Twitter Aquires Whisper Systems | Hacker News Reader

Twitter Aquires Whisper Systems

whispersys.com

43 pointsmike-cardwell15 comments

Maybe Twitter is doing something involving payments? But if they were, I wonder if they'd telegraph it so blatantly.

The words "talent acquisition" are so cynical, so I'm embarrassed that they'd be my first reaction to this.

Maybe another interesting question is: why is it so hard to get a successful device security product off the ground for Android? Is the market need not there?

Another possibility is that they want Moxie to work on Convergence full-time.

This could represent Twitter and Google ganging up on the CAB Forum to clean up their act for the good of the internet. Alternatively, it may be that Twitter plans to match Google's scheme to be an end user identity provider by moving some of the publishing directly onto the handset, and for this they might want a more decentralized server authentication environment.

Yeah, I had forgotten to put "Whisper" together with "Moxie". This makes a lot more sense now.

I can understand the talent acquisition, but it's strange to see Whisper Systems products owned by Twitter, considering their purpose...

I could imagine Whisper Systems developing an app to encrypt tweets. I can't imagine Twitter doing that.

One of the things Whisper had was a method of encrypting SMS messages so they still fit in an SMS message, perhaps Twitter is hoping to take advantage of that?

I can't imagine Twitter developing a product that prevents them from being able to look at Tweets going through their system.

This is why I think this is such a strange move on Whisper Systems part. Their products are all about privacy. Twitter wouldn't have a business model if they gave their users proper privacy.

Well, I can see a company about to sink (RIM) and leaving a big empty space for a smart move here. If twitter can take that space and provide enterprises and people along a way to exchange encrypted messages painlessly, that'll be perfect.

Social media is said to play an increasing role in revolutions and social movements; there's clearly something to do. Perhaps even, let's be audacious, some money to make.

Note: I don't actually think RIM is quite dead yet.

Think Egypt, Syria, China: countries where large-scale keyword filtering and MITM attacks are common, and the infrastructure is owned by the opponent.

What's needed in those cases isn't peer-to-peer encryption, but peer-to-service (and service-to-peer) encryption: tweets encrypted on the device, sent, and decrypted on Twitter's servers; timelines sent encrypted, and decrypted client-side.

Twitter still gets plaintext, but intermediaries can't trace/target pseudonymous users (or filter content).

This could be a real edge for Twitter in countries (China) where they're losing ground to monitored/censored clones (Weibo).

tl;dr: They're probably building Tor, not Skype/BBM.

Twitter already has client-to-service encryption with their https APIs.

Could there be a patent in play perhaps?

I don't see this as a talent acquisition.

Waiting for someone to shed more light on this acquisition.

Maybe they want to create an enterprise offering (like Yammer).

This is in line with Square perhaps we will see "Pay-by-tweet" with a secure encrypted tweet coming along.

With wrapper apps around this.

A hardened Android stack? Maybe Twitter are developing a phone?

Either that or someone knows someone and would like to have a "successful investment" wink wink.

Too early to say though.

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