[Infowarrior] - Verizon offers NSA-friendly secure calling

[Richard Forno]

As one of the comments reads, "I'm not sure whether Verizon or Cellcrypt understand the meaning of encryption."    ---rick


Verizon's New, Encrypted Calling App Plays Nice With the NSA

By Joshua Brustein December 11, 2014

Photographer: Mikkel William Nielsen

Verizon is the latest big company to enter the post-Snowden market for secure communication, and it's doing so with an encryption standard that comes with a way for law enforcement to access ostensibly secure phone conversations.

Verizon Voice Cypher, the product introduced on Thursday with the encryption company Cellcrypt, offers business and government customers end-to-end encryption for voice calls on iOS, Android, or BlackBerry devices equipped with a special app. The encryption software provides secure communications for people speaking on devices with the app, regardless of their wireless carrier, and it can also connect to an organization's secure phone system. 

Cellcrypt and Verizon both say that law enforcement agencies will be able to access communications that take place over Voice Cypher, so long as they're able to prove that there's a legitimate law enforcement reason for doing so. Seth Polansky, Cellcrypt's vice president for North America, disputes the idea that building technology to allow wiretapping is a security risk. "It's only creating a weakness for government agencies," he says. "Just because a government access option exists, it doesn't mean other companies can access it." 

< - >

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-12-11/verizons-new-encrypted-calling-app-comes-prehacked-for-the-nsa

---
Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it.