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Daylighting Plan 2018

Hi all!

Our team and mission are growing considerably, so I’d like to check in with everyone and talk about our goals for 2018. I just flew back from this year’s Chaos Communication Congress, a major hacker convention focused on issues of civil rights. I met a vast community of individuals working along the same lines as we are, made some excellent contacts among them, and am exuberant about what we can accomplish this year.

Last year we got a lot of development done in the Spring, and focused on recruitment in the Fall. That recruitment is paying off, and we’re hoping to double our staff over the next few months. We have already introduced newcomers Daniel McKay (starting as a journalist) and Ethan Riley (starting as a web developer), but have also talked to several others have shown excitement about joining the team.

An update on our existing projects:

  • Where are the Eyes (Camera Map) is approaching its last foreseeable major update

    • Milo met with the OpenStreetMap team in person in Leipzig, and OSM integration in the form we were hoping for is not a possibility

    • This simplifies our remaining work considerably, and frees up our time and resources to work on other areas

  • SpeakFree (Microphone Jammer) is now feature complete, ready for release on Android

    • UI improvements would be appreciated, but we have all the functionality implemented and running smoothly

    • Additional testing to establish the effectiveness of the jamming would be great

    • Apple has so far blocked the iOS version of SpeakFree on the grounds that it has insufficient functionality

  • Paillier (Homomorphic Cryptography Library)

    • Received one software update this past year to improve the API

    • 494 installations of latest version, 790 installs total (whoo!)

    • Added to the Paillier Cryptosystem Wikipedia article (not by us!) as a reference implementation in Ruby

    • Cited on Stack Overflow as the only explanation of how Paillier Zero-Knowledge-Proofs work (Congratulations Taylor!)

This year we are aiming to more than double our active projects. Here’s a summary of what’s been proposed:

  • A dead-man’s switch for journalists (name TBD)

    • Project Lead: Ethan Riley

  • TempestShield, an EM emissions jammer countering the NSA TEMPEST program

    • Project Lead: Taylor Dahlin?

      • We need to talk more, but you expressed some interest in this last I heard

  • SocMap, a framework for drawing maps of communities on social media, for further research into anonymity and propaganda

    • Project Lead: Milo Trujillo

  • A series of articles on the history of surveillance states and their cultural impact (name TBD)

    • Project Lead: Daniel McKay

    • The above is a starting point, and may expand to include more topics

  • A cypherpunk / cryptoanarchist zine on resisting the surveillance state (name TBD)

    • Project Lead: Not yet public, need to talk to them more

  • Techniques and software for identifying false-flag operations on social media

    • Project Lead: Not yet public, need to talk to them more

I am thrilled for this year, can’t wait to work with you all, and have much more to say soon.

-Milo

Posted 1/3/18

© 2018 Daylighting Society