>Lavabit was a small secure e-mail service, with an encryption system designed so that even the company had no access to users' e-mail. This isn't exactly accu

>Lavabit was a small secure e-mail service, with an encryption system designed so that even the company had no access to users' e-mail. This isn't exactly accurate, and so the comparison doesn't work. Lavabit always had the capability to read a users email.[1] Snapchat has, and does, retain Snaps. If Snapchat instead generated a public/private keypair and used those to sign and encrypt Snaps before they left a user's phone then whether or not Snapchat retained the Snap but hid it from the user would not matter. There are other issues, like end users recording the Snap. Also, while the central service would not be able to retain the content of your Snap metadata would be available to them. >We need ephemeral apps, but we need credible assurances from the companies that they are actually secure and credible assurances from the government that they won't be subverted. Given the current climate, this strikes me as rather foolish. Further, who is to say that the next head of state will not breach the assurances of the last? We should design services so that trusting the operator is a non-issue. [1] http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/lavabit-critique/ http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/lavabit-critique/