How about "The Fourth"? The name denotes privacy and won't scare off people by sounding illegal.

I immediately know what you mean since I was born and raised in the US, but most people will be left scratching their heads unless they're really well versed in the historical legislation of other countries. (I consider myself fairly well versed in international relations, but if someone made an app referring to a specific UK Act of Parliament I'd be confused.) But I agree, Felony isn't the best name.

It would make me unwilling to use it, due to being clearly pro-American. While it's the american government that is most likely to be spying on me. Awful name, felony is better.

I'm not an American, by the way.

I'm sorry but as a non-US person it's been made very clear to me that I have zero rights, zero laws to depend on and zero expectations of privacy. Calling it "the fourth" is like rubbing that in my face, leaving a rather bad taste.

Yeah was thinking this too, as a techie I like it, but to the general user or business it screams IM DOING SOMETHING ILLEGAL!

Question: what's the memory usage like A) at idle, B) after some using and left running for a day or two?

Meanwhile, a large percentage of the population is quite happy to play a game named Grand Theft Auto...

But that's a video game that purports to celebrate grand theft auto (among other lawlessness). Is the OP's purpose to simulate the commission of a felony? Because those who believe in encryption for everyone believe that encrypted chat should not be a felony.

See also the other discussion thread on that topic:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12030492

Feline - everyone loves cats

I think in era of state being the public enemy names like this has a political purpose. :)

Then call it "Rightstarter" :)

It's not targeted at entirely non technical users. That's why it's on Hacker News ;)

"Felony is the first PGP app that's easy for anyone to use"

How about calling it "Freedom"

Chucking my naming idea, call it rights.

Everybody wants rights and nobody sane is against having rights when rights means their right the free speech, their right to a fair trial etc.

good idea!

Wow, I like this a lot!

I would consider naming it something other than a common English phrase, honestly. I know it's the big trend these days, but it's making things incredibly hard to search for. Try searching for the messaging service "matrix" and the matrix client "vector". Insane amount of namespace collision there.

Best to go with something like Freechain or something so at least people can search for it.

"Freechain" is great. It passes the cognate test (sounds like "keychain," which it is), and the "free" part gives it the multiple meanings of both FOSS and freedom from surveillance. Euphony is pretty high, and it looks fairly low-noise on Google, too.

And chain even retains some connotations to "felon" ... ;-)

Seriously, though, "freechain" strikes a nice balance between being a new term, and hinting at what the use-case is.

I agree that Freedom is a nice choice, but "Freedom" is already in use by a somewhat well-known website/social media blocker (as in "freedom from all those distractions"):

https://freedom.to/

Still, other suggestions are coming up in this thread that may be of use. I really like the idea of a name that, for a non-technical user, cab be a lead in to answering "why do I want this app? what does it do for me?"

Just change the name man. Just today two of my non tech savvy friends refused to use it, they were scared by the name.

How about "Constitution".

M.Y.O.B. - Mind Your Own Business

I think folks should chill on the name. It's just a word which makes it stand out as a product. Good job !!

In that famous Goldman Sachs "theft" case, use of a tool called "Subversion" (which any IT person knows is just vanilla version control software) was taken by the FBI as evidence of malicious intent.

Just saying.

Here's the article about it I found mentioned in HN comments before: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldman...

Just call it Line Noise, Static, or something. No malicious intent in that.

Static is a great name.

Words have meaning and are way more important than you could even imagine. We don't think with words, we use words to think.

One example comes to mind, back in the day people used to use the word "Exploited" to talk about workers being drained of their life force. When you say exploited you assume that there is an exploiter, that someone is guilty of that worker's shitty life.

Now we mostly say the "Disenfranchised" or "Disadvantaged" which takes the "Exploiter" out of the equation entirely and put the workers plight mostly on the back of bad luck than anything else.

Words are very important.

"It's just a word which makes it stand out as a product"

So you think calling a product "nigger" is a good idea? It's just a word and it would certainly stand out.

(Before responding directly to my comment, please consider that I'm criticizing your logic, and don't actually want anyone to create a product with a hateful name)

That is a needlessly crass example. I get your point, but that's not the best way you could have made it.

I disagree. If someone has deactivated their own humanity enough to say "It's just a word" then they probably need a shocking reminder of the power of words. Making an abstract argument about words won't move the needle for a wet robot.

I disagree. Associating cryptography to a criminal term is not wise.

Exactly. How many future whistleblowers would consider using a tool named 'felony'.

I'm guessing exactly zero.

It is also bad PR. And encryption now needs more good PR than ever.