Hi all, Partly in response to what some are calling "the Snowden Summer" - also including the trial and sentencing of Bradley Manning - I've been poking into these matters a bit more earnestly, including subscribing to a (terrific) email listserv - liberationtech - operated from Stanford and including a number of luminaries, including some well-known AoIR folk. I'm intrigued by the raft of suggestions for more secure alternatives to contemporary and widely popular email services, social media, etc., including, e.g.:
Welcome to Trsst: An Open and Secure Alternative to Twitter
Post your thoughts, share links, and follow other interesting people or web sites, using the web or your mobile or any software of your choice. All of your private posts to individuals or friends and family are securely encrypted so that even your hosting provider - or government - can't unlock them. All of your public posts are digitally signed so you can prove that no one - and no government - modified or censored your writings. You control your identity and your posts and can move them to another site or hosting provider at any time. Think of Trsst as an RSS reader (and writer) that works like Twitter but built for the open web. The public stuff stays public and search-indexable, and the private stuff is encrypted and secured. Only you will hold your keys, so your hosting provider can't sell you out.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1904431672/trsst-a-distributed-secure-bl... -platform-for-the-o/description
I call this to our collective attention as it raises a number of ethical, social, political - and, yea, lo, verily - research questions and possibilities. Beginning with: is anyone doing some close study on the migration(s) to and from such alternatives, possibly alternative practices that emerge as a result of the sense of having greater privacy and security, etc.? Seems like a terrific route to follow - if anyone has resources and helpful signposts, would appreciate your sharing, either onlist or offlist. Many thanks in advance - Charles Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication Director, Centre for Research on Media Innovations <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/research/center/media-innovations/> University of Oslo P.O. Box 1093 Blindern NO-0317 Oslo Norway email: charles.ess@media.uio.no