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I've been running my own web services for the last three years. For email I use exim/dovecot/roundcube and am also experimentally using Bitmessage For social

by motters 13y ago

I've been running my own web services for the last three years. For email I use exim/dovecot/roundcube and am also experimentally using Bitmessage For social networking I use Friendica, and eventually I'll be on the Red Matrix. For dropbox type functionality I either just use plain old ssh or Owncloud. Owncloud also includes a lot of other stuff such as photos and calendar. For blogging I use Flatpress. It just works. From a security point of view conventional email remains a problem. It's not yet possible to function in the modern world without email, and trying to persuade even quite technical people to use PGP/GPG routinely has been very unsuccessful, since it's just too inconvenient for most people. I've never used Google apps to any extent since I don't have much need to collaboratively edit documents. But if I did then there probably are open source systems out there which would do the job. Certainly if I was running a business then I wouldn't even contemplate using Google apps, especially after the recent NSA scandal. I expect that readers here are more than capable of doing all the above, but sadly the average internet user is still going to remain stuck in the surveillance state with few other options to turn to.

igravious 13y ago
I've been thinking about this in light of recent events. I was going to blog about it but I'll jot down my thoughts here. At the moment we have companies making all sorts of set-top boxes, games consoles and media boxes which come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. It seems to me that we can rely on corporations to build user friendly devices for us to consume media. What we (as citizens) rather than as consumers need is a comms box or a social box or whatever it gets called. Some mentioned "personal data box" on here or words to that effect. We want (I'm going out on a limb to speak for other around here) secure, federated and private communications: chat communication (instant messaging), mail communication (email), audio communication (voice over ip), video communication (video over ip). Also we'd ideally like our digital social interactions kept secure, federated and private. Finally secure and private online storage of documents would be nice if only for convenience. And to top it all off what would be super-delicious would be a workable single sign-on thingy for the internet age. Please, pretty please? We only have to solve this once. We're at the threshold of the digital age, future generations will thank us for solving these problems when the issues cam e to a head (as they are now). What is needed for all this is _open federated protocols_. And the corporations that flog proprietary offerings have to embrace these protocols. As far as I can see we have those protocols for email (smtp+tls+...?), for voice over ip (sip), chat (jabber?), social (open soical?), online document storage (?), single sign on (openid?) We need all this in a box that people can just connect to the net via their router using wifi or whatever. We need it to be peer to peer so that large portions of it cannot be bought out and centralized after the fact. We need to shout loudly when companies roll back on support of open protocols. We need this in a box. My personal social comms box. I dunno. It seems like a huge but vital need. But we only need to get it right once. We can't trust those in power not to abuse this tech, there will always be an erosion of checks and balances so we need to build a technical solution while we struggle for better social and legal norms. Who's with me?
- visarga 13y ago
  Totally agree. The bad thing about blowing the cover of NSA is that now they don't need to pussy around to keep the secret. They'll be much more brazen. The good thing is that now we have momentum to change how we communicate. If we don't, we'll lose this train. We have had research in anonymity going on since 2000 but people haven't been motivated enough to adopt them en masse.
  - igravious 13y ago
    Yes indeed. We must use the energy created by this debacle to push forward with change. Of course, those who do will be said to be in league with the traitors and terrorists. I should given an honorable mention Freedom Box in my previous post: http://freedomboxfoundation.org/ http://freedomboxfoundation.org/
- motters 13y ago
  That is essentially the manifesto of the Freedombox Project, which has also been around for a few years. For a variety of reasons FreedomBox doesn't seem to have made much real progress on bringing data privacy to the masses, but there is certainly a need for something like it and a different project with different leadership could possibly do a better job.

by motters 13y ago

igravious 13y ago

I've been thinking about this in light of recent events. I was going to blog about it but I'll jot down my thoughts here. At the moment we have companies making all sorts of set-top boxes, games consoles and media boxes which come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. It seems to me that we can rely on corporations to build user friendly devices for us to consume media. What we (as citizens) rather than as consumers need is a comms box or a social box or whatever it gets called. Some mentioned "personal data box" on here or words to that effect. We want (I'm going out on a limb to speak for other around here) secure, federated and private communications: chat communication (instant messaging), mail communication (email), audio communication (voice over ip), video communication (video over ip). Also we'd ideally like our digital social interactions kept secure, federated and private. Finally secure and private online storage of documents would be nice if only for convenience. And to top it all off what would be super-delicious would be a workable single sign-on thingy for the internet age. Please, pretty please? We only have to solve this once. We're at the threshold of the digital age, future generations will thank us for solving these problems when the issues cam e to a head (as they are now). What is needed for all this is _open federated protocols_. And the corporations that flog proprietary offerings have to embrace these protocols. As far as I can see we have those protocols for email (smtp+tls+...?), for voice over ip (sip), chat (jabber?), social (open soical?), online document storage (?), single sign on (openid?) We need all this in a box that people can just connect to the net via their router using wifi or whatever. We need it to be peer to peer so that large portions of it cannot be bought out and centralized after the fact. We need to shout loudly when companies roll back on support of open protocols. We need this in a box. My personal social comms box. I dunno. It seems like a huge but vital need. But we only need to get it right once. We can't trust those in power not to abuse this tech, there will always be an erosion of checks and balances so we need to build a technical solution while we struggle for better social and legal norms. Who's with me?

visarga 13y ago
Totally agree. The bad thing about blowing the cover of NSA is that now they don't need to pussy around to keep the secret. They'll be much more brazen. The good thing is that now we have momentum to change how we communicate. If we don't, we'll lose this train. We have had research in anonymity going on since 2000 but people haven't been motivated enough to adopt them en masse.
- igravious 13y ago
  Yes indeed. We must use the energy created by this debacle to push forward with change. Of course, those who do will be said to be in league with the traitors and terrorists. I should given an honorable mention Freedom Box in my previous post: http://freedomboxfoundation.org/ http://freedomboxfoundation.org/
motters 13y ago
That is essentially the manifesto of the Freedombox Project, which has also been around for a few years. For a variety of reasons FreedomBox doesn't seem to have made much real progress on bringing data privacy to the masses, but there is certainly a need for something like it and a different project with different leadership could possibly do a better job.