[Ssc-dev] Fwd: FYI - Silent Circle app

Tue Feb 5 12:07:35 EST 2013

It seems that Slate has some well educated readers:

"from my point of view, as a non expert, this is all predicated on trust that
my data is being kept private, and as a cynic i trust no one. so, as far as
i'm concerned, this accomplishes nothing, which is just as well because i
believe in transparency, even (or especially) when challenging abuses of
authority (they just hate that)."

"Sure guys. Everybody talks a good game until the jack-booted thugs show up
with a subpoena and walk out the door with all of your hardware and papers.
Maybe you didn't "comply," but you're still out of business. A step in the
right direction though."

"Perhaps I'm brain-dead but I don't get the "breakthrough" implied by author
of this article. I've been using Zimmerman's PGP ever since 2000 to send and
receive military-grade encrypted text and attachments of every kind. The setup
is entirely P2P, eliminating all intervening servers. Note the telling
admission that headers (among many other trackable items, no doubt) are stored
for a week: why should they be stored at all? Also note the venue of storage:
Washington, DC -- fedquarters itself. Finally there's the steep price of
admission: $20 a month for something that should be free and open-source, like
all of Zimmerman's early offerings were. Methinks someone has sold out. I
wouldn't trust this stuff as far as I can spit."

.hc

On 02/05/2013 08:08 AM, Sam Gregory wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Sameer Padania <sameer.padania at opensocietyfoundations.org>
> Date: Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 8:06 AM
> Subject: Fwd: FYI - Silent Circle app
> To: Matt McAlister <matt.mcalister at guardian.co.uk>, Francesca Silvani <
> fsilvani at internews.eu>, Sam Gregory <sam at witness.org>, Bryan Nunez <
> bryan at witness.org>, Claire Wardle <claire.wardle at storyful.com>
> 
> 
>   **Hola:**
> 
> Sharing with you all given recent and not-so-recent conversations about
> these issues, and InformaCam/ObscuraCam - apologies if you've seen it
> already - pr were involved in it :)
> 
>  I remember Adrian Hong (Pegasus Strategies, working in closed societies)
> talking about this in v sketchy terms at TED last year, but hadn't been
> following this since then:
> 
>  **"According to Janke, a handful of human rights reporters in Afghanistan,
> Jordan, and South Sudan have tried Silent Text’s data transfer capability
> out, using it to send photos, voice recordings, videos, and PDFs securely.
> It’s come in handy, he claims: A few weeks ago, it was used in South Sudan
> to transmit a video of brutality that took place at a vehicle checkpoint.
> Once the recording was made, it was sent encrypted to Europe using Silent
> Text, and within a few minutes, it was burned off of the sender’s device.
> Even if authorities had arrested and searched the person who transmitted
> it, they would never have found the footage on the phone. Meanwhile, the
> film, which included location data showing exactly where it was taken, was
> already in safe hands thousands of miles away—without having been
> intercepted along the way—where it can eventually be used to build a case
> documenting human rights abuses."**
> 
> 
> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/02/silent_circle_s_latest_app_democratizes_encryption_governments_won_t_be.single.html
> 
>  https://silentcircle.com/
> 
> S
> 
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> 4571628) and a registered charity (charity number 1105069). Its registered
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> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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