It was kind of @Blindsite2k’s idea. Here’s his quote: “How difficult would it be to create our own phone, a SAFEphone? Print out a case, stick in a speaker and mic in and then write voip and networking software to run via the SAFE network? Viola encrypted telephony chat with a “phone” hardware interface.”
Would it really be that easy?!
I’m really concerned about SAFE’s potential on mobile devices, since most people out there don’t have access to a desktop, only a smartphone, if anything. (and we all know Apple won’t have any part of it)
But what if we made a SAFEphone???
It could even be its own ISP as it beams connectivity to other SAFEphones and creates its own decentralized internet grids!!
But, there always a but. Government always require the SP provide “legal monitor port” which SAFEphone can not. So, this phone may not get a license to sell.
So don’t sell it. Give it away. Is linux sold? Open source the software, the blueprints for the hardware you can print. Sell the absolute non printable parts and sell the labour for assembly. It’s not illegal to assemble computer parts anymore than it’s illegal to assemble generic PC components and install Linux instead of Windows. Even open source the 3D printer you need to print the phone.
Moreover once you open source and decentralize something you open up all kinds of interesting economic possibilities. Say the phone was completely open source, just for the sake of argument one could print and produce every part themselves, or buy it cheap at the hardware store. So you can’t sell the phone. But you can sell interesting personalized phone cases. You can sell a disk with the instructions for the phone at a cheap cheap fee (which is more than 0 and the cost of the disk). You could charge for creating cool addons for the phone or doing maintainance or doing tutorials and workshops. So what if the phone is free to dirt cheap? If you go to the store and buy a phone they don’t make profit on you buying a phone or a laptop or any kind of major tech anyway. They make profit on you buying the addons! Be it tutorials, cases, screen protectors, warenties, various gadgets, gizmos and extensions, cables, whatever. That’s the stuff they make money on. Why would the SAFEphone be any different save for the fact that if the SAFEphone is open source to begin with stores and individuals would save on overhead to buy and produce them in the first place?
Also… authoroties dont like PGPhone. SAFEPhone^TM would not be a welcome technology.
I don’t think authorities are ready for the SAFEnetwork. THey probably think the layers of the clearnet/old internet, are not changeable and permanent. I imagine a lot of their listening infrastructure, surveillance and data mining is seen as a permanent future proof tool…
From the Hacker News’ text seems that the company’s flaw is that they got datas in central servers. So, though information are encrypted, it’s easy for police to investigate them
This is another reason to open source and decentralize the phone. You can’t seize a phone that can be 3D printed and downloaded from anywhere. Anonymous encrypted communication it seems is treated with the same threat level as loaded weapons. So when designing our encrypted internet phones we should consider how we would also distribute say a 3D printed gun without it getting confiscated or taken off the net. Does anyone remember the 3D printed gun that came out a few years ago? Well a decentralized PGP encrypted phone or SAFEPhone would be treated much the same so we need to think about how to decentralize it to much the same degree.
It is in cases like this that bring the Left and Right together. Freedom is freedom whether it’s freedom to bear arms, freedom to communicate, freedom to do business with whomever one wishes, freedom to worship however or whomever one wishes, or sexual freedom to have sex with (censorship really guys) whoever one wishes. Ultimately when we give people these freedoms, and make no mistake that is the freedom we are giving people, that no matter how they use it they will be treated equally harshly no matter what aspect of freedom they embrace.
I think it’d be a lot easier to stick to software initially.
Why make a SAFE phone when you can achieve a high level of privacy through SAFE apps, and have a huge user base?
If you want deeper level software, create modified Android firmware with SAFE baked in & privacy tweaks that is compatible with a number of phones (similar to cyanogenmod etc).
Then, if hardware is truly a limiting factor, seek to partner with existing phone manufacturers to create ‘sefe edition’ phones, but the history of niche phone projects, even with partnerships is a graveyard with no notable successes I can think of.
could be a little communication device to take with you and use if you don’t want to completely ditch communication possibilities/want to track your travel with a gps module but don’t want to have your expensive phone with you so a robust lightweight travel tracker/emergency phone
I agree software is the easiest way to go initially but we really do need to solve the hardware problem. Closed hardware poses real security vunerability issues as well as creates an economic and creativity bottleneck.
The SAFE webrtc example at safe://webrtc.safeexamples seems like the correct starting point. Using the SAFE network to set up the conversation and then bypassing SAFE for the actual conversation is a good compromise for 99% of users. A direct p2p connection seems necessary from a bandwidth/latency perspective for realtime audio and certainly realtime video communication.
With end to end encryption, a peer to peer conversation (bypassing SAFE) can only leak meta data that some IP address talked to some other IP address for x minutes at y time. That means that if one of your contacts is investigated by a state actor, then you become a person of interest to that state actor. That is obviously not ideal, but it’s not terrible either, given the need of a direct p2p connection for realtime latency, and given the small percentage of people who actually have state actor adversaries.
Those with higher than normal security concerns who are concerned about such metadata leakage can send each other mp3 files through the SAFE network to interact in a non-realtime way. This could be automated into a “CB Radio” style interface to give non-technical users a painless way to create and hear such audio files over the SAFE Network, but it wouldn’t be realtime. While not realtime, the latency should still be only a few seconds, so only a little more annoying than talking to somebody on the moon. This only requires somebody to write a SAFE Webapp to accomplish, and any smartphone that can access SAFE would be able to use it.
You’d think so but not really. In reality intelligence agencies will target anyone who might know anything about a person of interest. So you don’t actually have to have state adversaries, you just have to go grocery shopping with someone who has state adversaries, or living in the same neighbourhood, or go to the same church, etc etc, in order to be targeted. If they can ID you they can get your friends, neighbours, romantic interests, coworkers, everyone involved, and no I’m not exaggerating the problem here. This is why keeping information buttoned up tight is so important.
The perfect is the enemy of the good. Scary stories will stop you from shipping a solution that will be a huge security upgrade for 99% of the people, so you can dream about a solution for the remaining 1%.
The 1% know who they are and can have a non-realtime solution as I outlined. I would hate to see a laggy, network congesting solution imposed on the 99% for the sake of the 1%.
What I’m talking about isn’t “scary stories” but an actual reality. But I see your point. Better to make it more expensive for the government than not to come up with any solution at all. Still real time conversation should be possible on the SAFE network at some point so we can plug that 1% hole eventually.
One idea presented was that the relay nodes would be involved.
So once the connection is securely setup then the path could be
you <–> (your) relay nodes <------> (Their) relay nodes <–> them
Thus the conversation has the IP address striped and delays are minimal. Since everyone has multiple replay nodes then it should be possible to switch relay nodes so that no one node can be targeted to see the conversation pattern
I’m just having a hard time crying too much for that 1%, since a non-duplex cb-radio’ish solution gets them audio communication in a non-metadata leaking way. To expend resources to give them a better user experience seems non-optimal.
i love the modular open source phone 
so a robust lightweight travel tracker/emergency phone