4 Apr
2020
4 Apr
'20
10:10 p.m.
The ideal solution is to make Jitsi Meet great! Until then:
Here's Mozilla's advice on how to make your Zoom gatherings more private:
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/tips-make-your-zoom-gatherings-more-…
Privacy issues with Zoom, some have which have just been fixed (see below):
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/what-you-should-know-about-online-too…
Tracking the name of the currently-active window on your desktop was a
significant one, and Zoom just removed it due to the outcry:
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115000538083-Attendee-attention-t…
Another just-removed privacy-unfriendly feature: Zoom's "Login with
Facebook" feature used FB's SDK, which was recording info about a user's
device and sending it to FB --
https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/28/21197967/zoom-ios-app-code-tracking-face…
Zoom is responding to the pressure, which is great! A huge privacy-related
outcry was unthinkable even 3 years ago, but now they're common -- and have
impact. Let's keep the pressure up!
I wish that those NoiseBridge folks that care less for
Privacy would
rethink their position, because, IMHO, NoiseBridge is giving a bad
example.
We've urged people to move over, but institutional momentum is a tricky
thing 😕; hard to get many people to change their behavior all at once,
which is why Facebook still have over 2 billion users even though almost
everyone distrusts it.
--Steve
On Sat, Apr 4, 2020 at 6:13 PM Steve Phillips <steve(a)tryingtobeawesome.com>
wrote:
Hey Daniel,
1. Why is *NoiseBridge using Slack (Corporate),* isn't privacy a concern?
I believe the historical reason is that, circa 2015, the people running
Noisebridge's infrastructure were overburdened and people wanted something
that would reliably be up.
I and James have set up RocketChat at https://chat.noisebridge.info/ but
it hasn't caught on. #networkeffects
RocketChat, Riot, and others didn't exist back when Noisebridge started
using Slack.
Private conversations are on Slack, and so yes, it'd be great to use
something end-to-end encrypted and open source instead.
> 2. Why is tomorrow's (2020/04/05) *NoiseBridge CryptoParty* being held
> via *Zoom*, when the party itself is about *privacy*?
> 3. Why not use their open source alternatives?
It is a public event. The way I think about this is: privacy violations
occur when information you want to be private to certain individuals is
visible to people outside of that group.
Zoom v. others was discussed internally and I encouraged Kinnard to use
Zoom for this public event because Jitsi Meet doesn't work very well at all
if you either have more than a few people joining, or even 1 person has a
slow internet connection, which is especially common in the global south.
More good is being done for the world by making the event accessible to
all :-).
If we want people to use FLOSS software then we need to (1) make it work
well and (2) financially support the people and organizations making that
software so they have the resources they need to make it work well!
--Steve Phillips
Cypherpunk and privacy activist since 2012