Judge in Confide case says plaintiff must provide records of messages

Cole County Judge Jon Beetem heard arguments in the lawsuit against former governor Greitens’ use of a message deleting app.

The judge told Mark Pedroli, the attorney representing Ben Sansone, with the Sunshine Project and the plaintiff, to provide records of the Confide messages.

The app, Confide, claims it is screen-shot proof, encrypts all messages between sender and receiver, destroy them once read.

Technology expert Jonathan Sessions said messaging apps often use a server to relay messages between sender and recipient.

“That message does leave your mobile device and go to a server somewhere,” he said. “Then it sends it to the target device.”

Sessions said these servers often store the messages in some form. He said the social media app Snapchat had a court case in which information no longer available to the sender and recipient was still existent on the server.

“Those conversations were still sitting on a server somewhere,” he said. “In the case of Snapchat through a subpoena they were able to be accessed and used through a court case.”

Sessions said he does not know if Confide uses a similar server to Snapchat.

Judge Beetem said if the plaintiff can’t provide records of the messages then the case is no longer in violation of the sunshine law.