[tahoe-dev] press release: LeastAuthority.com announces PRISM-Proof Backup

[Zooko Wilcox-OHearn]

Folks:

Here's our press release. I decided that I should call it
"PRISM-Proof" instead of "Spy-Proof", because it isn't going to help
much if you, personally, are the target of espionage or investigation.
But it could help you opt-out of indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance
of entire populations. “PRISM” is currently the word that people use
for that sort of surveillance.

(Of course, that's technically inaccurate—the actual “PRISM” program
itself is just one program among many. Other programs under other
names are operated by USA espionage agencies to surveil Americans and
others, and an even greater variety of programs are operated by
organizations in other countries to collect, store, and process all of
the communications and data of the residents of their countries and of
other countries. But, in the popular parlance, the word “PRISM” has
come to be short-hand for the whole idea of nation-state-level spies,
military, and police monitoring the communications, reading materials,
and location of everyone, all the time.)

Anyway, please share our press release (attached in HTML and PDF form,
and appended in its reStructuredText source form) with any groups of
like-minded people that you know. Now is the time when it is needed.
Let's push security, privacy, and decentralization forward now, while
we can.

Regards,

Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn
Founder, CEO, and Customer Support Rep
https://LeastAuthority.com
Freedom matters.

-------



============================================================
 LeastAuthority.com Announces A PRISM-Proof Storage Service
============================================================

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

`LeastAuthority.com`_ today announced “Simple Secure Storage Service
(S4)”, a backup service that encrypts your files to protect them from
the prying eyes of spies and criminals.

.. _LeastAuthority.com: https://LeastAuthority.com

“People deserve privacy and security in the digital data that make up
our daily lives.” said the company's founder and CEO, Zooko
Wilcox-O'Hearn. “As an individual or a business, you shouldn't have to
give up control over your data in order to get the benefits of cloud
storage.”

verifiable end-to-end security
------------------------------

The Simple Secure Storage Service offers *verifiable* end-to-end security.

It offers “end-to-end security” because all of the customer's data is
encrypted locally — on the customer's own personal computer — before
it is uploaded to the cloud. During its stay in the cloud, it cannot
be decrypted by LeastAuthority.com, nor by anyone else, without the
decryption key which is held only by the customer.

S4 offers “*verifiable* end-to-end security” because all of the source
code that makes up the Simple Secure Storage Service is published for
everyone to see. Not only is the source code publicly visible, but it
also comes with Free (Libre) and Open Source rights granted to the
public allowing anyone to inspect the source code, experiment on it,
alter it, and even to distribute their own version of it and to sell
commercial services.

Wilcox-O'Hearn says “If you rely on closed-source, proprietary
software, then you're just taking the vendor's word for it that it
actually provides the end-to-end security that they claim. As the
PRISM scandal shows, that claim is sometimes a lie.”

The web site of LeastAuthority.com proudly states “We can never see
your data, and you can always see our code.”.

trusted by experts
------------------

The Simple Secure Storage Service is built on a technology named
“Least-Authority File System (LAFS)”. LAFS has been studied and used
by computer scientists, hackers, Free and Open Source software
developers, activists, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency, and the U.S. National Security Agency.

The design has been published in a peer-reviewed scientific workshop:
*Wilcox-O'Hearn, Zooko, and Brian Warner. “Tahoe: the least-authority
filesystem.” Proceedings of the 4th ACM international workshop on
Storage security and survivability. ACM, 2008.*
http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/524.pdf

It has been cited in more than 50 scientific research papers, and has
received plaudits from the U.S. Comprehensive National Cybersecurity
Initiative, which stated: “Systems like Least-Authority File System
are making these methods immediately usable for securely and availably
storing files at rest; we propose that the methods be further
reviewed, written up, and strongly evangelized as best practices in
both government and industry.”

Dr. Richard Stallman, President of the Free Software Foundation
(https://fsf.org/) said “Free/Libre software is software that the
users control. If you use only free/libre software, you control your
local computing — but using the Internet raises other issues of
freedom and privacy, which many network services don't respect. The
Simple Secure Storage Service (S4) is an example of a network service
that does respect your freedom and privacy.”

Jacob Appelbaum, Tor project developer (https://www.torproject.org/)
and WikiLeaks volunteer (http://wikileaks.org/), said “LAFS's design
acknowledges the importance of verifiable end-to-end security through
cryptography, Free/Libre release of software and transparent
peer-reviewed system design.”

The LAFS software is already packaged in several widely-used operating
systems such as Debian GNU/Linux and Ubuntu.

https://LeastAuthority.com
-------------- next part --------------


============================================================
 LeastAuthority.com Announces A PRISM-Proof Storage Service
============================================================

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

`LeastAuthority.com`_ today announced “Simple Secure Storage Service (S4)”, a backup service that encrypts your files to protect them from the prying eyes of spies and criminals.

.. _LeastAuthority.com: https://LeastAuthority.com

“People deserve privacy and security in the digital data that make up our daily lives.” said the company's founder and CEO, Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn. “As an individual or a business, you shouldn't have to give up control over your data in order to get the benefits of cloud storage.”

verifiable end-to-end security
------------------------------

The Simple Secure Storage Service offers *verifiable* end-to-end security.

It offers “end-to-end security” because all of the customer's data is encrypted locally — on the customer's own personal computer — before it is uploaded to the cloud. During its stay in the cloud, it cannot be decrypted by LeastAuthority.com, nor by anyone else, without the decryption key which is held only by the customer.

S4 offers “*verifiable* end-to-end security” because all of the source code that makes up the Simple Secure Storage Service is published for everyone to see. Not only is the source code publicly visible, but it also comes with Free (Libre) and Open Source rights granted to the public allowing anyone to inspect the source code, experiment on it, alter it, and even to distribute their own version of it and to sell commercial services.

Wilcox-O'Hearn says “If you rely on closed-source, proprietary software, then you're just taking the vendor's word for it that it actually provides the end-to-end security that they claim. As the PRISM scandal shows, that claim is sometimes a lie.”

The web site of LeastAuthority.com proudly states “We can never see your data, and you can always see our code.”.

trusted by experts
------------------

The Simple Secure Storage Service is built on a technology named “Least-Authority File System (LAFS)”. LAFS has been studied and used by computer scientists, hackers, Free and Open Source software developers, activists, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the U.S. National Security Agency.

The design has been published in a peer-reviewed scientific workshop: *Wilcox-O'Hearn, Zooko, and Brian Warner. “Tahoe: the least-authority filesystem.” Proceedings of the 4th ACM international workshop on Storage security and survivability. ACM, 2008.* http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/524.pdf

It has been cited in more than 50 scientific research papers, and has received plaudits from the U.S. Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, which stated: “Systems like Least-Authority File System are making these methods immediately usable for securely and availably storing files at rest; we propose that the methods be further reviewed, written up, and strongly evangelized as best practices in both government and industry.”

Dr. Richard Stallman, President of the Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org/) said “Free/Libre software is software that the users control. If you use only free/libre software, you control your local computing — but using the Internet raises other issues of freedom and privacy, which many network services don't respect. The Simple Secure Storage Service (S4) is an example of a network service that does respect your freedom and privacy.”

Jacob Appelbaum, Tor project developer (https://www.torproject.org/) and WikiLeaks volunteer (http://wikileaks.org/), said “LAFS's design acknowledges the importance of verifiable end-to-end security through cryptography, Free/Libre release of software and transparent peer-reviewed system design.”

The LAFS software is already packaged in several widely-used operating systems such as Debian GNU/Linux and Ubuntu.

https://LeastAuthority.com
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