In the news recently comes a story about the latest technological revolution in the service of individual liberty. A cryptographic dream...or nightmare...depending on your perspective.
Back in October, the startup tech firm Silent Circle ruffled governments’ feathers with a “surveillance-proof” smartphone app
to allow people to make secure phone calls and send texts easily. Now,
the company is pushing things even further—with a groundbreaking
encrypted data transfer app that will enable people to send files
securely from a smartphone or tablet at the touch of a button.
(For now, it’s just being released for iPhones and iPads, though Android
versions should come soon.) That means photographs, videos,
spreadsheets, you name it—sent scrambled from one person to another in a
matter of seconds.
...
If governments don’t come round, though, Silent Circle’s solution is
simple: The team will close up shop and move to a jurisdiction that
won’t try to force them to comply with surveillance.
“We feel that every citizen has a right to communicate,” Janke says,
“the right to send data without the fear of it being grabbed out of the
air and used by criminals, stored by governments, and aggregated by
companies that sell it.”
How cool is that? Very cool! Anything that limits the intrusion of government in our private lives should be considered a step forward for everyone.
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