The threat posed by international hackers, not least state-sponsored ones, has U.S. intelligence agencies finding the good in end-to-end encryption. The FBI is warning smartphone users to stick to it, which means not sending text messages between platforms that don't fully support it.
As reported by Politico, advice given by CISA's Jeff Greene and an unnamed FBI senior official included "strongly urging Americans to 'use your encrypted communications where you have it… we definitely need to do that, kind of look at what it means long-term, how we secure our networks'." The two officials briefing the media went as far as to suggest "that Americans should use encrypted apps for all their communications," according to other reports (1,2). That means stop sending texts between iPhones and Androids, albeit iMessages and Google Messages are fully encrypted between users on those platforms.
Signal, WhatsApp, even Facebook are E2E now, though I wouldn't trust Facebook with the revealing metadata around the actual messages. The government's warning also applies to the government, after all.
Previously:
• Gentleman who sold FBI-controlled phones to drug traffickers sentenced to 63 months in prison
• FBI says to reboot your router ASAP to avoid Russia malware VPNFilter
• Widespread racist texts investigated by FBI
