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Comment by aw3c2 | Hacker News Reader

> TextSecure and RedPhone could serve as appropriate secure replacements

sadly those are only available for Android.

...and, under these sorts of regimes, will likely get blocked should they gain any sort of real traction anyway. (Moxie's post is clear that they want to intercept, and block what they can't.)

Without jailbreaking or a dev cert, you can't ensure that an app you install from the App Store on iOS isn't backdoored anyway.

I'm an iOS devotee but even I'm going to buy a second phone specifically to support sideloading of crypto software for secure communications. My phone's primary function is to communicate (despite all the smartphone value-adds) and secure and private communications are a pipe-dream on iOS.

iMessage is great (and end-to-end encrypted) but if I can't control the list of keys to which it encrypts, it's only as secure as Apple (and presumably the DoJ by extension) allows it to be.

You can safely assume that mobile software has been already backdoored. If not by the vendors directly, it is by the companies that are selling "lawful interception" tools based on 0days and what not.

With Android all you have to do is tick a checkbox to install apps that are not from the market, you don't need to root it and you don't need a special certificate.

Oh and if you want a dev user, it is a one time fee of 20 usd (or was, when I got mine).

iOS versions are in the works!

Great news! Any ETA?

Excited to try the iOS implementation. Is a desktop client (OSX, Linux, etc) for RedPhone feasible? I understand (I think) that RedPhone doesn't use usernames, but instead uses your phone number as the identifier - but I'm curious if that's a structural restriction at this point. Every time the issue of secure communications comes up the issue of what program to use comes up as well. There aren't a lot of good options at this point. Jitsi seems to be the best people can suggest.

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