https://www.rtl.lu/lifestyle/tech-world/a/1992883.html

Luxembourg wants to launch an own messaging app for Luxembourg. The argument why we need this is supposed to be that it will be more secure then existing solutions due to the everything being hosted in Luxembourg. Still I do not understand how and why such an application would be any more secure then other end-to-end encrypted services like Satellite which already exist?

13 comments

  1. Useless.

    What makes a good messenger service? That the people you want to communicate with, have it and use it. You can have the greatest platform, best security, best whatever. If noone is on the platform, it wont be used.

    Personally I have Threema, Signal, Telegram, Whatsapp, Messenger and Wire on my phone (to only name the pure messengers, not even factoring in social apps that have messaging, like Instagram and LinkedIn).

    TO be honest, I could delete all but Whatsapp, and still have access to 95% of my contacts. The others I have for very specific niche applications.

    Most users have 1 or 2 and call it a day.

    Luxchat will be dead on arrival if it will not be enforced by some lame governmental ecosystem stunt, like make it the new mandatory communication channel for online banking, myguichet, etc. If it is only a messaging service for the populace, it is doomed.

  3. The key sentence in that article is “Ugangs wär de Service awer fir d’Agente vum Staat reservéier” which in English means “initially this service (ie. Luxchat) can only be used by “state agents” This sounds like they want to have a messaging app which is usable by government agencies, and its use by “normal people” is a secondary consideration.

  4. It might find adoption if this is mandated as the official app for e.g. parent-teacher / student-teacher communication. Right now that sector of “public life” is dominated by elitist WhatsApp groups and the way material is shared is incredibly unprofessional.

    Something like that “being solved” could be one of LuxChat’s use cases

  5. End-to-end encryption (may) ensure that the content of the message is encrypted, but not the metadata (information about the sender and the receiver, the date and time of the message, etc.) that must transit via the central server.

    In other words, who controls the servers can know who messaged to whom, and when. In several situation, this is more than enough to get in trouble even without knowing the content of the message.

  7. Not sure how useful it will be, but deep inside i hope it helps me get rid of whatsapp.
    The e-wallet is great if it really alows to get rid of some cards.

  8. https://today.rtl.lu/news/luxembourg/a/1992909.html

    They mention extended use cases such as wallet for documents which is nice idea. In India they have something call Digilocker where one can import most of the govt documents from property ownership documents to driving license to education diploma/certificate to social security card, etc. and have it in your pocket.

    It would be great if they further extend it to instant mobile payments, velOh, library access, commune newsletters, etc. Basically, a superapp for govt.

  11. Sorry to sound like a boomer but why the fuck is tax money being burned on this?

    We have plenty of messengers if it’s supposed to be a messenger for the general public. Otherwise, there are also plenty of purpose built messenger applications if it’s supposed to be an internal thing for government employees.

  13. The fun will start when they need to make it interoperable with all other messengers as per the EU’s decision.

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