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Pirate Bay founder’s secure messaging app hits funding goal in 36 hours

The app promises to be free of ads and free of government surveillance.

 

Kevin Collier

Tech

Posted on Jul 11, 2013   Updated on Jun 1, 2021, 11:36 am CDT

It took Pirate Bay cofounder Peter Sunde less than two days to crowdsource his $100,000 goal to start Heml.is, a phone app that would encrypt users’ text messages to keep them invisible to government eyes.

“Wow and incredible thanks to all our backers for funding us in 36 hours! That is one hell of a thing to wake up to,” he wrote on Heml.is’s blog.

According the the app’s initial announcement, it’ll be available for both iOS and Android, won’t have ads or sell user data, and will be free unless you want to use extra features like adding photos. Anybody who contributed funding in the past 36 hours will get first crack at it when it’s finished.

Sunde knows a thing or two about keeping ahead of governments. His torrent site, the Pirate Bay, might be the most resilient site in the world, often bouncing from country to country to avoid getting shut down for copyright violations.

He’s also been extremely critical of the NSA’s ability to spy on seemingly everyone who uses a phone or an American Internet service. When a Twitter user suggested Heml.is is unnecessary because an American app called Gliph already offers the same service, Sunde nodded to the PRISM program, which allows the NSA to compel U.S. companies like Google. to cough up information on their users.

@averghese but @gli_ph is based in the USA. Automatically disqualified from being safe.

— Peter Sunde (@brokep) July 10, 2013

Photo of Sunde via Linus Olsson/YouTube

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*First Published: Jul 11, 2013, 3:51 pm CDT