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COLOGNE, Germany — Peter Sunde, one of the founding members of Swedish file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, has launched a crowdfunded project to design an NSA-proof messaging service, called Heml.is, or “secret” in Swedish.
The messaging platform, which Sunde is developing with colleagues Linus Olsson and Leif Hogberg, and which the trio pitched to potential users with an online video this week, aims to be both user-friendly and completely spy-proof.
“All communication on today’s networks are being monitored by government agencies and private companies,” Sunde says in the video. “That’s why we decided to be the messaging platform where no one can spy on you, even us.”
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Backers can contribute upward of $5 on the Heml.is site to buy and unlock codes to install the app on their smartphones and share it with friends. As of this writing, the three founders had raised $42,000 from some 2,400 users, nearly half the planned $100,000 needed to build the Heml.is app, which will be both free to use and ad-free.
After the initial fundraising, the founders intend to make money off the app by selling for-pay premium features, such as the ability to send images.
Sunde, along with three other Pirate Bay co-founders, was convicted in 2009 of assisting copyright infringement.
You can watch the video for Heml.is below:
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