I'm aware of what they said in this regard. I'm talking about this focus on apps like Signal in these leaks when absolutely nothing new and special about the programs themselves was revealed by the leaks. Hacking the device that runs these kinds of programs has always been known to be a weak point, and suddenly it's a hot topic now? It created a narrative that Signal was weak and possibly no longer secure.
Like I said, Assange is no dummy, and not only does he have extensive knowledge of all of this, but he also knows the media is by and large technologically inept. When you break stories like this, one should take pains to make them aware of these things. Likewise, the media owes it to their viewers/readers to discuss these matters clearly because the general populace often can't see the differences here. Instead, the discussions had all seemed to foster an image that there was some new security weakness. This is particularly annoying to me. I've already to explain to 2 people up North that nothing was broken, and it's still a secure way of communicating.
I don't quite understand your harsh critique towards Assange/WL. The WL-article was pretty clear that CIA can't break the encryption, but only bypassed it by infecting the phone (with malware).
Can you be more specific? What would like to change in the article? Are there any ambiguities?
And there is new information.
1) CIA could actually hack "any" smartphone (even though it is likely much costly than before Snowden and likely is not "scalable").
Even worse, even Russia/China probably could use similar techniques as well, because CIA din't notify Apple/Google about those bugs...2) Encryption may give a false sense of security.
