Software to Support Human Rights

An anonymous reader writes "Some software rollouts have lives hanging in the balance. Human rights workers in massacre zones from El Salvador to Kosovo face prying eyes peering into their address books and logs, who follow up with bullets and poison gas. One project, Martus, takes these hostile environments into account: a leak can get whole families killed. They use encryption, distributed backup, and other techniques designed to survive the ultimate corrosive environment: vindictive armies in countrysides in the throes of war. The source code is open, to allow meaningful contributions from anyone willing to help. These people bet their lives on open source and private data. The sponsor organization, Benetech in Silicon Valley, funds projects that arm global rights workers, and people under siege, with communications tools that counterbalance the overwhelming force used to exterminate everything "Free"."

Comments

open source dangerous!

[SegaVegas]

The source code is open, to allow meaningful contributions from anyone,
[b]including people who do not mean well[b]
watch out!

Re:open source dangerous!

[cperciva]

While I suspect the parent post was intended as humour, it raises a good point: How carefully do people look over contributed code before including it?

Especially in the case of projects like this, I can see a significant danger of someone deliberately introducing a "mistake" which could completely compromise the system's security. With off-by-one errors routinely being found many years after they were initially introduced, I suspect that such an attempt could easily be successful.

With all the new US laws

[miyako]

it might not be long untill we need this or something like it to protect us from our own homland security KGB.

Possession

[xixax]

And soon enough even the possession of these kinds of tools will be enough to put people in jail. After all, they were probably using them to swap MP3s or kiddie-pr0n or even plan terrorist acts.

Strong crypto is only a part of the answer (whatever that answer may be).

Xix.

Re:Possession

[arvindn]

Freenet is an internet infrastructure for completely anonymous communication (its been mentioned on /. before). I imagine it would be an excellent tool for human rights workers. Note that freenet is not tailored for specific content or applications, and so anyone can benefit from it.

If most people (or atleast a majority of people) started using freenet, it would change the internet in a fundamental way: it would be no longer possible to outlaw freenet. I don't see this happening anytime soon, because most people still enjoy freedom of speech. But if there were to arise a global dictator, technology has given us a way to fight back.

Still Not Good

[Anonymous Coward]

The evil army will just beat your key out of you. They aren't just going to try a few codes and walk off; they are going to break out the hoses and the electric generators. They may not be able to break the encryption, but they sure as hell can break you.

Don't expext the thugs to play fair

[de la mettrie]

I'm sure this is, technically, good cryptography software. However, keep in mind that this software is explicitly designed to hide information from governmental law enforcement authorities. Therefore

it is just as useful to criminals as to human rights workers. This is not, of course, a problem per se, but

using this as a pretext, governments will simply ban possession and usage of this software. If they need any pretext, that is - in the kind of country this software is designed to be used, "human rights worker" is just another word for criminal.

This kind of software is useful to preserve personal privacy in a civilized nation. In a thugocracy, however, the police will just confiscate your computer, or you will be extradited/tortured/shot for being in possession of this software.