For years, U.S. officials villainized end-to-end encrypted messaging apps like Signal as the domain of criminals and terrorists and a threat to national security.

As fallout over a Signal group chat about Yemen war plans ricocheted through Washington, however, CIA Director John Ratcliffe revealed at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday that the app is approved for official communication and even comes installed on agency computers.

One longtime critic of government attacks on secure messaging said it was a sign that everybody else should follow suit.

“For everyday Americans, this seems like an inadvertent but strong endorsement of the cybersecurity and privacy value that Signal represents — assuming you actually know who you’re adding to the given chats,” said Sean Vitka, executive director of the progressive group Demand Progress.

“Going Dark”

The highly sensitive discussion over whether and when to attack Houthis in Yemen included two members of the panel at Tuesday’s hearing, according to a blockbuster report Monday from The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg.

There was particular irony to an FBI director’s presence on the panel next to members of the thread. For years, successive FBI chiefs Chris Wray and James Comey had lambasted end-to-end encryption. The FBI popularized the idea that terrorists and drug cartels were “going dark” on law enforcement, and that the government needed to step in to do something about it.

The FBI’s favored solution was to create a back door in the apps that would allow the government to snoop on conversations — but only with proper authority, the FBI said.

In a 2014 speech, then-FBI Director Comey said that the “post-Snowden pendulum has swung too far” in favor of privacy. Without creating a back door, he added, “homicide cases could be stalled, suspects could walk free, and child exploitation victims might not be identified or recovered.”

The FBI never made much progress in Congress toward securing a back d