alt Hacker NewsTrue, but multiple security layers help both through redundancy and because they protect different things.
Cell encryption is not end-to-end, so even with cell signal encryption I'm susceptible to snooping by:
- the phone company
- the government if they serve the cell phone company with a warrant or other legal proceding
- malicious downstream actors
I'll use HTTPS for browsing to mitigate the damage of course, but even so without cell signal encryption, I'm susceptible to all of the above, plus any physically nearby actor can:
- see my text messages and possibly inject fake messages
- hear my phone calls
- see which IP addresses I'm communicating with (though not the contents of that communications if I'm encrypting with HTTPS)
- If app store security is inadequate or has flaws, they could force-feed me a malicious app disgused as an "update".
- I don't control the communications used by individual apps, so they can see any data passed in the clear, and trigger and exploit vulnerabilities in those apps via MITM.
So cell signal encryption helps a lot, though certainly it's not sufficient by itself.
> the government if they serve the cell phone company with a warrant or other legal proceedings
The police may have to sometimes jump though a couple of rubber stamped hoops, or hand over stacks of taxpayer money to companies for access to their online law enforcement portals, but the government is already inside taking everything that passes through those companies, using hardware those companies have been forced to install and/or by the outright seizure and occupation of their private property. There's nothing constitutional about it, but this has been true for a very long time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A) and it's not going to change.