Wickr Announces New Interface, App And Advisory Board

Messaging app will compete with SnapChat, WhatsApp, and iMessage

November 27, 2013

8 Min Read

PRESS RELEASE

The Wickr team is brought together by the strong belief that private correspondence is a universal human right that is extremely important to a free society. Each day, the team works hard to bring this right to everyone, for free.

To bring private correspondence to the entire populace, it is going to take a team of world-class cryptographers, privacy advocates, policy experts, peace negotiators, internet rights activists, technologists and business geniuses. So that is exactly what we have assembled.

Wickr is supported by a powerhouse of advisors dedicated to defending this basic human right, including:

• Brian Behlendorf - Apache, WEF, Mozilla, EFF

• Ambassador Joseph DeTrani - Peace Negotiator, State, CIA

• Whitfield Diffie - Cryptography God

• Jerry Dixon - Former CyberCzar, DHS

• Cory Doctorow - Sci-Fi Author, BoingBoing

• Sue Dorf - IMG, Olympics

• Lauren Gelman - Former Stanford, EFF

• Lesley Gold - Former CNN, DNC

• Dan Kaminsky - Saved the Internet

• Paul Kocher - Cryptography God

"Just as diplomats frequently insist that they must have privacy in order to negotiate, making public only the results of their negotiations and not the path by which they were reached, individuals must be able to communicate privately with their friends and associates in order to form the views that will inform their actions," said Whitfield Diffie, a Wickr advisor and inventor of the concept of public-key cryptography --- the technology that underlies the security of internet commerce.

"The only way to get good at stuff is to make mistakes. Without the privacy to screw up in front of a friendly audience, many of us would never be able to develop our ideas to the point where they were fit for the wider world," said Cory Doctorow, a Wickr advisor and best-selling author, privacy activist, journalist and blogger.

Brian Behlendorf

Brian is a Managing Director at Mithril Capital Management, a growth equity investment firm based in San Francisco. For 20 years he has been at the intersection of open technology, innovation, and public policy: as founder or co-founder of a series of companies (Hotwired, Organic, CollabNet); co-founder of the Apache Software Foundation, board member at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Mozilla Foundation, and Benetech; CTO at the World Economic Forum; and advisor to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Department of Health and Human Services.

Ambassador Joseph DeTrani

Joseph DeTrani is the President of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. He has served an impressive thirty-year public service career, including his roles as Special Envoy for Six Party Talks with North Korea and former Director of the National Counter Proliferation Center (NCPC) for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). In the past, he has worked in numerous roles for the CIA, including Director of East Asia Operations, Director for European Operations, Director of Technical Services, Director of Public Affairs, Director of the Crime and Narcotics Center, and Executive Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence.

Whitfield Diffie

Whitfield Diffie is the inventor of the concept of public-key cryptography --- the technology that underlies the security of internet commerce --- which he developed along with Martin Hellman at Stanford University in the mid 1970s. Diffie spent the 1980s as manager of secure systems research at Bell-Northern Research, the laboratory of the Canadian telephone system. Subsequently, he went to Sun Microsystems where he devoted the 1990s to the politics of internet security and retired as Chief Security Officer in 2009. Diffie holds the positions of Consulting Professor in the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and Visit Professor at Royal Holloway College of the University of London and is a participant in several startups. Academically, Diffie holds a bachelor of science degree from MIT and an honorary doctorate from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, which was given for the work done at Stanford University a decade earlier. The success of public-key cryptography has provoked numerous awards. Diffie is a Fellow of the Marconi Society, Laureate of the Franklin Institute, and recipient of the IEEE Hamming Prize. He particularly values the 1996 National Computer Systems Security Award which was given to him by NIST and NSA, with whom he was engaged in a political battle of the freedom to use cryptography. Recently, Diffie has more recently been elected as fellow of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, fellow of the Computer History Museum, and Cybersecurity Fellow.

Jerry Dixon

Former Director of National Cyber Security Division (NCSD) and US-CERT, Department of Homeland Security, Dixon now serves as Director of Analysis for Team Cymru and continues to advise partners on national cybersecurity threats. In this role, he aides organizations in preparing for cyberattacks, and assists with the development of cybersecurity policies for a variety of organizations. During his time at the DoH, Jerry led the national effort to protect America's cyber infrastructure and identify threats. Before joining NCSD, Mr. Dixon was the founding director of the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) Computer Security Incident Response Capability.

Cory Doctorow

Science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger, Doctorow authored Tor Teens/HarperCollins UK novels like "For the Win" and the bestselling "Little Brother." He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Some common themes of his work include digital rights management, file sharing, and post-scarcity economics.

Sue Dorf

Sue Dorf has represented over a dozen professional and Olympic athletes during her 16 year career as an Olympic athlete agent and sports marketing consultant. Sue rose to Vice President of Winter Sports for IMG, the leader in athlete development and sports marketing. Her athletes compete at the highest levels, and have won a combined 11 Olympic medals, 17 World Championships, and innumerable World Cup level events. Her brand development, marketing skills and relationships with the media have enabled athletes to achieve top earnings within their respective fields. Additionally, Sue has negotiated and executed event sponsorship rights deals and licensing programs within skiing and figure skating. Sue's current focus lies with World Cup Skiing and co-managing its top superstar, Lindsey Vonn, the most decorated US skier of all time.

Lauren Gelman

Lauren Gelman has been a leader in the field of cyberlaw and policy since 1995. She founded BlurryEdge Strategies and until June 2009, Lauren served as the Executive Director of Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society (CIS). She also spent six years in Washington, DC as the Public Policy Director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and as the Associate Director of Public Policy for ACM. Lauren is the co-editor of "Securing Privacy in the Internet Age" the author of "Privacy, Free Speech and Blurry-Edged Social Networks" published by the Boston College Law Review as well as dozens of other expert editorial pieces on the issue of privacy.

Lesley Gold

Before founding SutherlandGold, Lesley served as Vice President for Blanc & Otus, the global technology practice of Hill & Knowlton, where she led breakthrough campaigns for TiVo and Sony PlayStation, among other top consumer technology brands, and created positioning and strategy to maintain their leadership in the face of competition from Microsoft. Lesley's career has taken her from the nation's top political offices to the world's leading cable network. As a network television producer at CNN, Lesley built a reputation for compelling stories that captivate key audiences. At the Democratic National Committee (DNC), where she served as director of radio services, Lesley's issues management savvy came to the forefront, and led to positions as a campaign strategist and press secretary for former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich.

Dan Kaminsky

Kaminsky has been a noted security researcher for over a decade, and has spent his career advising Fortune 500 companies such as Cisco, Avaya, and Microsoft. Dan spent three years working on the Microsoft Vista, Server 2008, and Windows 7 releases. Kaminsky is best known for his work in finding a critical flaw in the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS), and for leading what became the largest synchronized fix to the Internet's infrastructure to date. Of the seven Recovery Key Shareholders who possess the ability to restore the DNS root keys, Kaminsky is the American representative. Currently, he is developing systems to reduce the cost and complexity of securing critical infrastructure.

Paul Kocher

Paul Kocher, known for designing many cryptology apps and protocols, is also credited with the discovery of timing attacks and techniques for preventing vulnerabilities. He is the creator the SSL 3.0 standard and DES Key Search machine – essential tools in internet security. In 2009, Kocher was elected to the Academy of Engineering. His recent focus has shifted to anti-piracy technologies for securing digital content.

About Wickr

The Internet is forever. Your private communications don´t need to be. The Wickr team is made up of top security and privacy experts who strongly believe online communications should be ephemeral. Wickr offers free worldwide text, audio, picture and video messages that self-destruct by being private, secure and anonymous.

We take our privacy policy seriously. Compare ours to every other messenger app. Privacy policies can tell you a lot about what an app is doing. We are the only ones not to collect any personal data.

Since the launch in June 2012, Wickr has seen an exponential growth and 5-star reviews. As a top ranked free social app in the U.S., China, India, Israel, Spain, South Africa and Brazil, we have served millions of secure messages. Wickr is the future of messaging. Join us if you haven't already. It's free!

Wickr is headquartered in San Francisco, CA. More information is available at https:www.mywickr.com. To get further detail about how the app works, please visit the App link on our website at www.mywickr.com. Feedback and reviews are much appreciated.

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