s ever told us the outcome of a study before the study was over. Have you? Do you have any memory of that? This seems to be specific to CNN.

Here's a scary story but fun. Turns out that criminal organizations, mafia types, have been using an encryption technology in which you would take a phone that had been crippled for all other purposes except for this one encrypted app. And it could only talk to people who also had a crippled phone with just that app on it. So it was like a really special super secret encrypted thing that's better than, you know, Telegram. It's better than Signal. It's better than WhatsApp. Because those are just, you know, encryption apps. But this one you had to have an actual special phone that could only talk to the other special phones. Pretty well encrypted, right?

Except law enforcement has had that encryption broken for a long time, and they've been watching the entire criminal enterprises, revealing all of their secrets for a long time, until they just did a big roundup and arrested a bunch of people.

But here's my advice to you. There's no such thing as an encrypted app. Now technically they're encrypted in the sense that encryption happens in a math and coding sense. Yes, Betsy, you skied in my hometown. I'll be damned. You've seen my house. If you were on the ski slope in Windham, New York, you saw my house because you just looked across the valley and there it was.

But here's the thing. Here's why there's no such thing as a safely encrypted app. My goodness, Eugene Gian, you are way too nice. I certainly appreciate it, but I'm not worth it. And but I appreciate it very much. So there's no such thing as a really encrypted app. And here's why. Your encrypted app ends up with a human being. That's why you sent it, right? You sent your message to a human being. The human being isn't encrypted, right?

As soon as the human being gets it, it's no longer a secret message. It's a message that some damn person could tell anybody they want. So the moment you think, well, I'm safe now, I got my encrypted app, no such thing. I used to have the Signal app, got rid of it. Because the moment you think your messages are secret, there's no such thing as a secret message. That doesn't exist. Because the person on the other end is not encrypted.

And let me point out this: those companies, Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, don't they have human beings working there? Do you think there's no way to get an insider to figure out how to beat an encryption? Actually I don't know the answer to that question. It might be that there is no way, but I doubt it. I would think that if you could get an insider who had the right skills, the right access, they could open up any app.

How do you know the insiders haven't already gone to the developers for whatever app you're using and said to them, here's the deal. If you don't give us a back door to your encrypted app, we will shut your operation down one way or another. We'll do it legally, but you're basically out of business unless you give us a back door. Did that happen? How would you know? How would you know? Is there any way you would know that your app developer had a secret conversation with the FBI? No, no, you'd have no way of knowing.

So you would be a sucker to use encrypted apps. You would be a sucker. Because an encrypted app is exactly where people are going to look for your secrets. Now it might not be that your neighbor can read your encrypted app, bu