Apple just hired the developer of Edward Snowden’s favorite encrypted chat app

Apple has hired one of the key developers of Signal, the secure encrypted messaging service that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden uses.

Apple has indicated that it plans to upgrade the security on iPhones and its iCloud service so that even it can’t access the data it stores.

It’s just an internship, according to Frederic Jacobs, but it’s a sign that Apple is very serious about locking down its products with encryption. Signal is widely seen in the information security world as the best encrypted messaging app.