Secure VoIP calling, free software, and the right to privacy

Secure calling VOIP using ZRTP operates much like ssh in concept. The keys for communication are generated locally, rather than using an external certificate authority, hence preventing weak or poisoned certificates which SRTP potentially allows. Fingerprint session signatures are shown and cached much like the ssh host fingerprints, so that one can determine if there is a man in the middle decrypting at one end and encrypting to another.

What we have developed does not interfere with lawful police investigations, since the end point can still be compromised with physical access, presumably executed as part of a lawful and judicially supervised court order. But it does prevent arbitrary and mass spying on what people say, which must come to an end before all other freedoms are lost. With additional technologies including tls secured SIP and anonymizing connection proxies, it is possible to also reduce associative information signal that intelligence so desperately wishes to mine, and that is a goal of later phases of this project.

Since it is free software, anyone can download and use it. Since it is offered as a library, it can be used to produce applications, like Twinkle, that can perform secure communications by design, rather than as an afterthought. This technology is here to stay. There are enough people who have set it up now around the world, including some I personally showed. The source is available and mirrored worldwide. Binaries have been build and now distributed in Debian. Much of that was all done very rapidly and early on at the start of the month, the rest while I was in Maturin speaking at the IVth International Free Knowledge Conference, which I will write about next week, to deliberately make sure it was immediately usable and widely disseminated.

This technology we are bringing to free VOIP software was of course first proposed, in a proprietary form, and as an external proxy known as zfone, by Phil Zimmerman. Much of the work in developing secure calling in the GNU RTP Stack was done by people like Werner Dittman and Federico Pouzols, and with lots of Michel De Boer from Twinkle. Whether you are a head of state wishing to communicate in private, a union organizer within a company, or simply talking to your family and friends, you have a basic right and expectation of privacy. We intend to do everything in our power to help further that goal.

read more?

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) Resources is a compilation of VoIP trends, providers and the latest news in this new wave of technology. There is special emphasis on the VoIP providers in the Philippines. To advertise at VoIP Resources, contact me here.

Subscribe in a reader

• DS3 Prices and T1 quotes
• Business VoIP New York
• Toll Free Voicemail
• Internet phone service
• best mobile phones in the UK
• Business Phone Systems
• Business Phone System
• Call Center Software Solution
• voip phone systems