Excellent points all around - and I too want to thank Sandy for bringing up the conversation. In repudiation to the author's words about electronic dystopia, I believe in the power of the Freedom Box as a leveler of the field. If conversations and content can be shared without big-brother...
You can have a wifi shared connection via TOR over cell networks on the latest android devices - it's not a cheap piece of kit today - but in just a few years time these are going to be *everywhere*. Cellular; and in particular 'smart phone' devices are barnstorming through every county in the world. TOR has already released the software.<https://www.torproject.org/docs/android.html.en> Included is secure chat and a browser. So - my opinion - is we focus efforts on a destination for these already mobile folks: node based social networks; web-based tools for publishing their news blurbs to things like twitter; blogs; and even facebook - make it reasonably secure, peer to peer, distributed; Downloadable to a USB or other offline storage if possible; and erasable with a lighter or teeth. Distributed social networks like Friendica <http://friendica.com/>and eventually Diaspora will eventually fill this purpose; and <startup-plug alert> I'm taking steps <http://node.net/> to help that along.* But pure cloud solutions don't go far enough towards true freedom. The key and fundamental choke-point of the cellular system is the expense and centralization (thus 'official' control) of the antenna tower. The hardest thing in the freedom box goal-set is the last-mile mesh network - and it's the one most suitable for a separate; *in the field*; bit of kit. Something the handheld, roving nodes can latch onto as a primary data and power source; perhaps even a connection 'sharer' (10 cell-phones gather round...) I'm gonna have to look more into what Mr Taht is doing I think. I've got a couple of different arm plugs; old, new, and purchased with other's 'storage-to-cloud <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonido>' software enabled. And I'm dying for someone to complete an official 'freedom box' on one / any of these devices. (Thanks - by the way - for the instructions<http://freedomboxfoundation.org/code/>) I've got my own contributions coming with the stuff I've learned installing Friendica and Tor but I'm still testing, tweaking, learning. But what I *really* think will cause real change is a * Multi ethernet (2 min enables chains) for reliable/private inter-node physical mesh; laptop or local server connectivity, and uplink. * Multi- usb (for charging & data) - centerpiece for a cafe tabletop. * Moderately powerful wifi AP that is more than happy to mesh with its buddy on the other side of the square; or at least the next cafe table over. Dual antenna if possible with optional 'can-tennas'. * Powered by anything - AC generator; wall wart; solar panel; whatever. Build in a battery for bonus points. * A button to toggle 'stealth-mode<http://rlv.zcache.com/if_you_can_read_this_im_not_in_stealth_mode_tshirt-p235437578572711285envm8_400.jpg>' (no wireless) * A quickly removable microSD card for the occasional police raid - holds the swap files & databases - runs only as an dumb-access and charging point without a data card. * A decently fast web-style interface to... whatever... I'm biased towards distributed social networking with anonymous/one-use email as a backstop. Blogs and authenticated email are a good candidate as well but I find they are better at a larger scale; a larger or more permanent audience... and that pain point is solved in better ways than a glorified news-publishing antenna in a bar, cafe, or living room. This isn't a $100 plug computer/wall-wort - not yet anyway. Educated Guesstimate: $250-500 for a manufacturer to produce - if we keep the number of ports down and eliminate things like HDMI & audio.. I've had conversations with the sales team at Global Scale (Dreamplug<http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx>) and they claim that they can build a custom box like this<http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/p-55-openrd-ultimate.aspx> - but we'd have to provide the software to drive it and a few hundred+ committed orders. And I agree - it looks a LOT like a router. PS for pure 'sexy' I've always pictured this thing to be a smoky translucent grey plastic cube. Multi-color LED's shine from the interior indicating the usual: traffic, signal strength etc. 'Stealth' button is obvious; SD card slot is not. * Yes I'm hoping to make a living off related work to the Freedom box; I'll market and sell the devices (with shipping included) if the community allows me to do so. I really like that hide-in-plain-sight sticker idea. But, until we have prototype software packages and those conversations around licensing happen... My team is tiny and working multiple jobs. But, what resources I have are dedicated to the furthering the freedom box and all it's earth changing capability. Brian Drake Austin Texas 512.850-6326 http://www.linkedin.com/in/brndrakeecoit Schedule a Meeting: http://tungle.me/briandrake On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 12:36 PM, Ted Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, 2012-06-26 at 10:27 -0700, Jonathan Wilkes wrote: > > > > The activists are the ones sending data with a tor fingerprint. The > > Everybodies are the ones doing what they were already doing-- > > going to Facebook and Twitter. > > > Tor traffic is designed to be identical to HTTPS, and can even be > obfuscated further to resist DPI attacks. > > > There's no way out of this problem without educating people about > > privacy. For the average user, nearly everything they do on the web > > is supported by the hypothesis that the data they provide about > > themselves is worth more than the services provided to them. The > > users know this and react by misjudging the value of their data-- > > almost a direct quote from a Facebook member, "they know I click > > 'like' on pictures of animals with captions on them." And I don't > > think > > any of us can convince such users that doing so is dangerous without > > knowing more about what Facebook and Google do with their data > > (which is hidden), or making every user do a research project on > > privacy so that they have the skills to understand that Moglen's > > speeches aren't hyperbole. > > > At the same time, ordinary facebook users reposted a modern-day chain > letter when Facebook had it's IPO asserting that since facebook was now > "public" they had to post a status containing legalese to retain > "ownership" of their facebook content. > > So obviously some people care, but they care more about the network > Facebook has built that allows them to have interactions with people > they know, and they don't know what actions will make them more or less > private. > > > -- > Sent from Ubuntu > > _______________________________________________ > Freedombox-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss >
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