Coming soon — traceless technology

In response to increasing government snooping in the name of law enforcement, companies such as San Francisco’s Wickr are attempting to build traceless communications systems.

The idea is to build the encryption into the actual message — rather than on the servers of the messaging provider — so no one other than the recipients, including a curious law enforcement agent, can see what’s being communicated. Right now Wickr works only on text messaging, but the company plans to extend its encryption services to e-mail and even social networks.

Robert Statica, Wickr cofounder and an information technology professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, argues that one person’s communication with another is their data — and their data only. “Why should you give it away to anyone else?” he asks rhetorically.

Big software companies also offer ways to seemingly suspend tracking when surfing the Internet. These tools allow users to visit websites anonymously and prevent others from cataloguing their Web history. Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome Web browser offer settings that keep search and URL history from being stored — called “private browsing” or “incognito mode.”

However, the features’ purpose is to hide users’ activities from anyone using the computer after them; they don’t necessarily mean that the search history isn’t electronically traceable in some way.

“The private browsing modes are not intended to effectively protect users from online tracking by third parties,” writes digital privacy researcher Chris Soghoian at the ACLU.