[Freedombox-discuss] Roadmap Brainstorming

[Jay Sulzberger]

On Sun, 20 Mar 2011, Boaz <alt.boaz at gmail.com> wrote:

> For what it's worth, my wishlist:

> < ... />

> 7. File transfer.  Both published to the world and access controlled.

> < ... />

>
> Additionally, some things that I think will be necessary or helpful for all
> of this to be feasible:

> < ... />

>
> 2. A crypto suite which encrypts everything all the time without the user
> needing to do anything.  Session keys are used to encrypt all the types of
> traffic, with perfect forward secrecy and deniability as in OTR (unless the
> user specifically chooses non-repudiation for some message, which people
> won't), and a single persistent public key is used to authenticate all the
> session keys for all the types of traffic, but is never used to encrypt
> traffic.  People's single persistent public keys can be authenticated by 0,
> 1, or more than 1 of:
> a) Preexisting short shared secret and Socialist Millionaire Protocol as in
> OTR
> b) Web of trust as in OpenPGP
> c) Hash commitment and short authentication string verified by voice as in
> ZRTP
> Authentication by one or more of these methods can occur whenever it happens
> to occur, including long after the key is already in use.

Yes.  I think the above hardening is central.  With it, whether
or not we quickly succeed in other parts of the effort, we will
have a weapon, a weapon of both offense and defense.  Without it,
we have no Freedom Box worthy of the name.

> So that's my ultimate super-ambitious wishlist.  I hope some reasonable
> fraction of that is feasible in the somewhat near term.

I think a hardened system, a system something like present home
computers, could be made within one year.  And to repeat what
many have said: The thing must be usable, and that means if we
have a subsystem of video conferencing, a new connection cannot
require answering even one confusing question.

oo--JS.