"Our clients e-mails are disappearing all over the place," said CDS Technologies Inc. CEO John Flanagan, whose company offers the self-destructible e-mail service. "In fact, you can make e-mails vanish or go 'kablooey' at a pre-set time." he said. So, despite what the esteemed Democratic senator from Vermont and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said yesterday, Flanagan said that sometimes maybe "the dog can eat your homework."
Sen. Leahy cited the old excuse "the dog ate my homework" as a mockery of the position the White House has taken in the swirling controversy over the alleged loss of some White House e-mails.
If any of the White House aides or Federal prosecutors who were fired used Kablooeymail, the sender of e-mail messages could have made them self destruct at a set time and meanwhile have prevented or at least made it difficult for the recipient to print, store, forward or copy the message.
"We're not advocating the use of our service to circumvent record-keeping requirements," Flanagan said. "We just wanted to correct the record as to what the latest in e-mail technology is capable of," he said.
By using such technology, it is possible to circumvent having the e-mail passing through so many servers. While not an infallible alternative, KablooeyMail provides layers of protection and privacy above regular e-mail that would make it more difficult to preserve, Flanagan said.
"The neighborhood kid whom the senator said could retrieve the lost e-mail may not have a lot of luck in finding those e-mails, but I'm willing to bet he could show you 100 different ways of communicating on the Internet that isn't logged, recorded, or backed up." Just as easily, he can show you how to use e-mail in such way, said Flanagan. While KablooeyMail isn't infallible and is definitely not the end all of e-mail security, it's providing "better than regular" e-mail security, he said.
