I'm no security expert, but at least in theory Retroshare may be one of the safest ways to communicate out there (along with some of the OTR-enabled apps; Retroshare doesn't use OTR, I believe, just P2P OpenSSL).
When the general Petraeus scandal happened, I was thinking that if he would've used Retroshare, which is P2P and encrypted, to talk to his mistress directly, he wouldn't have been found out (unless his PC had a keylogger).
Now if only someone made a prettier interface for it, so "normal" users would be compelled to use it.
EDIT: More info on its security and privacy models, by the team behind it:
The Retroshare no-gui version is almost feature-complete. The no-gui version will allow all kinds of interfaces as can be imagined. The Android version is still under active development: https://github.com/G10h4ck/RetroShare-Android-Client
It's open source. You don't even have to talk to the developers if you'd rather not. Fork it and make it beautiful, and release it. The world will thank you. If there's enough demand, the devs will merge it into the original project.
If I was a designer and not a programming type, this would be extraordinarily difficult, especially when it comes to refactoring someone else's code and interface to fit my vision.
Indeed design is not about sticking a pretty UI on top of the existing software.
You have to apply UX to the development process, such as how a user interacts with features, or the steps involved in each action, or the way the app communicates to the user, or delivering feedback after an interaction is completed. Design influences the software requirements.
It's necessary for designers to collaborate with developers if you want a well designed app... not just a pretty one.
When the general Petraeus scandal happened, I was thinking that if he would've used Retroshare, which is P2P and encrypted, to talk to his mistress directly, he wouldn't have been found out (unless his PC had a keylogger).
Now if only someone made a prettier interface for it, so "normal" users would be compelled to use it.
EDIT: More info on its security and privacy models, by the team behind it:
Ideals:
http://retroshareteam.wordpress.com/2012/11/03/retroshares-a...;
On security:
http://retroshareteam.wordpress.com/2012/12/28/cryptography-...;
On privacy:
http://retroshareteam.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/privacy-on-th...;
Distributed chat:
http://retroshareteam.wordpress.com/2012/11/16/distributed-c...;