I think this is cool and ambitious, but the marketing page makes this note:
> Only people on this list will be able to view your location, and it will be safe from advertisers, rogue employees, hackers and nosy governments.
I think you'd be hard-pressed to guarantee security against a nation state. Even if it's "the government is tracking your SIM on the cell network," it's a pretty bold claim that your threat model includes well-funded government actors.
> I think you'd be hard-pressed to guarantee security against a nation state.
My intent with that statement was not to mean that one would be protected from a nation state that has turned all its attention to you. I think that's an impossible level of security to guarantee. Signal could not even guarantee such a thing. The intent in the statement is that "a government agency can't simply send Zood a National Security Letter or some other coercive legal document and expect Zood to turn over location data about users". And that's because Zood doesn't handle user location data; there simply isn't anything to be turned over.
The goal with Zood is to create software that allows regular people to conduct their digital lives without giving up all their privacy and dignity. To prevent further expansion of the surveillance economy. The goal is not to build software that defends wanted individuals (whether right or wrong) from nation state actors. That's not something that I think any single technology company can provide.
This is a silly threat model, as enabling location services on the device provides the location data to Apple/Google via the network. If the nation in question is the US, they then don't need to attack this service, they can just get the location directly from Apple or Google directly under a FISA order without a warrant.
> Only people on this list will be able to view your location, and it will be safe from advertisers, rogue employees, hackers and nosy governments.
I think you'd be hard-pressed to guarantee security against a nation state. Even if it's "the government is tracking your SIM on the cell network," it's a pretty bold claim that your threat model includes well-funded government actors.