died during the campaign. Mr. Edwards named his own wife to the seat pending a special election, and Mr. Johnston won the nomination and the general election. He was re-elected in 1978 and again in 1984 against token opposition, despite a landslide for President Reagan that hurt other Democrats.
Mr. Johnston’s last campaign, in 1990, was his toughest — against David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader who had become a popular state legislator. Even by Louisiana’s baroque political standards, the race was strange: a powerful three-term Democratic incumbent overshadowed by a political neophyte who had not sponsored a single bill in the Louisiana Legislature.
Mr. Duke dominated the campaign with appeals to white resentment over affirmative action and welfare programs, and allusions to his racially charged agenda. But his candidacy and his past associations with white supremacy groups were widely condemned, and Mr. Johnston won a fourth term.
When that term ended in January 1997, Mr. Johnston, who lived in McLean, Va., retired from politics and founded Johnston & Associates, a Washington a lobbying firm that later went out of business.
Mr. Johnston’s son said that he is survived by his wife, his four children and 10 grandchildren.
Yan Zhuang contributed reporting.
Politics
Hegseth fends off reporter’s questions about Signal chat leak: 'I know exactly what I'm doing'
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday fended off a reporter’s questions about a leaked Signal chat group involving Trump administration officials discussing forthcoming strikes on the Houthis in Yemen.
Hegseth was asked during a press gaggle in Hawaii if the information was declassified before he put it in the Signal chat and if he was using the messaging platform to discuss operations as sensitive as the strikes against the Houthis on a government or a personal device.
Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, said he received a request to join the group chat on the encrypted messaging service Signal on March 11 from what appeared to be the president’s National Security Advisor Michael Waltz. Goldberg released screenshots of some of the message exchanges he observed.
Goldberg reported that officials were discussing “war plans” in the group chat called “Houthi PC Small Group,” but he decided not to publish some of the highly sensitive information he saw, including precise information about weapons packages, targets and timing, due to potential threats to national security and military operations.
TRUMP OFFICIALS ACCIDENTALLY TEXT ATLANTIC JOURNALIST ABOUT MILITARY STRIKES IN APPARENT SECURITY BREACH
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he knew “exactly” what he was doing after a journalist was mistakenly added to a group chat with senior officials. (REUTERS/Yves Herman)
Speaking in Hawaii Tuesday, Hegseth said the strikes against the Houthis that night were “devastatingly effective.”
“I’m incredibly proud of the courage and skill of the troops. And they are ongoing and continue to be devastatingly effective,” he said. “The last place I would want to be right now is a Houthi in Yemen who wants to disrupt freedom of navigation, so the skill and courage of our troops is on full display.”
“It’s a complete opposite approach from the fecklessness of the Biden administration,” he continued.
The secretary also repeated his claims that “nobody was texting war plans,” pushing back on Goldberg’s assertion.
“As I also stated yesterday, nobody’s texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth said.
Pressed by a reporter about whether he regrets leaking information in the Signal chat that could have put the lives of U.S. troops at risk, Hegseth claimed he has everything under control.
“Nobody’s texting war plans,” he reiterated. “I know exactly what I’m doing, exactly what we’re directing, and I’m really proud of what we accomplished, the successful missions that night and going forward.”
Goldberg reported that 18 people were listed in the Signal group, including Hegseth, Waltz, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
TRUMP NOT PLANNING TO FIRE WALTZ AFTER NATIONAL SECURITY TEXT CHAIN LEAK
Jeffrey Goldberg reported that administration officials were discussing “war plans” in a Signal group chat called “Houthi PC Small Group.” ( Jemal Countess/Getty Images for The Atlantic)
Ratcliffe also put the name of a CIA undercover agent into the Signal chat, Goldberg reported.
The editor has described Hegseth’s denial as a “lie,” citing messages he read that laid out a specific time for the attack, human targets, weapon systems and weather reports. He has also said he is considering whether to publish more messages to back up his reporting, as Hegseth and other Trump administration officials seek to discredit him.
Hegseth had earlier criticized Goldberg as “a deceitful and highly discredited, so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again, to include the … hoaxes of Russia, Russia, Russia, or the fine people on both sides hoax or suckers and losers hoax. So this guy is garbage.”
But the White House has confirmed that the group chat “appears to be an authentic message chain.”
“This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said in a statement. “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security.”
The article said 18 people were listed in the Signal group, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)
The Signal chat has been panned as a massive breach of national security, and many have noted that senior officials are not supposed to discuss detailed military plans outside special secure facilities or protected government communications networks.
Watchdog group American Oversight has sued Hegseth and other officials who were in the group chat, arguing that they failed to meet their obligations under the Federal Records Act by using Signal to communicate and plan active military operations.
Also on Tuesday, amid scrutiny over the Signal chat, Hegseth participated in some physical training with Navy SEALs.
“Kicked off the day alongside the warriors of SDVT-1 at @JointBasePHH,” he wrote on X. “These SEALs are the tip of the spear, masters of stealth, endurance, and lethality. America’s enemies fear them—our allies trust them. Proud to spend time with America’s best.”
Senior government officials mistakenly invited the editor in chief of the Atlantic to a group chat on the messaging app Signal, where the focus of conversation was U.S. airstrikes against rebel groups in Yemen. The app’s use by high-ranking national security officials has raised the question: Just how secure is Signal anyway?
On March 11, Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic was accidentally invited by the Trump administration’s national security advisor to connect on Signal. In the following days, Goldberg was added to a group chat that spoke of “operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying and attack sequencing,” according to his reporting.
Signal is a free app that cybersecurity experts consider to be one of the most secure messaging services because of its end-to-end encryption.
Simply put, text messages or calls are seen only by you, the sender and whoever is in your Signal group chat.
“We can’t read your messages or listen to your calls, and no one else can either,” the Signal website states.
If you’re using only your smartphone’s default messaging app, such as Apple’s iMessage or Google Messages, there is a chance your messages won’t be secure. This happens when you’re an iPhone user who texts an Android user, because you’re messaging from different platforms. Messages are end-to-end encrypted only if both people are using the same app.
Signal also touts user protection because it doesn’t use ads and doesn’t track user data. It collects only minimal user data, such as your phone number, the date you joined Signal and the last date you logged on to the app.
Aside from top government officials, journalists and advocates use the app, but it’s not limited to these groups of people.
With Signal in the news, experts are weighing in on whether the average user should consider it as an option for your everyday communication.
Why should you care about encrypted messaging?
Encrypted messaging “protects more than national secrets; it protects everyday privacy,” said Vahid Behzadan, assistant professor of cybersecurity and networks, data and computer science at the University of New Haven.
Most people unknowingly share sensitive information via text, such as personal addresses, passwords for Netflix and other accounts, or photos, according to Iskander Sanchez-Rola, director of artificial intelligence and innovation for Norton.
Encrypted apps ensure your messages are seen only by the person you intended to reach — and not third parties. That also means your “internet service provider or any potential malicious actors on your network won’t be able to see them either,” Sanchez-Rola said.
Cybercriminals are paying attention to your messages.
In December the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency stated that hackers affiliated with China’s government, called Salt Typhoon, waged an attack on commercial telecommunications companies to steal users’ data and prompted federal authorities to recommend everyone use only end-to-end encrypted communications.
“Ninety percent of all cyberthreats now originate from scams and social engineering threats — a figure that has almost tripled since 2021,” Sanchez-Rola said. “Everyday activities like forwarding messages or even clicking links and attachments can open the door to risks if your information isn’t properly protected.”
By using a messaging app that ensures end-to-end encryption, Behzadan said, you’re protecting yourself from data breaches and identity theft, and corporate tracking and targeted advertising, and ensuring confidentiality in professional or legal communications, freedom from surveillance or unauthorized access, and insurance against potential policy or government changes that may erode privacy rights.
“In short, encryption helps preserve digital dignity and autonomy in an increasingly connected world,” he said.
How is Signal a standout from other messaging apps when it comes to privacy?
All communications (messages, calls and video chats) are end-to-end encrypted by default, so you don’t have to go out of your way to ensure it’s a feature,” Behzadan said.
Unlike many platforms, Signal does not store metadata about who users communicate with, when or where.
“Its encryption protocol, the open-source Signal Protocol, is widely regarded as the gold standard in secure messaging and is even used by WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger for certain chats,” he said.
Signal’s nonprofit structure also sets it apart: The organization doesn’t monetize user data, which reduces incentives for surveillance or advertising-driven features.
Sanchez-Rola added a few more features that amplify securing your privacy:
- Screenshot blocker. This prevents malicious apps on your phone from accessing screenshots, but doesn’t prevent other people from taking screenshots of your conversations.
- Disappearing messages. Messages automatically delete after a set time, configurable from five seconds to four weeks, after they’ve been read. So even if a malicious app gains access to your phone, it won’t be able to retrieve messages that have been deleted.
- Single-view media. This allows you to send photos, videos and voice messages that are automatically deleted from the recipient’s device after they’ve been opened once.
- Incognito keyboard. This prevents third-party keyboard apps from potentially collecting data about your typing, offering an extra layer of privacy, especially when sending sensitive information.
- Usernames versus phone numbers. You can talk to people on Signal without needing to know their phone number — just by using their Signal username. This provides an extra layer of privacy.
How effective is Signal in protecting your privacy?
Signal’s terms of service state you “are responsible for keeping your device and your Signal account safe and secure.”
“The effectiveness of encryption isn’t just about the technology; it also depends on how individuals use it. Encryption works best as part of a larger cybersecurity strategy,” Sanchez-Rola said.
Behzadan shared a few important best practices. They include:
- Enabling disappearing messages for sensitive chats.
- Verifying safety numbers with trusted contacts.
- Setting a strong PIN or enabling biometric lock.
- Keeping the app and device updated.
- Avoiding screenshots or storing sensitive info on unsecured devices.
“The recent incident involving U.S. officials underscores this: Even the most secure technology can’t prevent human error, like adding the wrong person to a group chat,” Behzadan said. “In cybersecurity, the weakest link is often the human element.”
What are other encrypted messaging apps?
While Signal is the top recommendation among security experts, other apps offer encrypted messaging with varying trade-offs:
- WhatsApp: Uses the Signal Protocol but is owned by Meta and collects more metadata.
- Threema: A Swiss-based app that doesn’t require a phone number and focuses on privacy, though it has a smaller user base.
- Element (Matrix protocol): A decentralized and open-source option, popular among tech-savvy communities.
- Wickr: Used in enterprise and government settings and now owned by Amazon.
The best choice depends on your specific needs, your threat model and what platforms your contacts use, because encryption works only if both parties use the same secure platform.
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