NYCMinutes04/25/2012

Jay, Bryan, Pablo, Eliza, Tyrone, Sean

Jay:

Recap of the event at the Whitney with Applebaum and Binney. Well over 1000 people attended.
NSA has taps on data network entry points in the US. Binney, former NSA employee, verified this.

Bryan:

There is a new Applebaum interview that is interesting.
Riseup server seizure in NYC. They run activist mailing lists and other tech operations. The server that was seized was hosted by Riseup for a European group.
Issue was they were running Mixmaster, roughly equivalent for Tor for email. The server was origin for a bomb threat at a Pennsylvanian university.
Riseup event brings interesting physical server security issue. How do you maintain control over the data?
Jacob Applebaum's Twitter account was subpoenaed with a gag order. Every IP address that was logged would be sent to the FBI, and the Twitter user was not notified. Also subpoena was invoked on Icelandic parliamentary member. Twitter fought the gag order in court and won, and notified users they were subpoenaed. This likely happens
Suggestion to continuously send out data saying there is no subpoena.
3.6GHz license for Free Network Foundation. Kilometer-wide range. This is used largely for backhaul, not peer-to-peer spectrum. Software defined radios, so relatively inexpensively.
New Open Hardware Association group founded in New York City.
May Day next Tuesday.
Bryan leaving mid-May, returning July for HOPE.

Tyrone:

Pablo:

Berlin biennial topic is Art and Privacy.
Received a $3000 grant from school for documentation. Mesh networking brochure could be a product of the documentation. Promote transparency in the subject.
Trade School willing to start a weekly series in privacy and technology and activism. Pablo is starting the Spanish-speaking Trade School for the rest of the summer.

Bryan:

Mesh networking is a complicated topic. There are existing cryptography YouTube videos aimed for middle school kids, can you aim to create your documentation for middle school kids?

Sean:

WSJ Data Transparency Weekend hackathon. Worked on Open Secure Telephony with the Guardian Project.

Bryan:

FreedomBox: Eben Moglen impassioned plea to create a freedom box at an Internet conference. Courts have interpreted that if you are using cloud services such as Dropbox, then you are giving up some of your privacy. If you are using a FreedomBox, then you are showing that you have an expectation of privacy, and perhaps this will hold up legally.
Bank vault analogy, does this
Run your own services off the FreedomBox.
Rooter.is open hardware project. FCC issues for regulation. Subcomponents are impossible to source, not on the free network.

Pablo:

Isaac and James Vasille are in touch. How can we work together with the FreedomBox?

Sean:

FreedomBox UI is under development. Bug assigned to Sean to implement wifi functionality on the front-end.

Tyrone:

Bryan:

Ubiquity board, essentially a router, with swappable radio cards. Three sockets for radios. More open than routers, no longer in production. $90 and $15 for cards.
Is the FreedomNode going to be a device with a sticker on it, or will it be any hardware component that can fulfill the functions of the FreedomNode. One Laptop Per Child was an example of one hardware platform for the concept.
PGP keys very important to use by kernel source code maintainers so there is security in the platforms everything is built upon.

Jay:

Eliza:

We should focus the meeting, it's a very broad topic.
Action by FNF at May Day? FreedomTower setup? Polling and voting mechanisms?
Someone should be responsible if the security of the equipment is at jeopardy. Bikes are useful for escape.
Flyering material for May Day. Directions on how to use it and what the FNF does.

Bryan:

Pablo:

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