In our tradition, we are taught that a neighbor has rights over us. They have rights to safety, respect, and privacy. We wouldn’t leave our neighbor’s front door wide open if we saw it ajar. We wouldn’t share their private family matters with strangers. This is the essence of Amanah, the sacred trust we hold for one another.

Today, our neighborhood has moved online. We stay connected with family across the ocean and friends down the street through apps like WhatsApp. However, after looking deeper into the research, I realized that by using these platforms, we are unintentionally leaving our community’s front door unlocked. Protecting our digital footprint isn’t just about our own secrets. It is a humble act of care for every person in our contact list.

The Envelope and the Letter Link to heading

To understand the risk, we have to distinguish between what we say and who we talk to. WhatsApp uses “end-to-end encryption.” This means Meta, the company that owns it, cannot read your actual messages.

Think of a message like a letter. Encryption locks the letter inside an envelope so only the recipient can read it. However, the post office—in this case, Meta—not only sees the envelope data, but they actually record and store that information. They log who sent it, who received it, exactly when it was delivered, and how often you communicate. This is called metadata.

While it sounds harmless, intelligence leaders view this “envelope” as more valuable than the letter. Former NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker once remarked that if you have enough metadata, you don’t really need the content. This was echoed even more bluntly by former NSA and CIA Director Michael Hayden. During a public debate, he openly stated, “We kill people based on metadata.”

The Hidden Map of Our Community Link to heading

When a computer looks at billions of these digital envelopes, it creates a Social Graph. This is a massive map of every connection in a community. Even if an agency never reads a single word of your chat, they can use this map to link you to others simply by association.

We see the devastating impact of this “guilt by association” in Gaza. Investigative reports have detailed how military AI systems, like the reported Lavender system, use WhatsApp group memberships and metadata to identify and rank individuals for targeting. For our community, which is already active in boycotts and solidarity efforts, the stakes are clear. Simply being in a community group chat can be enough for an algorithm to mark someone as a person of interest.

This isn’t just a concern for those far away. Here at home, agencies like ICE use administrative subpoenas to pull data on an individual’s entire network. As privacy expert Hannah Lucal explained to the Guardian, these tools enable invasive surveillance. They target not only a specific individual but anyone who might be communicating with that person.

The Liability of Stored Data Link to heading

The core problem is that this metadata exists and is stored in a digital vault. Because Meta is a U.S. company, they are legally compelled to hand over these logs when served with warrants or Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATs).

You can see the scale of this for yourself on Meta’s Transparency Center, where they provide a searchable dashboard of government requests. Their reports show high compliance rates for these requests. They often provide data in 70% to 78% of cases for various international governments.

A recent vulnerability uncovered by researchers at the University of Vienna showed exactly why this vault is so dangerous. They were able to “scrape” a database of 3.5 billion active WhatsApp accounts, which is nearly the entire user base.

Without reading a single message, they identified millions of users in countries where the app is banned. This exposed those people to state persecution just for having the app installed. They also pulled “About” texts that revealed political views and religious affiliations. While that specific leak was patched, it proved a vital point. As long as Meta records and stores these envelopes, the entire community remains at risk of mass surveillance.

Why Signal is a Better Path Link to heading

The reason I am moving to Signal is that they have redesigned the envelope itself. Signal uses a technology called Sealed Sender. This hides the sender’s identity even from their own servers. It is like mailing a letter without a return address.

This changes the legal equation. On WhatsApp, a government can serve a warrant today and see retroactive logs of who you talked to for the last six months because that data was recorded. On Signal, because they do not record this information, a retroactive search is technically impossible. Signal’s Big Brother logs show that when governments demand data, Signal literally has nothing to give except the date the account was created.

It is important to understand that Signal primarily protects our history. It ensures that our past connections aren’t sitting in a vault waiting to be pulled. However, no app can fully hide you if a government is actively monitoring the network in real-time. Researchers at the NDSS Symposium have noted that a very sophisticated attacker sitting on the wire could still watch the timing of messages to guess who is talking.

A Realistic View of Safety Link to heading

Technology is only one half of the trust. Our habits are the other. Signal stops the automatic mapping of our community, but it cannot stop human error. In March 2025, a high-profile incident occurred when senior officials accidentally added a journalist to a private Signal chat.

Digital Amanah requires us to be intentional. This means turning off lock-screen notifications so messages aren’t visible to anyone holding the phone. It means using disappearing messages so our chats don’t sit on a device forever. It also means protecting our devices with a strong passcode rather than a simple 4-digit PIN.

Closing the Door Link to heading

Moving to Signal is a modest step, but it is a necessary one. It is a way to close the door on the mass-collection of our community’s connections. It is a small act of care for our family abroad, our neighbors next door, and our shared future.

If you are ready to join me, you can find Signal on any app store. I suggest starting with your family chat. By moving those most personal conversations first, we begin to uphold our trust in this digital age.

May our intentions be pure and our efforts be of benefit to the community.