

Demand change, transparency and accountability - Cozy as viable alternative - DaddyDuck
http://blog.cozycloud.cc/mantra/2013/06/12/PRISM-call-change-transparency-alternatives/

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ds9
According to the FAQ:

" With Cozy, applications run in the user's personal cloud where he keeps
ownership of his/her data. This simple paradigm shift changes many things.

" * personal data are aggregated in a trusted environment the user have full
control on, * apps can collaborate around data, cross apps integration is made
simple delivering a frictionless user experience, * there is no need to
communicate personal data to a third party because the processing is made
within the user's cloud."

Maybe I'm misunderstanding this, but it seems it runs on a Cozy server instead
of the user's own hardware. Therefore it is subject to being secretly copied
by the government (of whichever country the server is in), at any time. Is
this not correct?

If that is really how it works, I don't see how "the user have full control"
as they claim.

Also the third point, "there is no need to communicate personal data to a
third party because the processing is made within the user's cloud" is silly
because as soon as you send your data to Cozy's servers you have then sent it
to a _second_ party and you then no longer have control.

The only real advantage I see here is that the business model (according to
the claims ) is not based on the company data-mining the customers. That's a
step above the likes of Facebook but it hardly compares to "control of your
data".

~~~
DaddyDuck
Hi ds9,

you might be interested in visiting this link: cozy.io

Disclaimer, I am from Cozy and wrote the article and the FAQ.

You can self host Cozy on your own hardware or any hosting provider you trust.
You are in no way tied to us.

Keep in mind we are relatively young project, in the future we will make
possible to move easily your instance from one provider to another.

~~~
ds9
Thanks that makes it more interesting! Will read more.

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gesman
We need open source technology that auto-encrypts data before releasing it to
third party service (such as emails, chats, skypes, etc...). Although this
will piss off not only NSA but all service providers as well - as they get
used to like knowing your interests and subsequently spamming you.

------
zer0gravity
This is very close to my dream of a user centered modern web enabled platform.
I really like the fact that it promotes sharing by requiring a github account.

Definitely will try it!

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mtgx
I'd like to see every single chat app, mail service, or video-chat app being
launched from now on offer OTR, ZRTP and PGP, or some other novelty security
technology (like Bitmessage), as competitive advantages over the "big ones"
like Gmail and Skype. And they need to make them as painless to use as
possible, and enabled by default where's the case.

~~~
muyuu
And allowing payment through crypto-currency.

~~~
gasull
Bitcoin isn't enough because it isn't anonymous. We'll have to wait for
Zerocoin.

~~~
muyuu
It's enough if you know how to use it properly.

~~~
gasull
Even if you use a Bitcoin laundry service my understanding is that it's clear
that your bitcoins went into such laundry. There is no deniability.

Actually not even Zerocoin is enough, because it doesn't offer deniability
either, but it's closer to what is needed.

Of course Bitcoin is still much better than our corrupt banking system, but
for other reasons, not so much for financial privacy.

~~~
muyuu
You don't need any laundry service to have deniability.

I can pay you from an account I've never used before to pay anyone else and
there is no way for you to find out who I am.

In the general case, even if you do things shoddily, it would still take a
massive operation so you can short-list me among the possible sources of the
payment.

Lately BTC's pseudonimity is being downplayed for social engineering reasons
(some of the visible faces in the BTC community have decided so). Supposedly
being very anonymous is very hard work now, something for experts. But in
reality it's the other way around, making yourself easy to track requires very
specific usage patterns. By default almost nobody gets tracked unless they
want to.

------
hexo
With such a low contrast, this looks like it's not intended to be read at all.
So didn't read.

