[liberationtech] Wickr app aims to safeguard online privacy

[Nadim Kobeissi]

NK


On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 3:06 PM, Brian Conley <brianc at smallworldnews.tv>wrote:

> In this case, self-destruct would potentially save Joe and Susan from the
> "fool" Billy's lazy security culture.
>

In this kind of scenario, adding a self-destruct feature would definitely
be useful in preventing communications from leaking through certain vectors
after the messages have served their purpose.

However, they also shift the threat. If Authoritarianstan police know that
CryptoToolX deletes messages after a while, they are likely to feel more
justified in further interrogating the suspect, knowing that if the
messages aren't there now, it's likely that they were there earlier.

It's hard to discuss those features not because they aren't cool and useful
(they are!) but because they make it difficult to maintain a sense of
priority. Measuring how a feature will help, how it'll change the threat
and whether it will eclipse attention from greater threats and concerns is
kind of trick AFAICT.


>
> Certainly this is not a be all and and all, but does seem like a
> potentially valuable feature based on my own broad observation of "fools"
> amongst many activist and journalist groups.
>
> Brian
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 11:11 AM, Jacob Appelbaum <jacob at appelbaum.net>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. It is a kind of forward
>> secrecy that understands that attackers sometimes win but you'd like
>> them to not win everything for all time.
>>
>> Seems rather reasonable, really. Hardly malware but hardly perfect.
>>
>> All the best,
>> Jake
>>
>> --
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>
>
>
> --
>
>
>
> Brian Conley
>
> Director, Small World News
>
> http://smallworldnews.tv
>
> m: 646.285.2046
>
> Skype: brianjoelconley
>
>
>
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