Re: Hancock's half hour
" If you need secure communications with guaranteed delivery then email is absolutely the last tool for the job. A smartphone app with end-to-end encryption giving access to a secure document store - that could work."
You are joking, I hope.
Email can be made secure, and with work, desktops or laptops can be made reasonably secure. The tools to do so are relatively common, and can be packaged for end users as secure bootable live systems.
Smartphones, on the other hand...
1. Are easily lost, misplaced, or broken.
2. Not everyone has one.
3. Unlike email, the specific device matters. You need access to that one device, not another compatible device that can easily replace the lost/stolen/broken/failed device, with a bit of software and a key or two..
4. They are among the most privacy compromised devices on the planet, and that probably cannot be fixed without replacing the OS.
5. They are hard to secure, and it is difficult to be sure they have been secured... and given the way updates are done, and apps work, there is considerable room to doubt they can be kept that way.
6. They require expensive communications plans.
7, They may be difficult to use for the sick, elderly, or merely technologically disinclined.
I have yet to find a readily available smartphone that I would trust with any part of my private life, let alone things touching on very private health matters, or my life.