[StavrosK]

> I still use Silent Circle for calls because it is so tiring to talk when the bitrate is low.

To be fair, that's a high bar. Our (SC) phone guys are masters at optimizing audio quality. I would be extremely surprised if any other app (encrypted or not) had significantly better audio quality than Silent Phone.

[MereKatMoves]

Having used all the encrypted call possibilities there are , you are, in my opinion, absolutely spot on. SC has exceptional clarity. WA isn't bad.

Can you talk more about "our guys" in respect to the fact that the CIA and NSA use the Blackphone? Should I, as a casual business person, be wondering that the handsets you supply to them are in some way compromised? I know that both the NSA and the CIA are interested in my phone conversations, which is why I ironically bought a Blackphone (for when I assume they are listening) and others which make their life harder (but I do accept that I do this more for the kicks of making them work for their intel)

tl:dr - is SC actually secure given that the company has been short on cash for a while and that the CIA and NSA equip their agents with the same phones. I don't mind talking because I have nothing to hide, but backdoor code is usually the case if you are selling 10k phone units to US LE.

[StavrosK]

As far as I know (and I'm not really very high up in the hierarchy, nor do I know much about the Blackphone hardware), the NSA and CIA are buying them because they are secure. I heard they had a list of phones/apps they are allowed to use internally, and SC was pretty much the only app that made the list at the time.

Keep in mind that "an organization using a secure app" and "an organization wanting to spy on people" are pretty independent goals. I haven't poked around in the client source too much (although I have implemented some stuff for the Android client), but:

1) Nothing in the client seemed out of place. 2) I've seen every line of code running on the web backend and there's nothing untoward going on. 3) Given the culture, I think many of the high-level people would quit before they compromised the product. Especially Phil, who has been sued by the US government for exporting strong cryptography before.

[walterbell]

Wire's audio quality is quite good, even on cellular and/or VPN. Haven't compared with Silent Circle.

[quantumfoam]

I have to agree. Privacy is a right. It's not often you run into a free alternative that offer sync capabilities across all platforms and devices. You also have a way to restrict or remove access from unknown fingerprints. The only downside I see about Wire is that the option to "submit crash reports and usage data" is enabled by default but that's just an Advanced options visit away from disabling. Give Wire a try and give their white papers covering how they approach [1] privacy and [2] security a read.

[1] https://wire.com/resource/Wire%20Privacy%20Whitepaper/downlo... [2] https://wire.com/resource/Wire%20Security%20Whitepaper/downl...

[StavrosK]

Oh, I'll give that a go, thanks! I should try Signal again too, hopefully audio quality has improved from the Redphone days.

[secfirstmd]

Yeh it definitely has come on a lot since then

[newman314]

Can you provide some details as to what SC does differently?

[StavrosK]

I'm a web developer, so I don't really know much, but I know it has to do with our SIP guys losing their minds if the echo canceller is a bit too aggressive on a specific device. They're just very detailed-oriented and want things to be perfect. I swear, one of them is a bat, he can tell I switched phones just because the mic sounds different.