Moxie's laid out very clear reasons for why he uses Google Play and discourages other people from building it. You may not agree with him, but he at least has what I think is a coherent security model that he's sticking to. Really great discussion on it here: https://github.com/whispersystems/textsecure/issues/53 https://github.com/whispersystems/textsecure/issues/127 Namely, he trusts apps signed with his signature (a process he manages using his own airgapped system) and that's it. *You* may not hinge your trust of the application on his signature, but he does, and he wants ideally every TextSecure install to have it. Both threads above are from before the CyanogenMod deal. To make that happen, Moxie's team built a secure self-update path for the app, which removed most of the barriers to requiring Google Play. The other main barrier is push delivery, which right now uses Google Cloud Messaging. High quality push delivery to a kabillion devices is very hard, and not easy to replace. However, Moxie has encouraged people to take advantage of the server's WebSockets support, and to build an option for that into the client if they want to remove the last barrier to Google support -- while warning that WebSockets delivery will not be nearly as good as GCM-based delivery. I was talking with a friend about this over the weekend, and I think that the push that's happening for fully reproducible builds -- where every build produces an identical binary with an identical hash -- would resolve some of the issues Moxie has. Then, Moxie can sign the hash of the binary, and others who build the source code or get binaries from other places can verify that hash. That still requires some tooling or verification UX, and for builds to be reproducible by other people than Moxie, but it could make a difference. -- Eric On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 6:12 AM, Cathal Garvey <cathalgarvey@cathalgarvey.me
wrote:
Nope, I haven't had to install Play for Textsecure at all, and I don't use or have a personal Google account. When it offers to set up data channel, just skip it, and TS reverts to encrypting over SMS instead.
Redphone also has a "no google" mode where it announces incoming calls to other RP users with a simultaneous SMS, but I've found it to be very buggy in my builds; calls connect but no sound transmitted, etc.
As far as "where to get it", here's a copy: https://ngrok.com:61924/ owncloud/public.php?service=files&t=264659e23e8733b528386eaa6f52d5ef
Cert is self-signed: SHA1: 63:9B:E2:FA:D8:A9:66:DE:46:B7:E4:C2:18:47:73:04:C0:12:FE:1F SHA256: CF:D2:82:0D:C8:65:CE:EB:2E:3F:36:EC:DA:9E:82:4E:2E:BD:51:19: 6A:7E:11:65:50:40:57:9E:B8:79:8D:A2
This is an older build by now. Frankly I'm holding out for a JS build of Textsecure and I'll probably try FFOS, then. FDroid and Textsecure are my "killer apps" tying me to Android. I just wish Moxie would let them play nice together.
On 12/11/14 23:13, Seth wrote:
On Wed, 12 Nov 2014 14:29:04 -0800, <bluelotus@openmailbox.org> wrote:
Where can TextSecure be downloaded?
Best workaround I've found so far if you want to download Google Play APKs on your computer and then transfer them to your phone manually is Raccoon:
http://www.onyxbits.de/raccoon
Requires java along with a 'dummy' Google account, but gets the job done with the least amount of hassle.
Unfortunately, it appears that TextSecure still requires the Google Services framework to be installed and running on the Android device. Haven't figured out yet how to do this manually this without installing Google Play.
Also, FWIW, you can (or at least you used to be able to) manually remove a Google account from an Android phone without having to factory reset the device.
http://www.sleetherz.com/android-news/how-to-change- gmail-account-on-android-market-without-factory-reset/2511/
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