Pirate Bay Co Founder Crowdfunds Encrypted Messenger

[Karloff]

Pirate Bay Co Founder Crowdfunds Encrypted Messenger


Have a look at Heml.is. I guarantee the NSA will be too.

Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde knows that there's no such thing as privacy, not with the governments of the world demanding access to pretty much everything [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/124721-NSA-Harvests-Facebook-Google-Apple-User-Data-Secret-Files-Claim], so he's come up with an encrypted messaging service intended to defeat government spying. Heml.is - the name is the Swedish word for 'secret' - is going though crowdfunding right now to raise the $100,000 development cash it needs. So far, it's raised just over 40% of the total at time of writing, in less than 24 hours since the crowdfunding campaign launched. "Secrets are only secrets if they are secret," say the Heml.is team, and it says it would rather destroy the service than let someone illicitly monitor user communications.

The intent is to encrypt the message on both ends. That way nobody - except the sender and recipient - can access the information, not even ISPs. When it launches the messenger service will be free, but subscribers will get access to extra stuff, like sending images. The service will launch on iOS and Android, but other platforms may follow, depending on the initial success of Heml.is. If you're wondering what that .is stands for, it's the top level domain in Iceland, "one of the few," says the developers, "that has proven they do not cave in to pressure easily."

"Normally security results in a complex and unfriendly user experience," says the Heml.is team. "It should not be that way. Heml.is is a messenger for everyone so we are dedicated to create the most user friendly messenger ever." There's no confirmed release date yet, though the developers want to get this out there as soon as possible. The developers promise to spend the cash they get on the app, infrastructure to run it, and coffee; given the startling funding success so far, that's looking like a hellacious amount of coffee.

There's a website over here [https://heml.is/], if you want to know more.

Source: Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jul/10/pirate-bay-hemlis-encrypted-messaging-app-encrypt]


Permalink

 

[Legion]

It won't last long if the governments have their way. They will simply say that it could be used by terrorists, paedophiles and other criminals to conspire to commit crimes while being untraceable. Such things are already why so much of the media is backing the governments decisions to spy on us anyway, so something like this will just rile them up further.

I wouldn't be surprised if some legislation was written to prevent it. I don't even mean that in a conspiracy theory "evil government" kind of way, it's just that such a thing goes against what they were hoping to achieve with PRISM and the laws they wrote that allowed them to intercept communications that were written after 9/11.

 

[luvd1]

It won't last long if the governments have their way. They will simply say that it could be used by terrorists, paedophiles and other criminals to conspire to commit crimes while being untraceable. Such things are already why so much of the media is backing the governments decisions to spy on us anyway, so something like this will just rile them up further.

I wouldn't be surprised if some legislation was written to prevent it. I don't even mean that in a conspiracy theory "evil government" kind of way, it's just that such a thing goes against what they were hoping to achieve with PRISM and the laws they wrote that allowed them to intercept communications that were written after 9/11.

The us government can ***** all it wants from what I can see. This isn't happening in their jurisdiction. They can protest I suppose but even then someone has to give a damn in the company. The best they can do is block it and get called out as being North Korea or China.

 

[Ishigami]

Since the guys who want to make this apparently are located in Sweden I think it is fair to assume that USA legislation won't matter in the creation of this.
They a free to find a way to hack this of course proving that they are the real threat time and again.

Cool idea if it works.
However I'm using Windows Phone 8 so since the first version will be iOS and Android no start up money from me.
But hey if you get it running on Windows I may be inclined to donate something.

 

[Fayathon]

I'd like to see it evolve to PC with multi-user voice support, hell I'd be tempted to pay for that if it was reliable. Microsoft selling off data to the NSA is why I stopped using Skype almost all-together.

 

[MorphingDragon]

We need a kickstarter project to do this?

http://pidgin-encrypt.sourceforge.net/
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wickr/id528962154?ls=1&mt=8

Wouldn't his time be better spent advocating current solutions and educating instead of adding more to the slurry?

 

[Vivi22]

It won't last long if the governments have their way. They will simply say that it could be used by terrorists, paedophiles and other criminals to conspire to commit crimes while being untraceable. Such things are already why so much of the media is backing the governments decisions to spy on us anyway, so something like this will just rile them up further.

They can get as riled up as they want as far as I'm concerned. Governments seem to be under the mistaken impression that these are battles they can and will win, when the exact opposite is far more likely.

 

[Aeshi]

So much for "Information wants to be FREE!" eh?

 

[MorphingDragon]

So much for "Information wants to be FREE!" eh?

The open source movement was making information free before it was mainstream.

Being a hacker is more than wearing a mask and a hoodie.

 

[CriticalMiss]

Wasn't there an encrypted instant messenger announced a few years ago that did basically the same thing but for free?

Still, good luck to them. They've already butted heads with the powers of the US corporate giants, now they're going to be pissing off the US government (and their lackeys).

 

[Petromir]

To those saying that the US will try and shut this down. Have the US goverment moved agaist Blackberry then? As between blackberry's servers and blackberrys messages are encripted, and as such they were banned at least one non-western country, possibly Saudi Arabia.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-10830485

THe US goverment on the other hand actually uses the devices, because of said encription.

 

[Antari]

Unfortunately this will likely be one of the slowest messaging services out there if they plan on having any sort of reasonable encryption on it.

 

[Vrach]

Wasn't there an encrypted instant messenger announced a few years ago that did basically the same thing but for free?

Still, good luck to them. They've already butted heads with the powers of the US corporate giants, now they're going to be pissing off the US government (and their lackeys).

This is free too. It's just a crowdfunding effort to get the funds to build it and the people who pledge get some special perks, as the article says

OT: Cool, but surprised it won't work on PCs from the get go.

 

[Lucky Godzilla]

We need a kickstarter project to do this?

http://pidgin-encrypt.sourceforge.net/
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wickr/id528962154?ls=1&mt=8

Wouldn't his time be better spent advocating current solutions and educating instead of adding more to the slurry?

Yeah I'm going to have to agree with this, I would much rather have the time and energy being spent on lobbying for the end of the NSA's data mining program,

Besides, as I have been lead to understand (and common sense dictates) the NSA's primary data collection about you is your metadata, as in what sites you visit, who you call, not necessarily what you are saying.I mean after all, when you think about it in the time it takes an NSA spook to read one facebook comment from a random joe, thousands more have been published.

 

[Tastum]

While it's true that you could encrypt messages so that the content is safe and (assuming the service itself isn't compromised) hide the identity of the recipient, it'd still be clear to anyone watching the sender that they're sending messages that they dearly want to keep secret to an unknown third party.

At that point: http://xkcd.com/538/

This would be less of a problem if somehow everyone started using this service, of course. If sending encrypted IMs was an everyday activity, it'd cease being suspicious.

 

[Jandau]

As others have pointed out, governments will claim that this will be used by terrorists, pedophiles, criminals, etc. And naturally, everyone is opposed to such fearmongering, right?

But are they really wrong? Seriously, there ARE such people as terrorists, pedophiles and criminals. A safe, easy to use encrypted messaging software is something they would definitely be interested in.

I'm feeling conflicted on this one...

 

[surg3n]

Do we really need this. Consider the percentage of the world population who send emails, messages, facebook, youtube... everything. Now consider the percentage of the world population who's job it is to look at these things.

I could write pretty much anything incriminating here for example, and whats the chances of a swat kicking my front door in? - pretty slim I reckon.

I guess my chief concern is why it'll cost $100,000 to develop a product that'll make a fortune based on peoples arrogance, paranoia, or criminal activities. Are we really supposed to be excited or happy about this?