[Hackupy-discuss] Dovetail protester communications system

[Shannon Lee]

I would be happier if the stated goal was to create a system that simply
focused on functionality, and didn't make claims about its security.  Its
the false expectation of security that is harmful.

--S

On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 5:44 AM, Eleanor Saitta <ella at dymaxion.org> wrote:

> On 2012.01.10 00.52, Joshua Marker wrote:
> > A a friend-of-a-friend contacted  me about a project she calls
> > 'dovetail'. It's a peer-to-peer message transfer system designed to
> > route messages without reliance on cell phone networks/etc - eg, when
> > cities or governments shut them down to prevent protesters
> > communicating. It uses adhoc wifi and bluetooth to flip messages
> > around.
> >
> > Good idea, I was surprised it didn't exist. They're raising money
> > with a kickstarter to get it done - they're serious people, I think
> > UN/etc NGO level stuff, but the idea of needing that much money to
> > write this seemed absurd to me. It sounded like something Hackupy
> > would do in a few evenings. I told her so. She's interested in
> > talking to someone at NB/Hackupy/anyone about it. Anyone interested?
>
> Actually, getting something like this right is *very* hard, because of
> hardware and OS limitations.  There are also a lot of serious security
> implications with systems like this; Meredith Patterson, Travis
> Goodspeed, and I took another similar system called Fluid Nexus apart
> last fall, and it was really ugly.  People without a security background
> building tools like this *will* get people killed.  The Briar project
> (http://briar.sourceforge.net) is an attempt to build a system like this
> done correctly, with the right attention to issues around security,
> scalability, etc.
>
> I'm planning on reaching out to the Dovetail folks shortly to see if
> they're interested in working with Briar, because I think that
> duplication of effort here is a poor use of community resources at best.
>  I think their estimate of $30k to get a system running across multiple
> OS platforms in a production ready state is very low, unless all of the
> developers are working for free, and that if they're going to do it
> right, it's going to take much longer than they think.
>
> E.
>
> --
> Ideas are my favorite toys.
>
>
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>


-- 
Shannon Lee
(503) 539-3700

"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science."
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