[Hackupy-discuss] Dovetail protester communications system

[Eleanor Saitta]

On 2012.01.10 02.51, Gladys Regalado wrote:
> This is interesting and timely for us here in the Philippines. Just
> yesterday the government ordered the country's two leading telephone
> companies
> <http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=766453&publicationSubCategoryId=63>
> (we fondly call telcos) to suspend mobile services
> <http://noelcolina.tumblr.com/post/15561266667/kill-switch-turned-on-today>
> in areas around the huge Black Nazarene procession. If they can use
> "terrorist threats" to shut down services on a religious procession,
> they can easily do this again on protest actions.

This is exactly the kind of situation in which a system like this is
both critically useful and very dangerous.  Deployed as is, something
like this is very easy to eavesdrop on and generally also leaves a lot
of potentially incriminating evidence on phones which can and will be
used against people when arrests start, and yet the system gives the
false impression of security.  A correctly built system provides the
same functionality for messaging but cannot be eavesdropped on and
ensures that messages are never stored in plaintext on the phone.  (And,
further, can use deniable message stores to ensure that some innocuous
messages can be shown to the authorities).

When designing for repressive environments as a target audience, the
team takes on a responsibility to get this stuff right.

E.

-- 
Ideas are my favorite toys.

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