Bill Gates and Steve Jobs didn’t finish college, and they did okay. John Brooks dropped out of middle school at age 13, and he is doing okay.
Now 22, he began developing an encrypted chat program called Ricochet some four years ago — long before Edward Snowden so profusely exposed the National Security Agency’s spy-on-everyone programs.
Wired reports that Brooks eventually crafted “a full-fledged desktop client that was easy to use, offered anonymity and encryption, and even resolved the issue of metadata — the ‘to’ and ‘from’ headers and IP addresses spy agencies use to identify and track communications. . . .” He did a better job crafting the package than others offering similar armored tech.
One problem. For a long time, few people knew about his robust chat program. But dramatic revelations of unfettered surveillance by both government and businesses of everybody can sure concentrate the mind. Many more people have become worried about metadata that can be easily scavenged without a warrant. And Brooks realized that his achievement would be widely welcome if only he could get the word out and prove that Ricochet does what it is supposed to do. If not now, when?
That’s around the time a group called Invisible.im announced plans to develop an encrypted chat program to do what Brooks had already done. He told them about his own software; they dropped their plans and are helping him finalize and distribute Ricochet.
May the best private, secure, anonymous chat program win.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
8 replies on “Dropout versus NSA”
Bless the market and its reactive abilities.
The elitists and progressives, who would control and think that they have the power, never fail to underestimate the power of an individual, and the real supercomputer – which is the network of six billion human minds.
and another tip of the hat to Snowden, whether you think he is a traitor or a hero or both, for bringing this mainstream and giving momentum to people like this guy.
i have an FBI agent in my golf group who, a few months before Snowden blew the lid off the NSA, et al, absolutely denied that all this accumulation of everything was going on.
I had to laugh. Invisible.im dropped their plans because Brooks had already completed the project.
I can imagine their planning meeting: “Well that was easy.”
Snowden, HERO! and good fortune for other defying the NSA
Where do we get it? We need info.
The NSA/DOJ will arguer that simply signing on to such a sight is probable cause arrest and detention.
Obama, or his successor will no doubt sign an executive order making it illegal to log on to ricochet to protect our country’s national security.
Of course, the FBI already has the decryption codes, and will be eagerly waiting for you.
For the truly security serious, I suggest GnuPG, and BitMessage.
It’s not real time, but you can be as certain as it’s possible to be that the NSA isn’t going to read it.
SP Griffin, https://github.com/ricochet-im/ricochet