Twitter makes available some code from Whisper Systems buy

Twitter, which recently acquired year-old Android security start-up Whisper Systems, announced Tuesday that it is making some of the company's open-source code publicly available on GitHub. The first code being released is for TextSecure, an encrypted SMS application for Android devices. Twitter expects to release all of Whisper's code as soon as it "meets legal requirements and is consumable by the open-source community." Some security researchers, such as Jacob Appelbaum, hailed the news as a big win for user privacy. It remains to be seen exactly how Twitter ultimately will use Whisper's technology.

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