[liberationtech] Wickr app aims to safeguard online privacy

[Brian Conley]

Apparently Silent Circle is also proposing such a feature now.

Brian

On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 3:24 AM, Rich Kulawiec <rsk at gsp.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 03, 2013 at 10:34:17PM +0700, Nathan of Guardian wrote:
> > Just to be clear, I am not against 1) trying to make money through
> > software 2) tech startups 3) enthusiastic tech journalism and 4)
> > entrepreneurs who truly want to make people's lives better.
>
> I concur that these are good goals, nice goals, fine goals.
>
> However...and to focus on one issue that Wickr and Gryphn have in common:
>
> > [...] setting self-destruct timers that will delete the communication
> > from the recipient's phone.
>
> This is -- depending on how you look at it -- worthless or malware.
>
> If it doesn't work, then it doesn't do what it says it does and any
> illusion of security it provides is just that.  (My guess: it doesn't
> work.  It can probably be undercut at the network, OS, application
> or firmware levels.   And then there's "take a picture of the screen".)
>
> If it does work, then it does so by subverting someone's desire to
> make their hardware -- their property -- work the way they wish it to.
> We call that "malware".
>
> I'm not picking on these, per se: I can say and have said the same thing
> about DRM-enforcement software: it's malware, because it endeavors to take
> away control of someone's hardware and hand it over to someone else.
>
> But I do think it's long past time to abandon the entire concept of
> "self-destructing X".  I've watched many attempts to make it work
> and they've all failed.
>
> ---rsk
>
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-- 



Brian Conley

Director, Small World News

http://smallworldnews.tv

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