[Infowarrior] - Freedom Box gets off the ground

[Richard Forno]

Freedom Box gets off the ground

https://lwn.net/Articles/429230/

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While providing "safe social networking" is one of the aims of the Freedom Box, it is only part of the picture. The project wants to protect users' data as well as their communications, including internet traffic, email, and voice. Beyond that, Freedom Box is specifically targeted at routing around ISPs' restrictions on the types of traffic they will carry, as well as attempts by governments to do similar traffic restrictions. In short, the goals of the Freedom Box live up to Moglen's original vision, as spelled out in his February 2010 talk at the New York branch of the Internet Society, as well as those outlined in a more recent talk at FOSDEM 2011: it is geared towards restoring users' freedoms.

Those freedoms are best guarded by keeping our data safe within the walls of our homes, because there are typically more legal protections there than there are when storing data on some company's servers. We have already seen that companies will often bow to governmental pressure in ways that would be more difficult to orchestrate when the data is spread out across the net. To that end, Freedom Box also plans to provide ways to securely back up encrypted data on friends' and neighbors' servers. In addition, it will provide ways for those under repressive regimes to anonymously publish information, such that those regimes will find it difficult to stop or track down the publishers. If the FreedomBox is going to handle all of these kinds of things, obviously the security of the device itself is paramount, but it is also targeted at protecting other systems in the home that live "behind" the Freedom Box.

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https://lwn.net/Articles/429230/