June 2013. Edward Snowden reveals that the NSA has been reading everyone's emails, and gathering everyone's phone metadata, for years. On the wake of the revelations, secure email providers start shutting down one after another.
April 2014. Security researchers uncover the Heartbleed bug in OpenSSL. Sixty-six percent of "secure" servers have been affected for the last two years, potentially allowing others to read all their traffic. NSA officials deny having any knowledge of it.
April 2015. White House cybersecurity policy coordinator Michael Daniel declares at a security conference that the Obama administration is trying to get Silicon Valley to provide strong encryption that "leaves a door open for law enforcement." FBI director James Comey goes on record defending this position. Internet companies publicly disagree, but what they do in private is sealed by FISA court order.
February - March 2016. The FBI gets a judge to issue an injunction ordering Apple to create a special version of its mobile operating system with backdoor access. Apple flatly refuses and prepares for a long legal fight, until the FBI unexpectedly drops the case saying that they have found another way. Apple formally requests that this way be revealed, but the FBI refuses.
May 2016. Hackers obtain hundreds of thousands of login credentials from LinkedIn. An older hack at mySpace is revealed, involving more than a hundred million accounts.
November 2016. Donald Trump, who had advocated publicly for granting the sweeping surveillance powers to the US Government, is elected President. Days later, Yahoo reveals that more than half a billion accounts were compromised in 2014, including password hashes and actual content.
And that was a while ago when this project started. It looks like we're getting less and less electronic privacy with every passing day, every passing minute. Will there ever be an end to this?
Short answer: No, so long as users keep trusting hardware and software makers with this job. This will only stop when users exercise their God-given right to their own privacy and take matters into their own hands.
Because every email and messaging app, whether regular or "secure", plus all major websites, rely on servers or other hardware that can be compromised, even if they play as fair as they claim. On the other hand:
April 2014. Security researchers uncover the Heartbleed bug in OpenSSL. Sixty-six percent of "secure" servers have been affected for the last two years, potentially allowing others to read all their traffic. NSA officials deny having any knowledge of it.
April 2015. White House cybersecurity policy coordinator Michael Daniel declares at a security conference that the Obama administration is trying to get Silicon Valley to provide strong encryption that "leaves a door open for law enforcement." FBI director James Comey goes on record defending this position. Internet companies publicly disagree, but what they do in private is sealed by FISA court order.
February - March 2016. The FBI gets a judge to issue an injunction ordering Apple to create a special version of its mobile operating system with backdoor access. Apple flatly refuses and prepares for a long legal fight, until the FBI unexpectedly drops the case saying that they have found another way. Apple formally requests that this way be revealed, but the FBI refuses.
May 2016. Hackers obtain hundreds of thousands of login credentials from LinkedIn. An older hack at mySpace is revealed, involving more than a hundred million accounts.
November 2016. Donald Trump, who had advocated publicly for granting the sweeping surveillance powers to the US Government, is elected President. Days later, Yahoo reveals that more than half a billion accounts were compromised in 2014, including password hashes and actual content.
And that was a while ago when this project started. It looks like we're getting less and less electronic privacy with every passing day, every passing minute. Will there ever be an end to this?
Short answer: No, so long as users keep trusting hardware and software makers with this job. This will only stop when users exercise their God-given right to their own privacy and take matters into their own hands.
Because every email and messaging app, whether regular or "secure", plus all major websites, rely on servers or other hardware that can be compromised, even if they play as fair as they claim. On the other hand:
- PassLok does not communicate with servers.
- PassLok requires no installation.
- PassLok can run offline if you want.
- PassLok does not force you to store anything secret.
- PassLok uses strong encryption methods.
- PassLok runs on computers and smartphones equally well.
- PassLok is transparent: you can actually inspect the code before you run it.
- PassLok is free, because it is all about freedom.
