[Freedombox-discuss] Freedombox threat model

[ian at churchkey.org]

On 06/28/2011 12:44 PM, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
> On 06/28/2011 12:23 PM, ian at churchkey.org wrote:
>> There is a scale, it goes from the worse case scenario where everyone
>> you interact with online knows everything else you do online, to the
>> best case scenario, where no one you interact with knows enough about
>> you to be sure that you are the same person from interaction to
>> interaction.
> 
> Sorry to keep harping on this, but i don't think it's being heard (or
> internalized), so i'm going to keep on:
>
> It is *not* a best case scenario where no one you interact with knows
> enough about you to be sure that you are the same person from
> interaction to interaction.
>

Hi Dan,

Thanks for the focus. You are  quite right. In my threat model the
adversaries are the invisible data collectors and centralizers, those
organizations between you and the people you are actively trying to
communicate with who gain information about you and your activities from
monitoring what you do and how you do it. My ideal case only applies to
these organizations, and not to the people with whom you actively
authenticate.

> The goal (as i understand it) is to provide global communication to
> these good folks so that they can establish networks of community and
> collaboration over otherwise impassable distances.

Agreed that this is one of the goals. We also want to help non-activist
citizens increase their privacy and security during routine network
usage. I think the best way to complete the first goal is through
focusing first on the second and building up a large infrastructure of
routinely functioning boxes that can begin aiding activists when times
of social stress come along. If we build boxes focused mainly on the
needs of activists, we will only tend to get them used by the activists
themselves, which marks people out for suspicion in the same way as only
encrypting the email you think is secret.

-Ian