MESSAGE
| DATE | 2006-10-25 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Free Software Magazine
|
On Wed, Oct 25, 2006 at 11:21:01AM -0400, rc wrote:
> BTW - Lulu.com was founded by Red Hat founder Bob Young
>
> http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/blogs/secure_voip_calling_free_software_right_to_privacy
>
Say - I didn't know that. LULU looks like it might be a seriously useful tool
when we publish out text book.
Ruben
> Secure VoIP calling, free software, and the right to privacy
>
> By David Sugar
>
> Online on: 24/10/2006
>
> All free nations in the world today recognize certain basic principles,
> such as freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the freedom of
> privacy. These values that we all share were articulated by and fought
> for by people such as Voltaire, Jefferson, and Bolivar. This common
> heritage of freedom is today under attack by those who wish to turn the
> clock back on human progress. We all know that a government that lives
> in such fear of its own citizens that it must spy on them and claims the
> authority to do so en-mass and unchallengeable is not a legitimate
> government of the people it claims to serve.
>
> There is an interesting story about George Washington during the
> American Revolutionary War. At one point some of Washington's officers
> were plotting rebellion against him, and he accidentally received a
> dispatch that was meant for one of the conspirators. Having opened it,
> and read it, he realized what had happened, and then asked the courier
> to please apologize because the letter was not meant for him. He choose
> to act as best he could in a manner as if he had not read the letter.
> For Washington understood that even at a time of war, there are certain
> ideals that must never be sacrificed, otherwise even if victory was
> achieved, it is not worth the price of a nation nobody would wish to
> live in.
>
> With these thoughts, we chose, on the first Monday of this October, to
> release a stack for secure VOIP calling, as free software developed
> through GNU Telephony, a loose organization of developers who specialize
> in free software for telecommunications. We accomplished this by
> creating a free software stack that implements Phil Zimmerman's ZRTP, as
> well as the Secure RTP spec. This is now part of the GNU RTP Stack,
> ccrtp. We chose to make this available for immediate use in the most
> compelling way, by having available at the same time, a complete secure
> softphone client anyone can also download and use and which implements
> the secure calling features in an easy to use manner. This client was
> the Twinkle Softphone client, developed by Michel De Boer, and modified
> with his help to meet this goal in time with our initial release.
>
> Secure calling VOIP using ZRTP operates much like ssh in concept. The
> keys for communication are generated locally, rather than using an
> external certificate authority, hence preventing weak or poisoned
> certificates which SRTP potentially allows. Fingerprint session
> signatures are shown and cached much like the ssh host fingerprints, so
> that one can determine if there is a man in the middle decrypting at one
> end and encrypting to another.
>
> What we have developed does not interfere with lawful police
> investigations, since the end point can still be compromised with
> physical access, presumably executed as part of a lawful and judicially
> supervised court order. But it does prevent arbitrary and mass spying on
> what people say, which must come to an end before all other freedoms are
> lost. With additional technologies including tls secured SIP and
> anonymizing connection proxies, it is possible to also reduce
> associative information signal that intelligence so desperately wishes
> to mine, and that is a goal of later phases of this project.
>
> Since it is free software, anyone can download and use it. Since it is
> offered as a library, it can be used to produce applications, like
> Twinkle, that can perform secure communications by design, rather than
> as an afterthought. This technology is here to stay. There are enough
> people who have set it up now around the world, including some I
> personally showed. The source is available and mirrored worldwide.
> Binaries have been build and now distributed in Debian. Much of that was
> all done very rapidly and early on at the start of the month, the rest
> while I was in Maturin speaking at the IVth International Free Knowledge
> Conference, which I will write about next week, to deliberately make
> sure it was immediately usable and widely disseminated.
>
> This technology we are bringing to free VOIP software was of course
> first proposed, in a proprietary form, and as an external proxy known as
> zfone, by Phil Zimmerman. Much of the work in developing secure calling
> in the GNU RTP Stack was done by people like Werner Dittman and Federico
> Pouzols, and with lots of Michel De Boer from Twinkle. Whether you are a
> head of state wishing to communicate in private, a union organizer
> within a company, or simply talking to your family and friends, you have
> a basic right and expectation of privacy. We intend to do everything in
> our power to help further that goal.
>
> Further information can be found at GNU Telephony
>
>
> Ruben Safir wrote:
> >On Mon, Oct 23, 2006 at 10:32:43PM -0400, einker wrote:
> >>I' ve been reading this since issue #5. I thought you knew about it ....
> >>
> >
> >I discovered it last month and posted a note about it to the list. Since
> >I got no responses, I thought I'd mention it again./ It would be nice to
> >make
> >a contribution to their rag. They did a much better job than we did
> >trying to promote the same thing.
> >
> >
> >Ruben
> >
> >>On 10/23/06, Ruben Safir wrote:
> >>>Has anyone seen this Free Software Magazine at
> >>>
> >>>http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>This site is one of the best examples of Free Software in action I've
> >>>ever
> >>>seen.
> >>>Its content is awesome, the commentaries just wonderful and in depth.
> >>>The
> >>>Magazine is everything I had hoped for with the NYLXS Quarterly Journal
> >>>as
> >>>a
> >>>serious review journal that doesn't completely lose the new user or
> >>>program
> >>>user of computers.
> >>>
> >>>And David Sugar is a regular writer in it.
> >>>
> >>>And then they discovered this every cool social enginering tool.....
> >>>
> >>>http://www.lulu.com/
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>Ruben
> >>>--
> >>>__________________________
> >>>Brooklyn Linux Solutions
> >>>
> >>>So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
> >>>that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
> >>>proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
> >>>
> >>>DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
> >>>http://fairuse.nylxs.com
> >>>
> >>>"Yeah - I write Free Software...so SUE ME"
> >>>
> >>>"The tremendous problem we face is that we are becoming
> >>>sharecroppers to our own cultural heritage -- we need
> >>>the ability to participate in our own society."
> >>>
> >>>http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Consulting
> >>>http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
> >>>http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive or stories and
> >>>articles from around the net
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>--
> >>Regards,
> >>
> >>Evan M. Inker
> >
--
__________________________
Brooklyn Linux Solutions
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://fairuse.nylxs.com
"Yeah - I write Free Software...so SUE ME"
"The tremendous problem we face is that we are becoming
sharecroppers to our own cultural heritage -- we need
the ability to participate in our own society."
http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Consulting
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive or stories and articles from around the net
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