BitTorrent experiments with secure chat
Found on CNet News on Monday, 30 September 2013
Eventually, the service is expected to work with other instant-messaging accounts and be interoperable with SIP standards, but for now it requires a BitTorrent account.
Averill was unable to provide details on how the service logs your chats, so it's not clear at this time whether message logs are stored locally, or even available as an option.
When asked about what BitTorrent's response would be to potential requests from government agencies like the National Security Agency for a BitTorrent Chat back door, he said, "We're not familiar with specifics of NSA programs, so it's not something we can really comment on."
They are a little late to the game. Not to mention that squirming around instead of replying with a clear yes or no is not very reassuring. There are already secure chats, such as Torchat, OTR or Bitmessage. The latter doesn't even have any metadata at all so nobody knows who is the recipient of a message. How good BitTorrent Chat is needs to be seen when they release a public version. An open source release even, because when it comes to security and privacy, closed source is not an option. Especially not when the developers won't comment clearly about NSA backdoors.