[GNU/consensus] [SH] Re: GNU Consensus Manifesto -- Comments

[Michael Rogers]

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On 09/01/13 13:50, hellekin (GNU Consensus) wrote:
> Michael, welcome! Can you make a short presentation of what problem
> you're trying to solve with Briar? (You can use the [SH] topic
> prefix.)

Sure! Thanks for the welcome, Hellekin.

Briar's goal is to enable people to build their own secure
communication networks that can operate with or without internet
access, by using their existing trust relationships and devices.

The people I'm interested in enabling are activists, journalists and
civil society groups who are vulnerable to surveillance and censorship
- - but the project may turn out to be useful for other situations too,
eg disaster response.

Briar uses a store-and-forward architecture that's conceptually closer
to Usenet or FidoNet than the web. Communication between participating
devices uses a secure transport protocol called BTP, which can operate
over the internet, Bluetooth, WiFi, SD cards attached to carrier
pigeons, or whatever. On top of BTP there's a publish-subscribe
messaging protocol called BMP, which is used to implement discussion
groups and private messages.

As I mentioned earlier, identity is handled differently in Briar than
in most social networking systems. There isn't a one-to-one mapping
between identities and people. Instead, people use nicknames with
local scope to refer to their contacts. For example, I may call my
mother "Mum", whereas her friend may call her "Jen" and use "Mum" to
refer to her own mother.

When a person posts a message to a discussion group, she may sign it
with a pseudonym or remain anonymous. A person may create any number
of pseudonyms, and may choose not to reveal (even to her contacts)
which pseudonyms she uses.

This looseness is deliberate - it's meant not to restrict the wide
range of ways people use identity (and anonymity) in their social lives.

I'm not sure how much overlap there is between Briar's goals and those
of the other projects represented here. Actually I'm not sure which
other projects are represented here. :-) If it turns out that Briar is
an outlier, I don't want to prevent consensus between projects that
are more compatible... but perhaps that's an issue we should confront
if/when it arises. I think it might be too early to start looking for
consensus yet - let's find out who we are and what we're working on
first, and then look for common ground.

Cheers,
Michael

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