- Jan 24, 2011
- 9,378
Concerned about Facebook, Google, and other companies that make billions brokering sensitive information, free-software champion Eben Moglen has unveiled a plan to populate the internet with tiny, low-cost boxes that are designed to preserve individuals' personal privacy.
The Freedom Box, as the chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center has christened it, would be no bigger than power adapters for electronic appliances. The inexpensive devices would be deployed in a peer-to-peer fashion in homes and offices to process email, voice-over-IP communications, and the sharing of pictures, among other things. The decentralized structure of the devices is in stark contrast to today's biggest internet providers, which offer the same services in exchange for users turning over some of their most trusted secrets.
Public enemy No. 1 is Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who in Moglen's eyes, “has done more harm to the human race than anybody else his age.”
“He has to remarkable extent succeeded with a very poor deal, namely 'I will give you free web-hosting and some PHP doodads and you get spying for free all the time,'” Moglen said during a meeting last year of the Internet Society's New York branch. “And it works.”
[....]
The Freedom Box website gives no timeline for delivery, but Moglen told The New York Times that he could build version 1.0 in one year if he could raise “slightly north of $500,000.” The cost of plug-in devices is about $99 right now, but Moglen said they'll eventually sell for about $29. They'll run on a low-power chip. “You plug it into the wall and forget about it,” he told the NYT.
More details - link
The Freedom Box, as the chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center has christened it, would be no bigger than power adapters for electronic appliances. The inexpensive devices would be deployed in a peer-to-peer fashion in homes and offices to process email, voice-over-IP communications, and the sharing of pictures, among other things. The decentralized structure of the devices is in stark contrast to today's biggest internet providers, which offer the same services in exchange for users turning over some of their most trusted secrets.
Public enemy No. 1 is Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who in Moglen's eyes, “has done more harm to the human race than anybody else his age.”
“He has to remarkable extent succeeded with a very poor deal, namely 'I will give you free web-hosting and some PHP doodads and you get spying for free all the time,'” Moglen said during a meeting last year of the Internet Society's New York branch. “And it works.”
[....]
The Freedom Box website gives no timeline for delivery, but Moglen told The New York Times that he could build version 1.0 in one year if he could raise “slightly north of $500,000.” The cost of plug-in devices is about $99 right now, but Moglen said they'll eventually sell for about $29. They'll run on a low-power chip. “You plug it into the wall and forget about it,” he told the NYT.
More details - link
