Slashdot Mirror
A Skype Equivalent Without "Big Brother"?
Slimy Devil asks: "News.com has recently reported on the FBI seeking veto power over PC software. This makes me wonder: is there a safe, provably secure VOIP-like technology out there? The recent buyout of Skype probably means that the supposed encryption will be of little value, if you are of the opinion that the FBI or other law enforcement agencies shouldn't be able to tap in on demand. So, for my question to the Slashdot community: is there a viable alternative that is free of such concerns?"
And probably the next to the last.
There used to be PGPhone, but development on it stalled.
voice over jabber. +ssl.
Isn't this exactly what the Open Source community is all about?
Someone contact sourceforge, someone else start coding, and someone send their SO to the store for Bawls, meth, and mountain dew!
In a week, we'll have the more spasticly coded, but free VoIP software EVAR!!
Pretty Pictures!
This is again a sign of government paranoia. Bad guys will use some obscure/less known software for communication while the government will spend taxpayers' money on useless monitoring of those taxpayers...
I don't understand why the FBI is creating so much negative press for itself when it doesn't need to. They already have the power to perform "roving wiretaps" on internet connections, and any form of VoIP over said connections, unless it's heavily encrypted, is easy meat. This campaign for control is redundant.
The problem with PGP Phone is that it won't traverse NAT routers.
However, I understand that now there is other software for that. For example, Open VPN.
Any other suggestions?
Is it any wonder why technology companies are fleeing the US? Why would a company release a VOIP solution from the US when they could relocate their company to another country and export the software via the internet with out fears of government persecution from the US. Encryption, communications, stem cells, etc... The US is headed down a bad road where the only people with money are the Lawyers.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
This site follows Skype's work with encryption.
http://www.pgpvoip.com/
Zimmerman's work with encrypting VOIP is with this client:
http://divmod.org/projects/shtoom
Forget about Skype ever being secure. It already has an encryption layer but since they've made "arrangements" with law enforcement, it cannot be assumed to give you total privacy.
If you want truly secure VOIP, follow Shtoom's progress. It's as close as it gets right now.
Will you spineless, willfully ignorant morons take your excellent constitution and stuff it collectively up your politician's and bureaucrat's asses. You all have no right to celebrate Thanksgiving in the current political climate - when everything you purportedly hold sacred is being murdered from within. "We the People" have become "we the impotent".
You may say - "sort out your own country before criticising", You see the thing is - we have adopted major sections of US law all so we can have a "Fucked Trade Agreement". The difference is we have no recourse to affect the situation.
So now they may be able to wiretap your VoIP conversations. Not a big deal. They can only wiretap if they have a warrant or if they suspect you of being a terrorist. I'm sure that while they were at it, they would also wiretap your traditional phone, your ISP, and would be looking through your mail. The catch is, is that they have to have a reason to wiretap you in the first place.
So unless you're committing crimes and are coordinating more crimes using VoIP, these agreements and rules typically mean nothing to the masses. If you're mostly law abiding, you shouldn't have any reason to worry.
The only 100% secure voice-to-voice transmission is the one that's made in person, and even then...
Frink: Nice try floyd, but you were designed for scrubbing, and scrubbing is what you shall do.
Recently the speak freely API was used as the basis of the IRLP amateur radio linking project. IRLP needs strong authentication (but not crypto) and speakfreely + gnupg provides it.
Dunno if it does decent crypto on its own or not, but even if not... wrap the connection in a openvpn or ipsec tunnel, and be done with it. Of course, the "phone over broadband" commercial service is out of the question at that point.
What I want to know, is if we all hook up our asterisk servers together, and allow them to place local unmetered calls, could we get decent coverage of the US (or even the world) ?
Could we even allow people without computers/internet to call us locally, and route their calls around for them, for free? Would be a neat way to stick it to the phone companies.
(Even better yet, a cell phone plan that allows unlimited calls within the same service...)
First, you have to ask your self what capability does the NSA have for monitoring outside of the USA? After you answer that, then realize that the GWB (via his un-patriot act) gave that capability to the FBI.
From there, you next need to ask if you were the FBI, what type of data are you going to be looking for? After you answer that, then you have to realize that current stuff will not work.
Instead, a better way is to create a p2p connection using an audio stream with an embedded (regular|encrypted) phone message. This would hide the signal in the noise of all the streaming audio running around. At this time, that does not exist.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
the patriot act gave the DOJ to ability to monitor anything when they invoke a terrorism charge. We are not talking just Al Qaeda. they could declare that somebody is a risk to do a columbine, a mall attack, etc. and then have that as a reason for a warrent. Keep in mind, that if DOJ invokes the term terrorism with the warrent, very little evidence is required. If anything is discovered, that can be used against the victom. For all purpose, we now have the same system as the old USSR.
Everybody has every reason to fear big brother, as this will allow for anything to be used against you.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
As somebody else has posted, this will just send people packing to Europe and India. The administration's attack on sex sites has already just done that: All those companies are simply moving out. Like it or not, that is a billion-dollar industry that is taking its tax money and jobs elsewhere. Giving the FBI that kind of power will just make people leave faster -- and bring us one more step closer to being a police state.
Anyone who voted anything but Libertarian, shut up and go sit on the sidelines.
_ _
You've already demonstrated that you want an intrusive, activist government, you have no room to complain now. You ASKED FOR THIS.
_________________________________________________
A vote against a Libertarian candidate is
a vote to abolish the Constitution itself.
http://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/background/index. html
Everyone should take a moment and read the story of the PGP creator. Strong crypto is the only thing that will keep people from reading your packets, and the only thing that will guarantee you have the ABILITY - forget having the right - to have privacy in your communications.
This wasn't always the case.
People listening isn't a problem. You should ASSUME they are listening. Run crypto point to point if you want to be private.
..don't panic
Here in The Netherlands (a "free" country) we have seen Intelligence Agencies getting into organisations which were political opponents of the government. Being part of the leaders of political parties. Did any of those parties do anything wrong other then just being on the wrong side?
Unless secret services are being controlled, they operate on their boundaries or just outside. But the problem is : who can control a secret organisation?
Here's a page with a list of Open Source VOIP applications, both clients and servers.
This is exactly what PgpFone was supposed to provide. AFAIK, PgpFone was written by Phil Zimmerman, and the project was hosted at MIT. As you can see, not much happening here. However, the rights apparently went to NAI, but I don't think they currently offer the product.
I was able to find this link to pgpi.org where it looks like you can find old source and binaries for PgpFone. I don't know what the copyright status of these are.
In the face of the Patriot Act,etc, it would be great if someone started up, and modernized this project again.
Someone in your country is voting to "go along with the USA." If that person is an elected official, then your complaint is YOUR fault. If that person is NOT an elected official, it's still YOUR fault, because you're slacking off planning a much-needed revolution.
Maybe it's just that the majority of your country wants to go along with a policy that you're uncomfortable with. Maybe it's barely a majority at all, say, 51%. Maybe you're powerless to stop it. Gee, that sounds familiar...
Dunno if it does decent crypto on its own or not, but even if not... wrap the connection in a openvpn or ipsec tunnel, and be done with it.
While this may prevent evesdropping of the call stream it does not prevent interception and recording of the call. Asterisk has had call interception and recording as built-in features for a long time and this is all the FBI requires. The FBI serves the provider (owner of the Asterisk box) with a warrant and the provider turns on call interception and recording for that extension. Instant VoIP wire tap even if you encrypt the network connection.
What I want to know, is if we all hook up our asterisk servers together, and allow them to place local unmetered calls, could we get decent coverage of the US (or even the world) ?
Yes. In fact it has already been done. See Free World Dialup, DUNDi and others.
Could we even allow people without computers/internet to call us locally, and route their calls around for them, for free?
You must be a VoIP newb. Of course you could do this. But as everyone else has found out the infrastructure costs you money. Your high-speed internet connection incurs a monthly charge as does the local PSTN connection. Then there are the costs of your server equipment and the electricity to run it and I haven't even mentioned your labor costs to maintain it all. So, you must charge in order to recover your costs and if you are recovering your costs, then why not get a little profit as well. And so is born, the likes of Skype, Vonage, SpeakEasy, Gizmo, VoiceGlo, and the THOUSANDS of other VoIP service providers that have popped up in the past year or two.
Would be a neat way to stick it to the phone companies.
Here's a clue, you can't "stick it to the phone companies" unless you own all of the wires between the communicating nodes. Who do you think owns the wires for all of the internet connections of the world? Except for a few cable companies, the world's internet traffic all travels on wires and fibre optic cables that belong to the phone companies. Today, it is completely impossible for you to avoid paying the phone companies somewhere along the line. Regardless of whether you are using VoIP, Asterisk or Skype. And when the phone companies decide that they want you to pay more than just internet line fees, they will effect regulation to further control the market, as is happening right now with things like E911 and wiretap laws for VoIP. Expect VoIP regulation and taxes within the next 10 years. At that point VoIP from a provider besides the traditional phones companies will actual cost more than it will from the likes of SBC and Verizon.
Asterisk is only a PBX that utilizes VoIP. Neither Asterisk nor VoIP can replace today's telephone infrastructure and industry. Cellular systems, likely using VoIP within the providers backhaul network, are the near term future of mainstream telephony. Cellular poses a much greater threat to present day phone companies because they can, at least potentially, bypass the phone companies' wires. That's why the phone companies are buying up and crushing competing cellular providers so, in the end, you'll have to get your cellular service from the phone company as well.
Great sig!
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
>>the patriot act gave the DOJ to ability to monitor anything when they invoke a terrorism charge.
Except it didn't. Most of the PA just codified existing practice as Slate's four part analysis piece explains.
What parts were more radical (215) have been struck down as unconstitutional as can be seen on the EFF's (join EFF now!! the sky is falling!!) Patriot Act webpage.
One might want to notice that the PA renewal substantially weakened govt power while demanding new accountability.
Don't let the facts stop a good bout of paranoia. It is more fun to pretend that life is a black and white cyberpunk airport thriller novel than to recognize shades of gray. It makes us feel more important.
Attention slashbots: your next move is the slippery slope. In which you argue that searches approved by judges aren't bad but searches not approved are and therefore we need to freak out about about warranted searches because they might lead to unwarranted searches.
"Is it any wonder why technology companies are fleeing the US?"
And here I though it was because everything's cheaper outside the US, and companies want to maximize profit. Darn! Blew that hypothesis out of the water. Stupid FBI.
"The US is headed down a bad road where the only people with money are the Lawyers."
Lawyers without clients? Patent it!
I don't think there is a problem with finding the other person, without using a network. Just have the other person send an email to you, and use their IP address, which is in the email header. That's what we did with free software called Dial something or something Dial, several years ago. It used software that displayed ads.
The OpenVPN home page says that OpenVPN can:
I don't see any limitation about needing one end of the tunnel to be directly addressable, but that makes sense. Otherwise how would they see each other?
UltraVNC has a module called a repeater which I understand also traverses NATs.
http://www.cryptophone.de/index.html
Not exactly VoIP, but it works over landline or GSM network, and it's actual phone to phone encryption, not just phone to tower. They have several devices/software available, and full source code.
this may meet your needs
http://www.gizmoproject.com/
Has anyone tried SIP based P2P VoIP application DAMAKA? Visit http://www.damaka.com/ and download this great product. It offers much better security and audio quality than Skype and any other product in its category.
Free PC-2-PC calling, Conference calling, 5 lines, caller id, call waiting, music on hold, Free Voicemail, IM (with spell check, auto save and search capability), IM conference, SIP connectivity to FWD, End to End Secure, non-intrusive, direct peering, Text-to-speach, RSS reader, audio player and much more... check it out @ http://www.damaka.com/
If you like or dislike it, feel free to send me an email @ sippedoutyoda@gmail.com.
sippedoutyoda
"much potential I see... may the force be with damaka"
damaka id: sippedoutyoda
Speak Freely?
Speakfreely Speex Codec.
Old Home Page?
Current Home Page
"The actual windows product hasn't been updated in a long time..." I don't understand that. The Sourceforge page says "(2004-02-04 16:00)".
Does anyone have experience with Speak Freely?
Speak Freely End of Life Announcement posted by its original creator.
However, many of the issues mentioned don't exist now. It is possible to buy router/firewalls for as little as $3 after rebate now (did that yesterday) that can be programmed to deliver specific ports to specific computers behind a NAT.
Clearly, more developers are needed.
Wouldn't it be easier to create a front end that would encrypt the voice stream and pass it off to any voip system. Both parties would need to be running the software, but could use any service provider.
LIVE, Love, die
If you dont approve of being monitored by our government you must be evil.
Therefore, if any encrypted traffic is detected from you that doesnt have the proper backdoor, you will be assumed guilty and sent directly to jail.
Note: This is sarcasm. However, i can see us heading in that direction since they cant stop every little encryption project out there. Just make its very use illegal, and they wont have to worry about finding out content.
---- Booth was a patriot ----