[tw04]

If you think this is going to do anything other than cause criminals to develop their own secure apps, quite frankly you're delusional.

With the amount of money the drug cartels have, it will be trivial for them to simply hire developers to write them a secure messaging app.

[d_theorist]

They don't even need to build anything. The code exists. The secret is out, my friends!

All you do by restricting things like WhatsApp is deny secure communication to law-abiding people and make the criminal's life slightly more inconvenient if he wants to be able to communicate securely. But you can't stop it.

[kbart]

Exactly. Cartels build their own radio networks[0], compared to that, building secure communications out of the available OSS projects is trivial.

0. http://www.wired.com/2012/11/zeta-radio/

[rmc]

Because infosec is so easy.

[tw04]

What does the ease of infosec have to do with anything? They've got literally an unlimited budget, and there are countless open source apps they can build on top of to get started. FFS they've built their own cell networks, their own submarines, I'm confident they can have a secure messaging app commissioned.