My top achievement for 2025

26 December 2025

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
Category: Privacy

‘Tis the season where we look back on our professional achievements for the past twelve months, and for 2025, only one incident stands out. It was unexpected, it was chaos, it was drama, and it was, in a perverse way, quite funny.

Yes, you all know what I’m talking about.

So there was this article in Wired…

Screen cap from Wired: "How Signal's Meredith Whittaker Remembers SignalGate: 'No Fucking Way' The Signal Foundation president recalls where she was when she heard Trump cabinet officials had added a journalist to a highly sensitive group chat."

IN MARCH OF this year, Meredith Whittaker was at her kitchen table in Paris when Signal, the encrypted messaging service she runs, suddenly became an international headline. A colleague sent their group chat the story ricocheting across the globe: "The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans."

See the person highlighted in the green, “someone in the group chat sent it”?

Tell me a little bit about how you all reacted to that in real time. I'm sure you remember where you were. It was that kind of story. I was at my kitchen table in Paris, where I have a place. Someone in the group chat sent it and I opened it and I read it. So you guys didn't have a heads-up? No, we didn't get a heads-up, no. OK. I certainly wouldn't have predicted that Signal would become a main character. It's like, did the road the car drove on become the main character? So I read it, and I remember reading it, and I always have a bunch of tabs up, so there was a real quotidian kind of like, , "OK, I read that article ... " and I got up to get a glass of water, and then I was like, "Wait, what?" I sat back down and read it again because I was like, no fucking way.

 

*record scratch* Yep, that was me.

I was the one who told the group chat about the group chat.

(sorry guys. oops. my bad.)

Thereby setting off a global cascade of “WTFs” which registered on the Richter Scale, whilst triggering a tsunami of sarcastic memes which should probably go on display in the Louvre.

All of which rendered me unable to do anything other than laugh until my stomach hurt.

And you know what? That’s not even the most chaos I’ve caused at my kitchen table, baby.

Here’s to more of the same in 2026.

PSA: If anyone is looking for a smart, solid, experienced tech policy analyst w a global perspective and UK/EU-specialization, @heatherburnstech.bsky.social is great!

Over the past years she’s been an invaluable help at Signal, and across the ecosystem more broadly.

— Meredith Whittaker (@meredithmeredith.bsky.social) 4 December 2025 at 14:16

The Author

I’m a UK tech policy wonk based in Glasgow. I work for an open web built around international standards of human rights, privacy, accessibility, and freedom of expression. The content and opinions on this site are mine alone and do not reflect the opinions of any current or previous team.