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?"
There used to be PGPhone, but development on it stalled.
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!
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.
Yeah, because " law enforcement" never does anything to people who aren't breaking the law.
-bugg
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.
How about:
/dev/audio | lame | gpg --encrypt | nc my.friend 1337
cat
Your friend can do:
nc -l -p 1337 | gpg --decrypt | mpg123
This works great... the power of UNIX at work. You don't even have to write any software yourself.
My other car is first.
Here's a page with a list of Open Source VOIP applications, both clients and servers.
OpenVPN requires one end of the tunnel to be directly addressable, so its use remains limited by that fact.
The Skype model, which seems substantially like the Gnutella network, might be one way of building such a system. Heck, why couldn't it be piggy-backed on the existing Gnutella network?
The voice client could connect to the Gnutella network with a hash of the users userID (or some such). Want to find Bob_Robertson? A request for the SHA1 hash of "Bob_Robertson" goes out, my system sees the request and responds, etc.
The only real problem is lag. I don't know how long it might be between someone trying to find me and my system finally receiving the request.
Oh well. The simple fact is that Security Is Inconvenient.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics