Today, a team of developers that includes Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde announced that they were working to create a beautiful messaging app for Android and iOS that aims to be 100 percent snoop-proof. Take off your tinfoil hats and say hello to Heml.is.
The app, whose name the website takes great pains to explain is Swedish for "secret," is currently in development with no hard launch date. Instead, the developers say simply that it will be done "when it's done." However, eager security-minded beavers can donate toward their $100,000 goal and get activation codes and pre-register user names in return. ?I've already gone ahead and tossed them $10.
Heml.is will apparently launch as a free app, with extra features like picture messaging being restricted to paying users. The pre-sale unlock codes will make these extra features available.
On the Heml.is website, the developers make it clear that the project is a reaction against snooping by commercial organizations and governments. A promotional video, despite being very bright and Apple-esque, includes the now infamous PRISM PowerPoint presentation which alerted the world to the NSA surveillance program.
Most people probably don't think that their messages are worth intercepting, or they remember that anything sent through Apple's built-in iMessage app are encrypted and therefore unreadable by anyone?let alone any vague but menacing government agencies.
The Heml.is developers write that their focus on security is critical when compared to iMessage or other messaging services. "Our focus is your privacy so we are building everything from software to company structure to protect that," write the developers. "The others are focused on maximising profit." It will also be cross platform, something that iMessage can't boast.
One point in Heml.is's favor is that the developers have made it clear that they won't be holding the keys to the encryption. "We're building a message app where no one can listen in, not even us,"the team writes."We would rather close down the service before letting anyone in."
The mockups on the website also suggest that ?Heml.is will actually be beautiful. While I was impressed with apps like RedPhone Beta and TextSecure, they definitely felt unpolished. In their video, the developers say that people will want to use Heml.is because it's beautiful, ?and there's definitely some truth to that. Hopefully that will be the case, because Heml.is will certainly require that both sender and recipient use the app in order to see the encrypted message.
Heml.is's creators are obviously making a political statement with the app, and many people will download it so they can stick it to the man?passively. But politics aside, having a beautiful messenger app that also keeps my messages secure sounds like a win-win all round.
nbc UMass Dartmouth Katherine Russell MBTA Fox News Live Boston lockdown jennifer love hewitt
No comments:
Post a Comment