[liberationtech] Internet misuse in Gambia

2013-07-29 Thread Richard Brooks
New law in Gambia makes using the Internet to incite
dissatisfaction with the government punishable by
up to 15 years in jail and $100,00 fine:

http://frontpageinternational.wordpress.com/2013/07/28/internet-is-being-used-as-platform-for-nefarious-and-satanic-activities/

Looks like other governments are following David Cameron's
lead. He could also add satanism to porn in his new firewall.

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Re: [liberationtech] Fwd: [jitsi-users] New XMPP Server

2013-07-29 Thread Ben Laurie
On 28 July 2013 12:44, Bernard Tyers - ei8fdb ei8...@ei8fdb.org wrote:
 -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
 Hash: SHA1

 For those interested, these two forwarded mails mention two separate secure 
 Jabber servers with no-logging. I cannot vouch for the validity of them.

 IMO, any alternative to running the now closed (as in no non-GTalk users can 
 talk directly) Google Talk service.

There's also OTR, of course: http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/. Doesn't
hide who's talking to who, but does hide content.


 regards,
 Bernard

 Begin forwarded message:

 From: John Perry li...@jpunix.net
 Date: 28 July 2013 09:21:23 GMT+01:00
 To: Jitsi Users us...@jitsi.org
 Subject: Re: [jitsi-users] New XMPP Server
 Reply-To: Jitsi Users us...@jitsi.org

 -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
 Hash: SHA1

 On 7/27/2013 5:44 PM, Anthony Papillion wrote:
 I know that Emil has stated that the jit.si server is an
 experimental one and, with the developed focused on making the
 Jisti software even more kick butt, it's probably a bit hard for
 them to constantly troubleshoot server and config problems with the
 service.

 So I've set up a similar service at http://patts.us and invite
 anyone interested to use it. We support voice, video, and IM and
 run a Jingle node. We are also completely unlogged (even the web
 server).

 Just putting it out there to anyone who's interested. Not trying
 to poach users from the jit.si service. Hopefully, this will give
 Emil and the team a little breathing room.

 Best Regards, Anthony Papilloon

 I don't want to steal any of Anthony's thunder but I also have a
 server located at xmpp://chat.jpunix.net that has no logging and
 pretty much does what Anthony's does and is open to anyone that want's
 to use it.

 - --
 John Perry



 ==

 Begin forwarded message:

 From: Anthony Papillion papill...@gmail.com
 Date: 27 July 2013 23:44:36 GMT+01:00
 To: Jitsi Users us...@jitsi.org
 Subject: [jitsi-users] New XMPP Server
 Reply-To: Jitsi Users us...@jitsi.org

 I know that Emil has stated that the jit.si server is an experimental one 
 and, with the developed focused on making the Jisti software even more kick 
 butt, it's probably a bit hard for them to constantly troubleshoot server 
 and config problems with the service.

 So I've set up a similar service at http://patts.us and invite anyone 
 interested to use it. We support voice, video, and IM and run a Jingle node. 
 We are also completely unlogged (even the web server).

 Just putting it out there to anyone who's interested. Not trying to poach 
 users from the jit.si service. Hopefully, this will give Emil and the team a 
 little breathing room.

 Best Regards,
 Anthony Papilloon

 --


 - --
 Bernard / bluboxthief / ei8fdb

 IO91XM / www.ei8fdb.org

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Re: [liberationtech] Fwd: [jitsi-users] New XMPP Server

2013-07-29 Thread Bernard Tyers
Hi Ben,


Ben Laurie b...@links.org wrote:
On 28 July 2013 12:44, Bernard Tyers - ei8fdb ei8...@ei8fdb.org
wrote:
 -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
 Hash: SHA1

 For those interested, these two forwarded mails mention two separate
secure Jabber servers with no-logging. I cannot vouch for the
validity of them.

 IMO, any alternative to running the now closed (as in no non-GTalk
users can talk directly) Google Talk service.

There's also OTR, of course: http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/. Doesn't
hide who's talking to who, but does hide content.

Yes definitely agree. I use it and suggest it to everyone I know.

The point here was running a self-hosted XMPP server which allows you to 
communicate with anyone running XMPP which allows users on different servers  
to communicate, unlike GTalk or Facebook.

Sent from my tiny electronic gadget. Please excuse my brevity and (probable) 
spelling mistakes.
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Re: [liberationtech] Internet misuse in Gambia

2013-07-29 Thread Bernard Tyers - ei8fdb
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 29 Jul 2013, at 15:26, Richard Brooks wrote:

 New law in Gambia makes using the Internet to incite
 dissatisfaction with the government punishable by
 up to 15 years in jail and $100,00 fine:
 
 http://frontpageinternational.wordpress.com/2013/07/28/internet-is-being-used-as-platform-for-nefarious-and-satanic-activities/
 
 Looks like other governments are following David Cameron's
 lead. He could also add satanism to porn in his new firewall.


Wow, incite dissatisfaction? I don't suppose they've been helpful by defining 
what dissatisfaction is?

Is complaining about government bureaucracy on Facebook incitement of 
dissatisfaction?

Bernard

- --
Bernard / bluboxthief / ei8fdb

IO91XM / www.ei8fdb.org

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Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.17 (Darwin)
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Re: [liberationtech] Internet misuse in Gambia

2013-07-29 Thread Richard Brooks
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

- From what I hear, yes complaining about the government on
Facebook or Twitter would easily qualify. To give you an
idea, Guinea where the government soldiers rounded up
large segments of the population in 2009, put them in
a stadium for mass beatings, public rapes, and killings,
is ranked better in human rights than Gambia.

In other news, social media monitoring of the recent election
in Togo can be found at (helps if you know French):

http://nukpola.org/public2/


On 07/29/2013 12:30 PM, Bernard Tyers - ei8fdb wrote:
 On 29 Jul 2013, at 15:26, Richard Brooks wrote:
 
 New law in Gambia makes using the Internet to incite
 dissatisfaction with the government punishable by
 up to 15 years in jail and $100,00 fine:
 
 http://frontpageinternational.wordpress.com/2013/07/28/internet-is-being-used-as-platform-for-nefarious-and-satanic-activities/
 
 Looks like other governments are following David Cameron's
 lead. He could also add satanism to porn in his new firewall.
 
 
 Wow, incite dissatisfaction? I don't suppose they've been helpful by 
 defining what dissatisfaction is?
 
 Is complaining about government bureaucracy on Facebook incitement of 
 dissatisfaction?
 
 Bernard
 
 --
 Bernard / bluboxthief / ei8fdb
 
 IO91XM / www.ei8fdb.org
 
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
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Re: [liberationtech] Fwd: [jitsi-users] New XMPP Server

2013-07-29 Thread Ben Laurie
On 29 July 2013 16:04, Bernard Tyers ei8...@ei8fdb.org wrote:
 Hi Ben,


 Ben Laurie b...@links.org wrote:
On 28 July 2013 12:44, Bernard Tyers - ei8fdb ei8...@ei8fdb.org
wrote:
 -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
 Hash: SHA1

 For those interested, these two forwarded mails mention two separate
secure Jabber servers with no-logging. I cannot vouch for the
validity of them.

 IMO, any alternative to running the now closed (as in no non-GTalk
users can talk directly) Google Talk service.

There's also OTR, of course: http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/. Doesn't
hide who's talking to who, but does hide content.

 Yes definitely agree. I use it and suggest it to everyone I know.

 The point here was running a self-hosted XMPP server which allows you to 
 communicate with anyone running XMPP which allows users on different servers  
 to communicate, unlike GTalk or Facebook.

Doesn't help if the other server logs, tho, right?


 Sent from my tiny electronic gadget. Please excuse my brevity and (probable) 
 spelling mistakes.
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Re: [liberationtech] My design to implement PGP in commercial email system

2013-07-29 Thread boyska
On 29/07/2013 01:45, Percy Alpha wrote:
 key and plain public key to Google. Because Google doesn't know your
 password, Google cannot server you a fake secret key, even though you
 download your encrypted secret key from Google every time you login.

this is using encryption (your password) to provide verification. I
don't believe this is safe (even if I can't came up with a way to break it).

 When the users tries to send an email to another Gmail user B for the first
 time, B's public key will be downloaded from Google and signed by A. Any
 subsequent times when A tries to send email to B, A will not only download
 B's key from Google but also verifies the authenticity of B's key. This
 prevents MITM attack if Google is hacked or forced by law enforcement. (For
 advanced users, Google can present the option to manually verify the public
 key for the first email. )

but what if Gmail provides a fake key for B? Why should you
automatically trust that key?

Also, I miss the point of signatures: A signs B's key, but noone cares
about that signature in that scheme. Am I missing something?

I think that this scheme relies on trust on your email provider and on
https not being MITM-ed, which I think is not common between people that
want to use PGP.

-- 
boyska

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Re: [liberationtech] My design to implement PGP in commercial email system

2013-07-29 Thread Randolph D.
uh? why commercial? http://bitmail.sf.net is open source. Regards

2013/7/29 Percy Alpha percyal...@gmail.com

 PGP is great for privacy but rather hard to use for common users. I came
 up with a simple design that can be implement in main-string email system
 while preserving the usability.

 Take Gmail for example.
 First Google should adopt zero-knowledge password proof for its account
 while asking users to choose recovery questions. To recover password, users
 will answer 3 secret questions and the password is encrypted with the
 answers. This ensures that users can recover password and get old emails
 back without letting Google know the password.

 Then when users first log into Gmail, the browser will generate the
 keypair using JavaScript locally and encrypt the secret key with login
 password(with PBKDF2, etc). Then the user will upload the encrypted secret
 key and plain public key to Google. Because Google doesn't know your
 password, Google cannot server you a fake secret key, even though you
 download your encrypted secret key from Google every time you login.

 When the users tries to send an email to another Gmail user B for the
 first time, B's public key will be downloaded from Google and signed by A.
 Any subsequent times when A tries to send email to B, A will not only
 download B's key from Google but also verifies the authenticity of B's key.
 This prevents MITM attack if Google is hacked or forced by law
 enforcement. (For advanced users, Google can present the option to manually
 verify the public key for the first email. )

 To send email between Gmail and Hotmail, Google should be able to request
 a Hotmail user's public key from Microsoft server. To prevent spam,
 Microsoft should return some random public key for non-exist account and
 perhaps always return this fake public key for this non-exist account to
 prevent cross reference.

 The only downside of this approach is that email providers are not able to
 filter spam or provide related Ads based on email content. Even this might
 be solved in the future because of private outsourced computation.


 Percy Alpha(PGP https://en.greatfire.org/contact#alt)
 GreatFire.org Team

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[liberationtech] Request: Information on use of smartphones by the socially vulnerable

2013-07-29 Thread Yosem Companys
From: Araba Sey araba...@uw.edu

 **

A colleague in Brazil is looking for examples of projects or studies at UW
that look at “the use of smart phones amongst people in social
vulnerability”. If you are or have been involved in such work, please let
me know.

** **

Thanks!

araba

** **

Araba Sey

Research Assistant Professor

University of Washington Information School 

Technology  Social Change Group

tascha.washington.edu 

Tel 206-685-3724


**
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Re: [liberationtech] PGP is hard to use and needs stuff installed on your computer. Use PassLok instead.

2013-07-29 Thread Francisco Ruiz
@Tony

On Sun, Jul 28, 2013 at 1:32 PM, Francisco Ruiz ruiz at iit.edu
https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech wrote:

* - How do I communicate a password to Bob? Before I get a crucial bit** of 
information to Bob, I need to first get a crucial bit of information** to 
Bob? Alice should send her Lock (public key) to Bob rather than 
anything** secret.***
How? At the very least Alice/Bob need an authenticated/trusted channel for
this.

If Alice sends Bob her public key over an untrusted channel, it can be
intercepted by an MitM posing as Bob who can then intercept all traffic
between Alice/Bob

-- 
Tony Arcieri


Hi Tony, I actually worried about this quite a bit. The best solution I
could think of is making a hashed ID
 of the public key (PassLok has a button for that), which Alice/Bob can
dictate over the phone, thus authenticating
the key.

Any other ideas?

Francisco
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Re: [liberationtech] PGP is hard to use and needs stuff installed on your computer. Use PassLok instead.

2013-07-29 Thread Steve Weis
Hi. I think you're slowly reinventing PGP.

Just to summarize what you have so far:
1. Alice and Bob each generate key pairs locally.
2. Both securely store their private keys.
3. Both generate hash values of their public keys.
4. Both mutually exchange public keys over an untrusted channel.
5. Both use some existing trusted communication channel to manually
verify their keys.
6. Alice encrypts a password with Bob's public key and sends it to Bob.
7. Alice uses the password to encrypt a message using server-side code.
8. Bob decrypts the message with the password using server-side code.

#1-#3 require client-side software and secure key storage.
#5 assumes that there is a safe communications channel already.
#6 is not forward secure.
#7-#8 are vulnerable to attacks on the server.
#8 is vulnerable to phishing.

On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 1:52 PM, Francisco Ruiz r...@iit.edu wrote:
 Hi Tony, I actually worried about this quite a bit. The best solution I
 could think of is making a hashed ID
 of the public key (PassLok has a button for that), which Alice/Bob can
 dictate over the phone, thus authenticating
 the key.
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Re: [liberationtech] My design to implement PGP in commercial email system

2013-07-29 Thread Percy Alpha
To boyska,


 but what if Gmail provides a fake key for B? Why should you
 automatically trust that key?

 Also, I miss the point of signatures: A signs B's key, but noone cares
 about that signature in that scheme. Am I missing something?


At first time, B's public key will be downloaded from Google and signed by
A.. Any subsequent times, A also verifies the authenticity of B's key.
So Google can provide a fake key only at the first time. I said For
advanced users, Google can present the option to manually verify the public
key for the first email. Google cannot MITM any subsequent communications
because fake key of B is not signed by A and will be detected.

I think that this scheme relies on trust on your email provider and on
 https not being MITM-ed, which I think is not common between people that
 want to use PGP.

I'm targeting the common people(email provider to the common people),not
the existing PGP users.
Now, only people who are technical savvy can make the conscious decision to
use PGP. My design is totally transparent to the users and can greatly
boost the privacy of common communications without users even knowing what
PGP is. Those high profile users can keep using the desktop version.
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Re: [liberationtech] My design to implement PGP in commercial email system

2013-07-29 Thread Percy Alpha
On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 10:58 AM, Randolph D. rdohm...@gmail.com wrote:

 uh? why commercial? http://bitmail.sf.net is open source. Regards


Again, I want common people to use PGP. I want every communication to be
encrypted. You recommendation is great but a client app(especially an app
designed by cryptographer, no offense) just will not attract common users.
A simple, familiar web mail that can provide PGP in default without any
extra configuration is the only way to push it to the mass.(And even after
everyone adopts it, the mass will still no nothing about PGP)
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[liberationtech] Self-determined publics

2013-07-29 Thread Michael Allan
Folks,

Below I define what I call self-determined publics.  Has anything
similar been attempted before?

   A self-determined public is an open, topical community that
   proclaims the definitive bounds of its own communications.  The
   proclamation takes the form of a timely sequence of references
   (e.g. web links) each pointing to a communication of the public,
   such that all references together define the total of that public's
   communications in time and space.  For example:

   Ago Place  Title  (click to visit thread)
  ---  -  --
  17 min   r/Foo  How do we attach the doohickey?
   5 hrFoo-L  The problem with so and so's proposal.
   1 day   FuBarz Who are these Foos, anyway?
   1 day   r/Foo  This, that, and the next thing.
   2 days  FooStack   What's the best thingamy for such and such?
  . . . and so on

   The boundary proclamation is similar in form to a conventional news
   feed.  It concerns a specific topic or category.  Differences are
   in a) the exclusion of mass communications, b) the claim to
   totality, and c) the self-determination that redeems that claim.
   (a) A principle criterion for inclusion is that one may immediately
   join any of the referenced communications as a peer.  One-way, mass
   communications are excluded.

   (b) The boundary proclamation claims to cover the entire public
   discussion of the topic across all communication media and sites.
   It claims to be the most complete, accurate and timely overview of
   the extended discussion that is available anywhere.

   (c) This claim is redeemed by the public members themselves who
   submit the references, self-organize the necessary labour, and
   self-constitute the necessary government.  No aspect of this
   redeeming self-determination is controlled by an external
   authority.


I'm looking for brief pointers, please.  I don't know of any actual
implementations of this, or projects that are working on it.  I'll
share what's found.

-- 
Michael Allan

Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
http://zelea.com/
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Re: [liberationtech] Self-determined publics

2013-07-29 Thread Douglas Lucas
Michael and Libtech,

Not sure I can be much help other than this - you might find relevant
Heather Marsh's writings on Concentric Groups, Knowledge Bridges and
Epistemic Communities:
https://georgiebc.wordpress.com/2013/01/23/concentric-groups-knowledge-bridges-and-epistemic-communities-2/

:-Douglas

On 07/29/2013 11:45 PM, Michael Allan wrote:
 Folks,
 
 Below I define what I call self-determined publics.  Has anything
 similar been attempted before?
 
A self-determined public is an open, topical community that
proclaims the definitive bounds of its own communications.  The
proclamation takes the form of a timely sequence of references
(e.g. web links) each pointing to a communication of the public,
such that all references together define the total of that public's
communications in time and space.  For example:
 
Ago Place  Title  (click to visit thread)
   ---  -  --
   17 min   r/Foo  How do we attach the doohickey?
5 hrFoo-L  The problem with so and so's proposal.
1 day   FuBarz Who are these Foos, anyway?
1 day   r/Foo  This, that, and the next thing.
2 days  FooStack   What's the best thingamy for such and such?
   . . . and so on
 
The boundary proclamation is similar in form to a conventional news
feed.  It concerns a specific topic or category.  Differences are
in a) the exclusion of mass communications, b) the claim to
totality, and c) the self-determination that redeems that claim.
(a) A principle criterion for inclusion is that one may immediately
join any of the referenced communications as a peer.  One-way, mass
communications are excluded.
 
(b) The boundary proclamation claims to cover the entire public
discussion of the topic across all communication media and sites.
It claims to be the most complete, accurate and timely overview of
the extended discussion that is available anywhere.
 
(c) This claim is redeemed by the public members themselves who
submit the references, self-organize the necessary labour, and
self-constitute the necessary government.  No aspect of this
redeeming self-determination is controlled by an external
authority.
 
 
 I'm looking for brief pointers, please.  I don't know of any actual
 implementations of this, or projects that are working on it.  I'll
 share what's found.
 
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Re: [liberationtech] Self-determined publics

2013-07-29 Thread Sebastian Benthall
I really like the way you frame this. Please do share anything you find on
this!

You might find interesting (if you haven't seen it already) Chris Kelty's
term *recursive public*, which he uses to describe geekdom (with an
emphasis on open source software communities) as a whole.

http://p2pfoundation.net/Recursive_Public

A recursive public is a public that is vitally concerned with the material
and practical maintenance and modification of the technical, legal,
practical, and conceptual means of its own existence as a public; it is a
collective independent of other forms of constituted power and is capable
of speaking to existing forms of power through the production of actually
existing alternatives.

If you'll forgive the self-promotion, you might find this work on Weird
Twitter (an on-line community not unlike what you describe) and symbolic
bounded network communities of interest.

http://ethnographymatters.net/2013/06/30/why-weird-twitter-part-1/


On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 9:45 PM, Michael Allan m...@zelea.com wrote:

 Folks,

 Below I define what I call self-determined publics.  Has anything
 similar been attempted before?

A self-determined public is an open, topical community that
proclaims the definitive bounds of its own communications.  The
proclamation takes the form of a timely sequence of references
(e.g. web links) each pointing to a communication of the public,
such that all references together define the total of that public's
communications in time and space.  For example:

Ago Place  Title  (click to visit thread)
   ---  -  --
   17 min   r/Foo  How do we attach the doohickey?
5 hrFoo-L  The problem with so and so's proposal.
1 day   FuBarz Who are these Foos, anyway?
1 day   r/Foo  This, that, and the next thing.
2 days  FooStack   What's the best thingamy for such and such?
   . . . and so on

The boundary proclamation is similar in form to a conventional news
feed.  It concerns a specific topic or category.  Differences are
in a) the exclusion of mass communications, b) the claim to
totality, and c) the self-determination that redeems that claim.
(a) A principle criterion for inclusion is that one may immediately
join any of the referenced communications as a peer.  One-way, mass
communications are excluded.

(b) The boundary proclamation claims to cover the entire public
discussion of the topic across all communication media and sites.
It claims to be the most complete, accurate and timely overview of
the extended discussion that is available anywhere.

(c) This claim is redeemed by the public members themselves who
submit the references, self-organize the necessary labour, and
self-constitute the necessary government.  No aspect of this
redeeming self-determination is controlled by an external
authority.


 I'm looking for brief pointers, please.  I don't know of any actual
 implementations of this, or projects that are working on it.  I'll
 share what's found.

 --
 Michael Allan

 Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
 http://zelea.com/
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