[liberationtech] Wickr app aims to safeguard online privacy

[Daniel Colascione]

On 2/5/2013 11:11 AM, Jacob Appelbaum wrote:
> Brian Conley:
>> Apparently Silent Circle is also proposing such a feature now.
> 
> Such a feature makes sense when we consider the pervasive world of
> targeted attacks. If you compromise say, my email client today, you may
> get years of email. If you compromise my Pond client today, you get a
> weeks worth of messages. Such a feature is something I think is useful
> and I agreed to it when I started using Pond. 

Nobody is objecting to a feature that deletes certain messages after a
configurable time. I agree that it mitigates some attacks (although less than
one might think, if the mail account isn't tamper-evident), and timed message
deletion has other benefits besides. Many MUAs provide this feature, often
through "filters" or "rules" interfaces.

Rich's objection, which I share, is that Wickr (and apparently, Silent Circle)
attempt to impose this policy on users without allowing them to make an
independent choice.

Is your position that timed message deletion is valuable only if it is
sender-selected and MUA-enforced?