[wilhelmtux-discussion] Catering other NGO's ..? - great idea

Claude Almansi claude.almansi at bluewin.ch
Son Mar 16 09:00:31 CET 2003


Robert, 

I am very interested in the encryption solution, now that after April
1st, Swiss ISP's will have to save all messages for 6 months (and our
browsing tracks). 

>From the article by François Pillet at Largeur.com, I understodod they
wouldn't even be saving web e-mail, though. So I first thought of
changing to web e-mail addresses for my subscription to mailing lists
like Politech (www.politechbot.com) which is public anyway, and forward
all e-mails to Madame Metzler, saying I wished to avoid clogging my
ISP's storage with it, but didn't want to thwart the Dept of Hustice and
Police's desire to read it. I could accumulate something like a 100
e-mails to be sent thus on April 1st.

However, you r idea is much better in the long run. Fancy this
cocked-up, would-be privacy-encroaching law becoming an educational tool
about encryption and openware browsers...

AS to the NGO's, now that others from Wilhelm Tux are on the mailing
list of NGO platform for WSIS , I would rather leave THEM the task of
explaining there, because I am too incompetent technically (will you
tuxers answer my questions if I bungle tying encryption, please?)

Claude

-----Message d'origine-----
De : wilhelmtux-discussion-bounces at wilhelmtux.ch
[mailto:wilhelmtux-discussion-bounces at wilhelmtux.ch] De la part de
Robert Ribnitz
Envoyé : samedi 15 mars 2003 13:06
À : wilhelmtux-discussion at wilhelmtux.ch
Objet : [wilhelmtux-discussion] Catering other NGO's ..?


Hello,

as it was pointed out, by those visiting WSIS PreCons, we should
collaborate more with other NGO's. "Brot für Brüder" (Bread for All),
and other like-minded organisations should be our allies, because:

- Signing/Encrypting using GnuPG can provide a "secure" channel to voice
opinions (I am sure the NSA, and other bodies have ways to decrypt such
messages, but the avg. ISP does not). And given the amount of mail
circulating, and that even for the NSA "considerable" time (I think, in
the order of 10-20 minutes should be assumed), it is unlikely they pick
"your" mail.

Also, the Web of trust mechanism does not require you to trust anyone.
If you receive a key ultimately trusted by 3 people you dont know you'll
attach different "confidence" than if it is signed by your 3 closest
friends.

- Free Software can be "free of cost" (if those ocsts are taken over by
these NGO's). CD-Rs (and CDs) are "cheap to produce", easy to read. We
could envisage collaborating with them to produce a "Software
Environment" for the use in developing countries. As a first plan, this
should include:
              1) Software to browse the net
              2) Software to read/write mail, and support encryption
              3) A Database application
              4) Some Text Processor

Of course all of it should be Free, possibly using linux as a System
below. Ideally it would also feature an automatic installer, as you
cannot expect tohse people to be able to install it.

If we follow suit, our next steps should be:

- Identify potential organisations possibly interested
- Create documentation explaining the benefits of Free Software with
regards to the humanitarian field. This should be non-technical
documentation, poining out the benefits to freedom of expression,
independence of a few large companies, as well as the boost to local
economy.
- For each organisation, identify one or more contacts (technical)
- Create a mailing list to coordinate activities

What the people of gnuwin [1] have done is a good start, but
unfortunately we cannot depend on linux. Knoppix [2], based on debian
[3] is another good starting point.

Anyone interested in following up?

Robert

[1] http://gnuwin.epfl.ch
[2] http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/
[3] http://www.debian.org


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