On 6/16/12 5:45 PM, liberationt...@lewman.us wrote: > Technically, their website[0] states "Absolutely NO Backdoors: No > backdoors with our encryption for any individual, organization or > government." > > This only refers to the encryption, not anything else. I would expect > Zimmerman and Callas to not put backdoors in their encryption. I wonder > about everything else related to their services. As they are still in > private beta, I'm giving them a huge benefit of the doubt for now. The > future could be bright.
I had a quick email exchange with Michael Janke (SilentCircle CEO), will speak with him soon to have an exchange of opinions. I had Zimmermann working with me at PrivateWave in 2008-2009 and i can confirm that when he work on a Board of Advisor and put his face on a company/product. He is a "crypto-taliban" and perfectionist! Nothing can be left behind and everything had to be reviewed by him, i had a 1-months delay on product release due to additional paranoid to be added to the product by Phil! :-) So i expect SilentCircle products will be well designed and implemented. <OT-TLDR Marketing consideration on mobile security businesses> However i have some doubt about the sustainability of the "prosumer" business model they are proposing, $20/month subscription. I've been struggling on marketing model for mobile secure telephony in past few years and it's absolutely a "difficult market" . What i see everyday on daily-job dealing with mobile voice crypto is: * Enterprises and Governmental projects give you the core-business with which you live with. That kind of customers keep many months before buying something, they need to penetration-test you, need to evaluate deeply how security and product works, are "commercially expensive to be followed" but are "high-budget" customers that can pay for your time/product. Establishing "trust" with "customers" for that kind of product it's a very challenging tasks. Additionally they *need* to have their own infrastructure in-house and will refuse to use any "hosted solution". * On the private/personal use i've see several attempt to make "prosumer" business model but none being able to really survive. - "average users" use skype if they feel to need phone privacy - criminals use skype if they feel to need phone privacy So, considering that "average users" uses skype, criminals uses skype we remain with "paranoid users" . So the question is, do we think that Paranoid users are willing to pay something for secure telephony? I expect no. Imho paranoid private user want to use products that free. So i expect initiatives like Guardian's OSTel/CSipSimple project will play a major role in the private/personal uses for mobile secure communications. But at the same time i find difficult to consider economically sustainable for a company to make enough recurring/subscription private users to survive in long-term. If we think, what made PGP really successful? The fact that it was "free for personal use" and it remained free for enough time to diffuse. But Enterprises and Government customers paid the bill for PGP employee's time. So, as a personal consideration for what i can try to do with PrivateWave is to try to push for approval on my board of directors a "free for non-commercial use" licensing schema. Currently on PW-side it's possible to get free-licensees only trough the NGO Program and trough "friendly network of relationship", but i would be really happy if we would be able to provide it free for anyone with no questions! </OT-TLDR Marketing consideration on mobile security businesses> -naif _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. You may ask for a reminder here: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech
