One thing I hope we can all learn from the revelations of these "private" texts:
SMS should never be considered private or secure communication. Whether by eavesdropping / MITM attack or by court order, everything you send via SMS can be revealed to the entire world, one way or another.
If anyone wants some recommendations on encrypted messaging services, I've tried a pile of them and can recommend a few.
I am still using IRC with OTR, on a secure server, in the control of his command, to contact my friend in Ukraine.
Also they use matrix.
@corlin
Matrix was one I was going to recommend. I've used Element, which is oriented at group / team chats and runs on matrix.
Some of us here have had an old-school XMPP group with OMEMO encryption for 4+ years. Still works great, and decentralized.
The third one I like is Briar. Also decentralized.
The one I really liked but quickly abandoned was Session. It sounds great until you read into it and find out it's running on their own crypto coins which you need to buy to run a node.
@voltronic yeah s list can be handy
deffo interested :)