-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 Hi Julian and Eugen, I'm Collin, I work on Martus training and outreach at the Human Rights Program at Benetech. I wanted to clarify a few concerns coming from the Forbes piece. You're right to question cloud-based security, but Martus is not a traditional cloud computing application--I'd hesitate to call it a cloud application at all, really. Martus is a java desktop application that encrypts information (stored as "bulletins," semi-structured rich documents) locally on the user's machine. The encryption keys (RSA public-private key pairs used to encrypt per-bulletin AES keys) stay on the user's computer, and in her 5-choose-2 secret-share backups. The "cloud" part comes from our server network. The Martus application replicates the ciphertext (through SSL) to a publicly-available server; the servers replicate to each other so that each has a full copy of all bulletins. Note that only ciphertext is ever stored on the servers, unless a user chooses to publish <https://martus.ceu.hu/servlet/SimpleSearch> some of her data through Martus--then the public data (and only the public data) is stored in plaintext on the servers. It's up to the user to decide whether to make any data public, and it's very easy to set Martus preferences such that data will always be private and stored in ciphertext. And there are never any keys stored out of the user's control. Martus users can share information securely through the network. Each bulletin's author can authorize other users to read a given bulletin by including the other user's key when the bulletin is saved. Again, the keypairs are created and stored locally, and there is no web portal for access to a Martus user's private bulletins. Also mentioned in the Forbes piece, Martus comes with some wipe features for the attacker-at-the-door use case. One is an account and data wipe, the other is account/data wipe plus uninstall. These are designed to be quick-erase features ("panic button" functionality, as it's been called), with time constraints precluding overwriting the data several times, and we're careful to explain this to users during trainings and support. Of course, by using her backed-up key, the user can retrieve her data whenever she needs to -- whether she's wiped the data, or had her computer lost or stolen. We first released the software in 2003, and it's in use by human rights monitors all over the world. It runs in ten languages, including Russian, Arabic, Thai, and a number of other non-latin-character languages. There are over 250,000 bulletins saved in the server network. Of course the software is available under the GPL, always has been, and always will be. Hope this helps. More info is available at martus.org <https://www.martus.org/>, and I'm happy to answer any questions. Cheers, Collin - -- Collin Sullivan Human Rights Program Associate Benetech Human Rights Program Email: collin.s@benetech.org Skype: collin.w.sullivan GPG: 0x78657D4D https://www.benetech.org - Technology Serving Humanity https://www.martus.org - Martus Human Rights Bulletin System https://www.hrdag.org - Human Rights Data Analysis Group Julian Oliver:

..on Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 10:50:04AM +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote:

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On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 09:41:05PM -0800, Yosem Companys wrote:

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http://www.forbes.com/sites/skollworldforum/2012/11/12/disruption-at-the-int...

...

Look at Benetechbs development of Martus, a human rights database, based in the cloud with highly secure encryption and eraser technology ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

If you can cartwheel through the lasers while wearing the appropriate 3d printed face it's a snap. Just don't look down: Cloud computing is high-altitude stuff..

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