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Announcing The Dark Mail Alliance – Founded by Silent Circle and Lavabit

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Re: Announcing The Dark Mail Alliance – Founded by Silent Circle and Lavabit

#71

Post by kenko »

sandstrom wrote: post #57
natural219 wrote: post #45

I appreciate the cheekiness of calling it the "Dark Mail Alliance", but from a purely PR perspective, it would make sense to reconsider your name if you are taking the position that encrypted end-to-end email is not solely an interest of those pursuing shady or deviant activities.

I totally agree, I really think you should change the name. Some suggestions: - Locke Mail [from John Locke] - Mill Mail [from John Stuart Mill] - Hobbes Mail - Liberty Mail

Hobbes Mail makes no sense; either you're in the condition of the war of all against all (no thanks) or you've surrendered everything to a single sovereign (no thanks).

Re: Announcing The Dark Mail Alliance – Founded by Silent Circle and Lavabit

#72

Post by scintill76 »

Tepix wrote: post #14

From the talk that just finished at Inboxlove, it appears they will use XMPP for transport, some JSON and encrypted cloud storage. You receive a message via XMPP that an email is waiting for you on the cloud storage (similar to MMS). This is also a good solution for the spam problem, I think. They have a working prototype, a whitepaper is forthcoming and the community is welcome to improve the new standard.

Sounds like the cloud storage could help solve the large attachment problem. Cool.

Re: Announcing The Dark Mail Alliance – Founded by Silent Circle and Lavabit

#73

Post by jcc80 »

zokier wrote: post #56

To everyone complaining about the name: it is just the name of the advocacy/development group. You don't call SMTP mail 'IETF mail', nor should you call call whatever they come up "dark mail alliance mail".

"Well, Bob, as your viewers may know, 'Smith Mail' came out of a group that calls themselves 'The Dark Mail Alliance'. This is a group of anti-government hackers that..."

Re: Announcing The Dark Mail Alliance – Founded by Silent Circle and Lavabit

#74

Post by peatmoss »

redblacktree wrote: post #31
cottonseed wrote: post #2

Terrible name.

I submit, "Envelope." It's a good analogy, since now we're essentially sending all of our email on postcards.

I'd posit that the French already have our backs. A few years ago, the official body that governs standardized French attempted to wean French-speaking people from the borrowed English terminology. Et voila! "Courriel," a portmanteau of courrier and electronique was pilfered from the Quebecois for the benefit of francophones everywhere. Sadly however, if Google Translate is any indicator, then "courriel" never made the leap from official to commonplace.

Now, the electronic part is a given. But what about the courier part? Here's what Wikipedia says:

> Couriers are distinguished from ordinary mail services by features such as speed, security, tracking, signature, specialization and individualization of express services, and swift delivery times, which are optional for most everyday mail services. As a premium service, couriers are usually more expensive than standard mail services, and their use is typically restricted to packages where one or more of these features are considered important enough to warrant the cost.

Speed, security, individualization, premium? Those all sound like adjectives that I like!

Let's do the L'Académie française a solid. Let's adopt Courriel and apply the label only to our fast, secure, individualized, premium electronic communiques.

Re: Announcing The Dark Mail Alliance – Founded by Silent Circle and Lavabit

#75

Post by jlgreco »

natural219 wrote: post #45

I appreciate the cheekiness of calling it the "Dark Mail Alliance", but from a purely PR perspective, it would make sense to reconsider your name if you are taking the position that encrypted end-to-end email is not solely an interest of those pursuing shady or deviant activities.

If the system they create is excessively vulnerable to political pressure, then it would be better to find that out sooner rather than later. If bad PR threatens their ability to operate, then perhaps they should not be operating.

Re: Announcing The Dark Mail Alliance – Founded by Silent Circle and Lavabit

#76

Post by networked »

kenko wrote: post #71
sandstrom wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree, I really think you should change the name. Some suggestions: - Locke Mail [from John Locke] - Mill Mail [from John Stuart Mill] - Hobbes Mail - Liberty Mail

Hobbes Mail makes no sense; either you're in the condition of the war of all against all (no thanks) or you've surrendered everything to a single sovereign (no thanks).

>or you've surrendered everything to a single sovereign

Well, Bruce Schneier has argued that that's what security is becoming today: feudal (https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/12/feudal_sec.ht...). If you wanted to, you could instead call most if not all currently existing email services "Hobbes mail".

Re: Announcing The Dark Mail Alliance – Founded by Silent Circle and Lavabit

#77

Post by hnha »

nwh wrote: post #39
tocomment wrote: post #11

What's wrong with bitmessage?

Bitmessage doesn't scale, it's POW doesn't solve any spam problems, and it's largely insecure. There's been quite a lot of public discussion about just how hilariously insecure it is.

links please

Re: Announcing The Dark Mail Alliance – Founded by Silent Circle and Lavabit

#78

Post by banachtarski »

tocomment wrote: post #44
nwh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitmessage doesn't scale, it's POW doesn't solve any spam problems, and it's largely insecure. There's been quite a lot of public discussion about just how hilariously insecure it is.

I didn't know that. Is anyone working on an improved version? It seems like a great idea in principle.

It's not a great idea in principle at all. It should have been obvious that it wouldn't scale from the beginning by design.

Re: Announcing The Dark Mail Alliance – Founded by Silent Circle and Lavabit

#79

Post by dmerrick »

netgineer wrote: post #46
r0muald wrote: post #7

"Stay connected with the Dark Mail Alliance [Enter your e-mail] "

And over an unencrypted channel no less, www.darkmail.info doesn't have ssl, so the NSA will know if you are interested.

It is not a crime to be interested in something like this.

Re: Announcing The Dark Mail Alliance – Founded by Silent Circle and Lavabit

#80

Post by sirsar »

nwh wrote: post #50
tocomment wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know that. Is anyone working on an improved version? It seems like a great idea in principle.

There's room for improvement, but there's a lot of core issues that just can't be flushed out. The concept of the POW is to stop spam, as all addresses are inevitably public, it doesn't really work though, as spammers typically have access to botnets which can spam all day long. Normal users just have to wait minutes to send a message. The scale issue is a weird one, they plan to split the network into different "str…

>The concept of the POW is to stop spam

Your other points are good, but this one is wrong. Bitmessage is currently bundled with a client because that makes adoption easier, but ultimately, Bitmessage is first and foremost a protocol. POW increases the cost of flooding attacks on the network. Clients like Thunderbird (it was easier for me to integrate Bitmessage with Thunderbird than my regular email provider) stop spam.

The scaling is a rather hard problem, since, for anonymity, "everyone gets everything." If you have any ideas about how to scale a network like that, OR have any comparable methods for hindering traffic analysis, you should publicize them.

The timing attack mitigation via sleeps /is/ a rather ineffective substitute for constant-time decryption.

In summary:

1. POW is a non-issue, and part of the design at least the way you've put it.

2. Scaling is inevitable given the tradeoffs being made, unless you have a better idea, for which I will pay money

3. Timing attacks are a temporary problem, but they can certainly be "flushed out."

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