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Current mass-market communications technology is very insecure. User adoption rates for encryption of emails, instant messages, and phone calls are for all intents nil. Even the use of ad-free, cookie-free, untraceable internet browsing is on the order of 5%, despite its extreme ease. Legal protection for the privacy of such communications is scarcely any better. For example, the NSA wiretapped and obtained incriminating evidence about a high-ranking Democratic congresswoman who was perhaps uncoincidentally in line for the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee. Authority for roaming, warrantless wiretaps has been claimed by presidents from both political parties. The dominant usage of technology in America has destroyed the expectation of privacy that people used to enjoy effortlessly. Perhaps we can convince people to take matters into their own hands. | | | Recent telecommunication innovators like Skype avoid the cellular network altogether. Skype users may make encrypted calls (only to other Skype users) using 256 bit AES encryption, which, while not impenetrable, would certainly thwart all but highly motivated eavesdroppers and would prevent wholesale data mining. However, Skype itself is not open source, and it is widely believed that some parties (governments, at a minimum) are given "backdoor" snoop access. A number of open source VoIP suites exist, but none of them seem to feature PC-to-landline/cellular calls without an additional account with some form of interconnection service provider that charges a few pennies per call. | |
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< | Incumbent telecommunications carriers are unwilling to allow access to their network for free, unlike the rest of the internet. To the extent that they allow Skype and Google Voice to exist, they may view them as interesting experiments in marketing and distribution, much in the manner that they experiment with giving customers "night and weekend" minutes or a "circle of five" or other such nonsensical demand metering masquerading as bandwith pricing. I would be surprised if Ebay viewed Skype as long-term strategic fit--perhaps one of the four companies that control 82% of the phone network might be interested in buying it in the future. The only real solution is to abandon the closed networks of the telecommunications monopolists entirely. This would require adoption of an addressing system more like instant messenger than a phone directory, but if the reward were free or near-free phone calls, people might be convinced. Cell phones would fuse with tablet PCs, and access the internet over municipal wifi. | >
> | Well, indeed. You have
to get to that phone using the closed network to which the phone is
attached, and that network provider's interconnection charge is
inescapable. But because switching services and wholesale bandwidth
are extremely competitive in the global market, the price charged by
the VoIP? supplier will be only infinitesimally greater than the
monopoly interconnection fee at the other end. So even the consumer,
using Skype's service to reach landlines and cellphones, gets within
three significant digits the same price that the smartest business
VoIP? purchaser can get. A free software user running Asterisk in her
laptop and having an account with Junction Networks or some other
well-run VoIP? supplier would get a global best price to within four
significant digits on every call.
Incumbent telecommunications carriers are unwilling to allow access to their network for free, unlike the rest of the internet. To the extent that they allow Skype and Google Voice to exist, they may view them as interesting experiments in marketing and distribution, much in the manner that they experiment with giving customers "night and weekend" minutes or a "circle of five" or other such nonsensical demand metering masquerading as bandwith pricing.
No, they pay their way
as interconnecting foreign telephone companies do. Skype passes that
cost along.
I would be surprised if Ebay viewed Skype as long-term strategic fit--perhaps one of the four companies that control 82% of the phone network might be interested in buying it in the future. The only real solution is to abandon the closed networks of the telecommunications monopolists entirely. This would require adoption of an addressing system more like instant messenger than a phone directory, but if the reward were free or near-free phone calls, people might be convinced. Cell phones would fuse with tablet PCs, and access the internet over municipal wifi. | | | The use of open networks to transmit voice data would make encryption nearly mandatory, since otherwise anyone situated between two callers could simply sniff packets and eavesdrop entire conversations. Due to open network architecture, there are a lot of people so situated, whereas on closed phone company networks, the only person between you and the person you are calling is Ma Bell. People are not generally convinced of the need conceal their conversations from her, which is just as well, because as long as you're on her network, the only way to do so is to buy $1500 phones, and to insist that your banks, doctors, and phone sex operators all use them.
Because of open-source VOIP suites and other free software, these problems don't really exist for a small, educated, and technologically proficient subset of society. When those people speak to each other, they do so with a degree of privacy that has not existed in at least a century. Everyone else has to pay $50 to $75 a month for a portable phone featuring less privacy by the year. It is no solution to condemn those people as stupid or lazy for their consumer choices. Marketing need not be exclusively for the purpose of making people want to buy things that they don't need. Social attitudes about communication are malleable, and if a physical device can be constructed to wean people off of the incumbent telecommunications monopolists, it would offer a value proposition that people of all levels of sophistication would appreciate. | |
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> | Agreed. Hence my
proposal for
the Freedom Box,
which would put a privacy-engineered
telecommunications server inside everyone's house for a price less
than half that of the world's cheapest
cellphone.. | | | \ No newline at end of file |
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