[messaging] WhatsApp & OWS team up

[zaki at manian.org]

The OWS Contributor Agreement appears to permit multiple licensing
agreements that would permit using OWS open source code within a
proprietary app after reaching an agreement with OWS which is probably what
is happening here.

https://whispersystems.org/cla/


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   this Agreement, You hereby grant to Open Whisper Systems and to recipients
   of software distributed by Open Whisper Systems a perpetual, worldwide,
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On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 10:54 AM, Nadim Kobeissi <nadim at nadim.computer>
wrote:

> Mike Hearn hits the nail on the head! My only questions were in fact
> regarding how to handle identity authentication and how to deal with
> the closed-source nature of WhatsApp damaging potential security
> guarantees.
>
> Although, I just noticed something: TextSecure is GPL, and Moxie says
> that WhatsApp is using the same code as TextSecure. Doesn't that mean
> that WhatsApp is now obligated to send a copy of its source code to
> whoever demands it? :-) That would be amazing if true.
>
> Either way, this is historic. I think Moxie's team deserve immense
> respect for accomplishing this. This is an accomplishment I will look
> up to for many years to come. Truly inspiring.
>
> NK
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Messaging [mailto:messaging-bounces at moderncrypto.org] On Behalf
> Of Joseph Bonneau
> Sent: November 18, 2014 1:16 PM
> To: Mike Hearn
> Cc: messaging
> Subject: Re: [messaging] WhatsApp & OWS team up
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 11:23 AM, Mike Hearn <mike at plan99.net
> <mailto:mike at plan99.net> > wrote:
>
>
>         https://whispersystems.org/blog/whatsapp/
>
>         Huge, massive congratulations to Moxie and the team - this sort of
> mainstream success is inspiring. I'd been hoping for a long time that
> once TextSecure showed you could build a secure messenger with
> production quality usability, Facebook / WhatsApp might pick it up,
> and today my dream came true :)
>
>
> I echo the major congratulations! One of our main goals with the EFF
> Scorecard was to push big providers to take steps like this, hopefully
> many more will follow suit.
>
>
>         I can see a couple of directions to go now:
>
>
> I would add
>
> 3) Design an efficient, auditable, privacy-friendly public key
> directory. WhatsApp/TextSecure still largely rely on a centralized
> public key directory. Cracking usable key verification would be great,
> but I'd also like these key directories to be able to convincingly
> prove to me that they've only signed for a certain set of keys for my
> username over a given time period. Some work is underway on this at
> Princeton and hopefully elsewhere...
>
>
>         It will be interesting to see what the political ramifications of
> this are. WhatsApp should now be pretty close to intercept-proof for
> all governments bar the USA. Given its ubiquity and complete
> centralisation inside California, I suspect this will result in all
> kinds of interesting jockying as different countries try to get lawful
> intercept capabilities to it (by switching keys, I guess).
>
>
> Presumably Apple has already been in this position for over a year
> with iMessage, although it might be more interesting because WhatsApp
> doesn't have the political clout
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>
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