GNU/consensus/Secure Messaging Scoreboard

Motivation

The Electronic Frontier Foundation published a Secure Messaging Scoreboard as the first phase of a promising campaign about secure and usable cryptography. That is a good first step, but in the wrong direction: it fails to take into account NSA blanket surveillance programs such as PRISM, as if the plethora of new spying information could cover the scandal of NSA corporate partners. Moreover, it provides a fake sense of legitimacy to proprietary software that is audited independently by, wait for it: "an internal security team", while unticking most of the free software for not having received any formal security audit (that should be an incentive for people to sponsor one for their favorite software). When confronted with this, the EFF tries to minimize the situation--they have their reasons, explained at What Makes a Good Security Audit, and yes counting on extraordinaire individuals to do the right thing should be enough (unless they move on, etc.).

But the most important critique, that requires an alternate scoreboard, is that it does not build on the existing community work, and puts everyone and everything in the same bag, flattening the landscape of messaging solutions. Such flattening can be seen as whitewashing, and give false impressions. Our approach will therefore focus on building upon existing community work, and focusing on threat models to discriminate of messaging solutions. Hopefully our work will prove useful to the EFF at some point.

We'll be using two sources for our scoreboard:

1. the in-depth analysis of Secushare Capability Comparison.
2. the rich and community-maintained catalogue of alternative solutions at PRISM ⚡ Break.

In order to keep things simple, we consider two categories: #Compromised and #Broken:

• COMPROMISED messaging systems are proprietary and "open" solutions without oversight on the software code, the system's operation, or presenting fatal flaws in their architecture. This category is a simple list of solutions that should be avoided because they won't deliver what they promise. If we have time and interest, we can describe why it is so more precisely, although most of them are documented elsewhere.
• BROKEN messaging systems are free software solutions that can be fixed to provide an acceptable level of privacy, and those are compared for the kind of threats they can thwart, and the ones they cannot. This can be useful for users who want to defend against specific types of threats, and for developers to choose what direction to take depending on the objectives set forth among their communities.
• OK messaging systems are free software solutions that are designed with privacy in mind, but also with thwarting global surveillance as a primary objective. That means any two interlocutors using these systems could not be matched by an all-seeing-eye watching both sides of the communication, and doing black magic counting packets and monitoring flows.

Criteria

One important thing you need to remember at all times: this is not a Chinese restaurant order, where you pick numbers and receive food. Those criteria are there to help you discriminate tools according to your needs, but your wants will get the last supper if you let them. Choose convenience or the cake with the cherry on top at your own risk. In any case, remember that NSA-style threat is very difficult to defend against, and in most cases impossible, unless you have elite hacker skills, lots of patience, infinite discretion, you have no shadow, do not take planes, do not use banks and credit cards, do not use phones, and your image does not reflect in mirrors. In other terms: be realist when considering what you're using and for which purpose, and be wary of anything that promises bullet-proof security: you are not bullet-proof when they fail.

Risk

What are you exposing yourself to. Hiding from your spouse is probably different from surviving for the next 24 hours, unless your spouse is seriously abusive--many are around the world.

Goodwill

Not all people or entities are made equal. Some amend, most don't. And then, you have Google, a whole complex octopus by itself, providing both good and evil (don't).

Technology

Various technologies trigger different risks. Some may cause inconvenience, other may be unavailable at your site, yet others could send you to your grave.

Risks range from "Ssssh, it's a surprise" up to "Incoming drone!", and obviously, nothing will help you if you're trying to be the next Chelsea Manning and you're leaking NSA documents over What's App. Technology can't cure stupidity.

Goodwill can be summarized as "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." The Good is making efforts to protect you--among them, some are even ensuring they cannot be neither Bad or Ugly, technically. The Bad is making efforts to keep you as a customer--including spying on you or selling your data if that allows them to provide "a better service". The Ugly is ratting at any opportunity--they're the enemy, just keep them away from your loved ones.

Technology is a great debate. There's obviously broken tech, there's somewhat naïve tech that wants to be strong, and then, there's great tech. The latter often comes with a terrible bug: it does only a number of things very well, and probably not much else. That's because to make great technology, a lot of work is required. It's not just putting a nice button here, and a responsive design there. There are shitloads of complex issues that may be solved, and some that won't. As for security, technology is mostly a matter of trade-offs.

Here we go...

Which apps and tools actually keep your messages safe?

In the face of widespread Internet surveillance, we need a secure and practical means of talking to each other from our phones and computers. Many companies offer “secure messaging” products—but are these systems actually secure? No, they are not.

Compromised

There is one simple criterion for considering a compromised messaging system: it's made by a company that it depends on, and you don't know how it works. Security by obscurity is as good as you can't find the switch. Then, you're caught naked in the bright light.

TODO Put a list

Broken

TODO Put a table: name(link), version, criteria...

OK

Woohoo! All is not bleak on Planet Earth! They are some people interested in addressing our electronic communications issues. Some of them actually think straight, long term, and are willing to find solutions that will last and actually improve our human condition beyond sharing cat pictures. No, there's nothing there yet. When we have a widely deployed 1.0, let's do that.