Doyle here :) I'm very proud of my military service!
Prior to Cape, I led the national security business at Palantir. That experience was actually the catalyst for Cape. It’s where I first learned about the massive array of vulnerabilities that exist in our current cellular networks. I saw how those gaps impacted not just government organizations, but everyday people, and I realized that the mobile phones we carry every day are perhaps the single largest risk to our privacy.
I needed that experience to understand the depth of the problem, but once I left to start Cape, that connection ended. Cape has no ties to Palantir. We aren't a subsidiary, we aren't a "front," and we don't share data with them. The only thing we took from Palantir was the desire to fix a broken system. If you want to see me and some of the rest of our founding team talk more about this topic, you can watch this video on our Instagram page here.
Another related theory I’ve seen online is that Cape is a honeypot for law enforcement. Cape is not a honeypot. It’s so hard to prove a negative, but at least I can say it clearly and out loud: Cape is not a honeypot.
We are a group of individuals who deeply value privacy. That mission carries across everything we do, from our work with the US government and allies, to everyday people, and everything in between.
We partner with non-profits to support victims of domestic abuse who are facing cyber-stalking and digital harassment. https://www.cape.co/break-free
We are a young company growing exponentially, and we don't plan on slowing down. We know we have to earn your trust every day. The truth is, no one else is building a high-quality, first-class solution to these specific cellular problems. We are committed to being the ones who do it right.
Someone doesn't need to work for Palantir or the military to understand that cellular security is fundamentally broken and completely insecure.
That is a lot of highly polished for the camera media you dropped into that post. The way that you word things, such as "Cape is not a honeypot." but don't delve any deeper, to start, gives someone less than zero confidence or trust in your words.
I have seen enough in the industry to say that your words are meaningless.
John's account was throttled since it's new. Posting this on his behalf.
----
You're right that you don't need to do those things, but I would argue that my background made me uniquely situated to understand and care about these problems deeply enough to spend years of my life building a company in response.
I say "Cape is not a honeypot" a lot just so I don't appear to be mincing words. If you want to delve deeper on how we treat customer data, a couple of good resources are our privacy policy: https://www.cape.co/privacy-summary
Yikes, sorry guys (I'm a mod here). I've marked his account (and yours!) legit so this won't happen again.
It's my least favorite thing about HN that high-quality new accounts, such as founders jumping into threads about their work, sometimes get throttled by the software. Gah.
> but I would argue that my background made me uniquely situated to understand and care about these problems deeply enough to spend years of my life building a company in response.
Maybe but this line of argumentation also opens the door to more criticism. Anyone looking at Palantir from the outside only knows their reputation and involvement in unsavory projects before taking a job. You chose to take the job with that knowledge covering most of your field of view. You stayed to work for that company contributing to that kind of work. That's a signal that's brighter than the valuable experience you gathered there. Tech can be learned but the values needed to support or even tolerate Palantir's activities don't get easily changed.
The premise of your company pivots on trust, not technology, the same tech is known and available to everyone else too. And it's trust in you that you will do what you say, not that you can do what you say. The latter is a given, you clearly have the knowhow. The former is putting any promise in doubt.
> Cape routes your traffic through our US-based mobile core.
This sounds like an anti-feature when it comes to privacy or the paranoid.
> I say "Cape is not a honeypot" a lot just so I don't appear to be mincing words.
I appreciate you saying it but Crypto AG probably also said that a lot (figuratively).
> Cape does not keep this data.
Unfortunately you are limited in what you can do here. Having or processing this data for any amount of time, even without keeping it, puts you in the position to be compelled to provide it.
This is valid feedback and it’s on us to earn trust over time through our actions. I will say that Cape is a company of almost 100 people from many different backgrounds. Prior to Cape I spent almost a decade at DuckDuckGo. We’re a group of people that is frustrated with the status quo in the telco industry and want to do better.
One of the efforts we’re working on now is an audit of our data retention claims. We recently posted an RFC on Reddit if anyone from this community has input: https://www.reddit.com/r/CapeCellular/s/zTn7HQ0emo
We plan to continue to do more things like this that increase transparency and build trust over time.
What can be open sourced (GrapheneOS) already is, and the remainder is business logic that they have described for the MVNO that is likely carrier specific and tied to the oddball MVNO platform they are using.
Very hard to make the latter usable by anyone else IMO.
> The way that you word things, such as "Cape is not a honeypot." but don't delve any deeper, to start, gives someone less than zero confidence or trust in your words.
> Another related theory I’ve seen online is that Cape is a honeypot for law enforcement. Cape is not a honeypot. It’s so hard to prove a negative, but at least I can say it clearly and out loud: Cape is not a honeypot.
I'm sure you know this, but for others who may not: there's a history of splashy new mobile operators which promise security and privacy as their core feature, but turn out to be a front for law enforcement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Trojan_Shield is the preeminent example.
There are also people working in this space who are cranks and morons. In summer 2023, I had a phone call with the founder of a well-known startup founder from the dot-com era. He was trying to launch a privacy-focused cell network and messaging software. But everything about his approach was wrong, almost to the point of being an anti-solution to the problems he was trying to solve, as if he was totally unaware of the past 20-30 years' worth of learning about end-to-end encryption and mass surveillance.
He was also a conspiracy theorist: during our call, he repeatedly and unironically referred to a documentary film created by a well-known convicted felon and serial liar, as a source of credible information about the world.
> We also work with the EFF to provide investigative journalists and activists with free Cape service so they can do their work safely. https://www.cape.co/journalists-and-activists
Hey thanks for the question! I was indeed an Echo. I loved my time in SF, and I learned a lot about being a good teammate and doing hard things in ambiguous environments, and a bit about secure comms. The first two will help at any startup, and the 3rd doesn't hurt at Cape...
Only you know if you want to jump into SFAS. I knew I'd always regret not doing it, which made the decision easy for me.
That made me very weary about this service. But I like the connections they have with other trusted organizations like the EFF and GrapheneOS. Still sketchy though.
At some point it becomes obvious the Palestinians (under their current government and political climate) doesn't want peace.
Wikipedia is not a good source here. There was never a sincere offer accepted by all Palestinians that acknowledged Israel's right to exist. Specifically the sticky point here is the right of return which means that Israel ceases to exist. A peace proposal that includes the destruction of Israel is not one made on good faith. Either way it's not up to the Arab states to make peace here, it's up to the Palestinians.
> Most sources agree, that under Israel's final proposal, the Temple Mount (including Al-Aqsa) would remain under Israeli sovereignty. Israel would also take most of the rest of East Jerusalem, while Palestinians would get some parts too. Israel would annex 8% or 13.5% of the West Bank, and would maintain a military of an additional 6–12% of the West Bank for an unspecified period of time (sometimes called a "long term lease"). According to some sources, Israel would also retain its settlement blocks in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian state would not be contiguous and the West Bank would be split into 2 or 3 sections. Finally, Israel would control Palestinian airspace.
How is that a sovereign state?
> Specifically the sticky point here is the right of return which means that Israel ceases to exist.
If you see Jewish supremacy as a core element of Israeli statehood, then I guess, yes. There are other concepts though, like a one-state solution, which would solve that.
> Either way it's not up to the Arab states to make peace here, it's up to the Palestinians.
The arab states have leverage though, and in this situation, they tried to use it.
I honestly don't see how Palestinians would be able to make peace if the result is more creeping settlements like in the west bank. What is the outlook here? Where would they live?
It is such a shame where Firefox is and is headed these days. It could have been a browser for the people, instead it's an advertising machine, similar to Chrome.
I'm happy that this RFC is published.
reply