> If anything, I think this should be a wakeup call for those of us who have the capability to change things. I'm not talking about lobbying or raising attention to the issue, but the technical challenges of designing a network that is immune to all forms of surveillance.
I don't agree with this as the first step. The first step is decentralising the control of people's identities.
This doesn't necessarily mean brand new protocols or ways of doing things. All that would be necessary as a first step would be a movement to set up a number of independent non-profits to provide basic Internet services; email, media sharing, chat, and Facebook-style "wall" systems being possibly the minimal viable subset.
Each non-profit could cover a defined geographical area; a small city or county, etc. This would allow them to target marketing and fund-raising locally, and prevent the problem of there being too much choice for consumers within this new ecosystem (possibly eventually ending up with a subset of organisations having the majority of the users).
The non-profits could link in with each other easily through an OpenID Connect based network, so that you can follow someone's feeds just by entering your email address, even if they're on another organisation's system. Users who don't have an account on this network could still follow users on the network, using email as a fallback delivery method.
The best bit? The technology to do this is mostly based on off-the-shelf systems and standards. Very little that's entirely new has to be written, nobody has to change the way they use the Internet, and all of a sudden, it'd be much harder for a Government agency to coerce every single organisation into giving up keys, passwords, or automated user data access.
Once Governments have eventually figured it out, hopefully the movement will be in full swing and the people participating in it will be able to effectively develop and market a properly decentralised, cryptographic system that doesn't depend on a network of authoritative nodes, if that becomes necessary and generally useful.
I don't agree with this as the first step. The first step is decentralising the control of people's identities.
This doesn't necessarily mean brand new protocols or ways of doing things. All that would be necessary as a first step would be a movement to set up a number of independent non-profits to provide basic Internet services; email, media sharing, chat, and Facebook-style "wall" systems being possibly the minimal viable subset.
Each non-profit could cover a defined geographical area; a small city or county, etc. This would allow them to target marketing and fund-raising locally, and prevent the problem of there being too much choice for consumers within this new ecosystem (possibly eventually ending up with a subset of organisations having the majority of the users).
The non-profits could link in with each other easily through an OpenID Connect based network, so that you can follow someone's feeds just by entering your email address, even if they're on another organisation's system. Users who don't have an account on this network could still follow users on the network, using email as a fallback delivery method.
The best bit? The technology to do this is mostly based on off-the-shelf systems and standards. Very little that's entirely new has to be written, nobody has to change the way they use the Internet, and all of a sudden, it'd be much harder for a Government agency to coerce every single organisation into giving up keys, passwords, or automated user data access.
Once Governments have eventually figured it out, hopefully the movement will be in full swing and the people participating in it will be able to effectively develop and market a properly decentralised, cryptographic system that doesn't depend on a network of authoritative nodes, if that becomes necessary and generally useful.