BitTorrent Unveils Secure Chat To Counter 'NSA Dragnet Surveillance' 111
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Jacob Kastrenakes reports on The Verge that as part a response to the NSA's wide-reaching surveillance programs, BitTorrent is unveiling a secure messaging service that will use public key encryption, forward secrecy, and a distributed hash table so that chats will be individually encrypted and won't be stored on some company's server. 'It's become increasingly clear that we need to devote hackathons, hours and resources to developing a messaging app that protects user privacy,' says Christian Averill, BitTorrent's director of communications. Because most current chat services rely on central servers to facilitate the exchange of messages, 'they're vulnerable: to hackers, to NSA dragnet surveillance sweeps.' BitTorrent chat aims to avoid those vulnerabilities through its encryption methods and decentralized infrastructure. Rather than checking in with one specific server, users of BitTorrent chat will collectively help each other figure out where to route messages to. In order to get started chatting, you'll just need to give someone else your public key — effectively your identifier. Exchanging public keys doesn't sound like the simplest way to begin a chat, but Averill says that BitTorrent hopes to make it easy enough for anyone interested. 'What we're going to do is to make sure there are options for how this is set up,' says Averill. 'This way it will appeal to the more privacy conscious consumer as well as the less technically inclined.' For now, it remains in a private testing phase that interested users can apply for access to. There's no word on when it'll be open to everyone, but with all of the recent surveillance revelations, it's easy to imagine that some people will be eager to get started."
OTR (Score:2, Insightful)
How is this different from OTR?
closed source (Score:2, Insightful)
You can't trust a closed source "security" app.
Re:closed source (Score:5, Insightful)
And should also become quite obvious that you need to start vetting coders who are infiltrating projects on behalf of the government. That good old warped 80's tinfoil hat paranoia is the only thing that will save you anymore because it seems it was never wrong.
Re:honey (Score:3, Insightful)
This attitude needs to go away. Now. I have EVERYTHING to hide.
Re:Vulnerable to Social Engineering (Score:5, Insightful)
This is to stop mass spying/trawling.
If your contacts are all in jail then you have bigger problems.
Re:bedroom spy camera (Score:4, Insightful)
Breaking into houses takes time and resources. Much more so then if the NSA can simply watch all your chat, archive it in a huge data center in utah, and then do a search through your histories.
So when spy agencies have to work the old fashioned way, even if they disrespect the need for warrants they still can't spy on everybody. If they can just do a search through your data, they are effectively watching everyone