johndoylecape

But to be clear, you DO actually know that other cell service providers are selling your data to law enforcement:

A helpful thing to keep in mind is that everyone has basically 2 use cases for their cell phones:

1. Send and receive calls and SMS 2. Connect to the internet

Whether you're a national security professional, an investigative journalist, or an average consumer who values privacy, that's what you do with your phone. So if we can build features that make you more secure and more private across those two use cases, we have a product that can help both government and consumer users.

Sometimes when people ask the "conflict" question they mean some version of "but doesn't the government then ask you for a backdoor to get all the data?" All we can really do here is stand by our privacy policy. We store the minimum amount of data possible, we promise not to sell your data to anyone, we notify our users if we receive legal process on their account that is not subject to a gag order, and we pledge to push back on any law enforcement request we receive that is not well formed and narrowly tailored as required by law.

The backdoor/honeypot fears are often related to the Anom story that came out a few years ago. It's not a perfect rebuttal, but the reporter that broke that story has written about Cape a couple of times. You can read those articles here:

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.