Matrix's origin is Israel's intelligence community. One could argue the authors are rebels, being insiders themselves, who've begun to fight back against the surveillance state that they intimately know. That's a naive and foolish thing to think. The project's design is awful from a 'privacy' perspective, with the design specifically allowing third-parties to silently 'intercept' users' data--all whilst still being 'E2EE'. It's a feature. That's the amusing thing about its absolutely shit design, but regardless of design choices, encryption has always been a lagging component of the program.

The cynic might observe that the whole thing was proposed with foresight as to create a compromised leader ready to be adopted by organizations that felt they needed a higher degree of security. Matrix is a good solution, or so government bureaucrats are told.

Let Tel Aviv inside.