Privacy and DRM: The SnapChat Case

When I first heard about SnapChat I was immediately reminded of the attempts of a friend of mine to establish a DRM’d email platform that would let recipients read an email but not do anything else with it that hadn’t been explicitly authorized (printing, forwarding, etc). There was some amazingly fancy crypto technology involved. In the end though it was never possible to close up the many holes inside general purpose computing technology. Those of course include the ultimate hole – the so-called A-Hole which here stand for Analog Hole: the ability to take a picture of the screen. Music and video companies have of course found the same truth the hard way in their own DRM efforts. So I was not at all surprised to see this headline: Not-So-Ephemeral Messaging: New SnapChat “Hack” Lets Users Save Photos Forever. Anything that gives you a false sense of security or control will come to bite you eventually. Personally I consider this a feature and not a bug of digital technology.