No more, officially, WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal to send messages within the government. Elisabeth Borne sent a circular to request their replacement by Olvid, a highly secure French application, created by a startup.
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A very short deadline: 16 days from November 22, the date this circular was sent by the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, with December 8, 2023 as the deadline. 16 days to give up everyday communication tools, used for years but which “do not ensure the security of conversations and shared information”. 16 to favor Olvid, a French challenger.
The circular was sent to ministers, state secretaries, cabinet directors and members of ministerial cabinets. In short, to everyone who works in government.
Logical consequence: if the entire government, in the broad sense, stops using WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal, all those who communicate daily with the government – even if they are not subject to a formal obligation – must also switch: this small revolution therefore also indirectly concerns, in particular, the 925 parliamentarians: 577 in the Assembly, 348 in the Senate, plus parliamentary assistants, etc… And for them, the deadline is not 16 days, but barely eight days , since the information was only revealed Wednesday evening, November 29 on the website of the Point.
Recreate all your contacts
The problem is that Olvid, this French application created by a startup, doubly certified by ANSSI (National Agency for Information Systems Security) and messaging services such as WhatsApp or Telegram (which are not) , do not manage contacts in the same way.
This is actually one of the advantages of Olvid, but it’s true: when you install it and launch the application for the first time on your smartphone, you start from scratch, without any contact, which is quite destabilizing. And for good reason: there is no centralized directory on servers, the application does not ask for, and will not ask for, your email or your mobile number.
No third party will be able to identify the participants. You must therefore recreate all your contacts, one by one, without the possibility of importing them from WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal.
And even creating a contact requires a particular approach. There are, in fact, two methods for adding a correspondent: either face to face physically. Everyone then holds out their phone and presents a QR code provided by Olvid, which the other person will scan and vice versa. The trick is done in a few seconds. We can still imagine the scene reproduced thousands of times in the corridors of the Assembly and the Senate…
Secret code to be exchanged via an “authentic” channel
You can also add a remote contact, which complicates the operation since each person will have to provide the other with a four-digit secret code, sending it neither by email, nor by another instant messaging service, nor by SMS but, ideally, through a so-called “authentic” channel: in plain language, a videoconference or an old-fashioned telephone call.
Not sure – however – that, in the offices, we follow the instructions for the application to the letter: my first addition of a contact with one of its members was done by receiving his code. access, via WhatsApp!
All that’s missing is the final blow for “historic” instant messaging applications: the announcement, by Emmanuel Macron, that he too has adopted Olvid and switched. The President of the Republic, a follower of Telegram since his campaign for the 2017 presidential election, has already been using Olvid for several weeks.