[liberationtech] Want to shield text, photos from government? Wickr says it has an app for that | SiliconBeat
http://www.siliconbeat.com/2013/06/07/want-to-shield-text-photos-from-government-wickr-says-it-has-an-app-for-that/ The U.S. government has acknowledged — with President Obama saying this morning in San Jose that it’s all in the name of securityhttp://www.mercurynews.com/nation-world/ci_23411831/obama-defends-surveillance-programs-san-jose — that its agencies are spying on Americans’ phone calls and Internet communications in some fashion. There are tech tools that claim they can get around such surveillance, and one of them is Wickr, an app made by a San Francisco startup. Wickr is similar to Snapchathttp://www.siliconbeat.com/2013/02/08/quoted-on-snapchat-wickr-and-erasing-our-digital-tracks/, the popular app that allows users to destroy messages and photos sent on mobile phones after a certain time. But the 1-year-old company’s app is “military grade,” founder Nico Sell said in a phone interview this morning. Sell says Wickr users can “send text messages, videos, documents that self-destruct — all encrypted, and it exceeds NSA top-level encryption on the device before it goes out on network with a key that only you have.” “Very few people in the world can do what we’ve done,” Sell said. She says she has advocated for the annual Defcon hacking conference for more than a decade. The company’s other founders include a team of privacy and security experts, according to a spokeswoman. If the government comes knocking with a subpoena, Wickr could turn over its database, but the information would be “useless,” Sell said, because the company doesn’t collect personal information about its users. It claims to have no call logs or location data. This also means such information is inaccessible to wireless providers, advertisers and other companies that usually collect it. Sell touts Wickr as an alternative to messaging offered by Whatsapp and Skype. Skype, the service owned by Microsoft, has long been thought as secure. But experts quoted by CNNMoneyhttp://money.cnn.com/2013/06/06/technology/security/verizon-call-logs/index.html and others have warned that no tech tool is immune to tracking, and Skype looks to be no exception. Ars Technicahttp://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/think-your-skype-messages-get-end-to-end-encryption-think-again/ recently reported that Microsoft regularly scans messages. Could Wickr do something similar? “This is a big thing with us. It was a huge requirement that we never collected private information, period,” Sell said. The app is free for iOS users only for now. Sell said an Android version, and voice calling, are due out this summer. -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] Want to shield text, photos from government? Wickr says it has an app for that | SiliconBeat
From: Yosem Companys compa...@stanford.edu
To: Liberation Technologies liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu
Sent: Saturday, June 8, 2013 2:22 PM
Subject: [liberationtech] Want to shield text, photos from government? Wickr
says it has an app for that | SiliconBeat
http://www.siliconbeat.com/2013/06/07/want-to-shield-text-photos-from-government-wickr-says-it-has-an-app-for-that/
foreach secure_app $secure_apps {
if {$secure_app eq proprietary} {continue}
...
}
-Jonathan
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Re: [liberationtech] Want to shield text, photos from government? Wickr says it has an app for that | SiliconBeat
Nadim Kobeissi na...@nadim.cc wrote:
we're supposed to discuss proprietary software not only as secure, but as
military-grade and government-proof.
It's kind of ironic that so many apps refer to themselves as
military-grade, when the intelligentsia on this list has better security
than military intelligence. To be military-grade at this stage is to
take a step backward.
foreach secure_app $secure_apps {
if {$secure_app eq proprietary} {continue}
...
}
-Jonathan
Zing! One of the OHM villages this year is called Noisy Square, with the
motto Revolutions don't happen in Silent Circles. ;-)
~Griffin
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Re: [liberationtech] Want to shield text, photos from government? Wickr says it has an app for that | SiliconBeat
It's not open-source, therefore it not only *can* be discarded without any further discussion, it MUST be. ---rsk -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] Want to shield text, photos from government? Wickr says it has an app for that | SiliconBeat
Can we just not? Wickr's PR is pretty adept at taking advantage of opportunities and Libtech bites every time. http://i.imgur.com/a5KVZzG.png On Sat, Jun 8, 2013 at 10:27 PM, Rich Kulawiec r...@gsp.org wrote: It's not open-source, therefore it not only *can* be discarded without any further discussion, it MUST be. ---rsk -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech -- *Collin David Anderson* averysmallbird.com | @cda | Washington, D.C. -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] Want to shield text, photos from government? Wickr says it has an app for that | SiliconBeat
And you know Windows 3.1/NT/2000/XP is used in military for many year! -- Jerzy Łogiewa -- jerz...@interia.eu On Jun 8, 2013, at 5:11 PM, Griffin Boyce wrote: It's kind of ironic that so many apps refer to themselves as military-grade, when the intelligentsia on this list has better security than military intelligence. To be military-grade at this stage is to take a step backward. -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] Want to shield text, photos from government? Wickr says it has an app for that | SiliconBeat
Jerzy Łogiewa jerz...@interia.eu wrote: And you know Windows 3.1/NT/2000/XP is used in military for many year! After my OHM forensics talk was announced, the CIA (or someone using their IP range) visited my tumblr. They were using XP. This will never not be funny to me. :D ~Griffin [1] http://i.imgur.com/f04gCvP.png [2] My tumblr, like all tumblrs, is a mix of comics, cat pictures, and landscapes with melodramatic captions. -- Just another hacker in the City of Spies. #Foucault / PGP: 0xAE792C97 / OTR: sa...@jabber.ccc.de My posts, while frequently amusing, are not representative of the thoughts of my employer. -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
