OCA is a little more 'obvious' in its shortcomings. We still disclose this as clearly and responsibly as we can, but to the average, non-technical user, it seems intuitive that calling a phone that is "outside the circle" is less secure. Our choice for the brand name "Out-Circle" was very intentional.

The key difference though is in the data that we have to hold on to. With email, we had to hold on to all sorts of metadata in the email headers (no matter how it's stored, we would obviously have to be able to read it, in order to provide 'email' service). OCA has no such issue. We don't have to log any metadata. Obviously you need to assume that information is being logged _somewhere_ (again, the 'outside' part), but we're not ending up with anything that we could be compelled to hand over.

OCA is designed for a different threat model. If you're concerned about the NSA (or the USG (or more broadly the 5 Eyes) in general), then OCA isn't for you. By and large, OCA is for people that need to get their communication securely out of some 'hostile' environment, and aren't especially concerned about western governments (e.g. someone living under an oppressive regime who wants to talk to their ex-pat family in Canada, or a US business man traveling in a country known for stealing trade secrets who needs to talk to his home office about product designs).

Best of luck to our crypto heroes!

Your comment got me thinking about ways we could do a better job pointing out the limitations of OCA, and had an interesting idea for a simple way to remind folks. So thanks for making us think about it again.