Hackathon 1: Tor, Secure Audio/Video Recorder for Activists/Journalists, & More!

Greetings fellow cypherpunks,

I am excited to announce that our very first hackathon will be Saturday December 17th @ 2pm at Noisebridge!

For everyone planning on attending this event, please take this brief survey now (https://oasis.sandstorm.io/shared/Ml-alaidrb7kiO3hZeA0MRJFLLFsUncc6dVmGbzJCsy) to finalize the list of projects we will work on. Between now and Dec 17th I am reaching out to the people behind these projects to learn which contributions we can make that would be most meaningful and impactful! Survey: https://oasis.sandstorm.io/shared/Ml-alaidrb7kiO3hZeA0MRJFLLFsUncc6dVmGbzJCsy

For this hackathon, we'll be hacking on a combination of:

1. Tor sub-projects, as well as projects from the broader Tor ecosystem, such as:

• Snowflake (https://github.com/keroserene/snowflake) (for getting around censorship of Tor),

• Tor Metrics (https://metrics.torproject.org/) ("the primary place to learn interesting facts about the Tor network, the largest deployed anonymity network to date"; "Tor metrics are the ammunition that lets Tor and other security advocates argue for a more private and secure Internet from a position of data, rather than just dogma or perspective." - Bruce Schneier (June 1, 2016)),

• Tor launcher,

• OnionShare (https://onionshare.org/) (for securely sharing files over Tor), and

• Tails (https://tails.boum.org/) (for booting to a secure environment that routes all your traffic over Tor)

2. Adding Nexus 5X support for Tor's new secure mobile phone project: Mission Improbable (https://github.com/mikeperry-tor/mission-improbable)

3. An audio and video recording app (https://github.com/cpunkswritecode/projects/tree/master/project-ideas/encrypted-footage-recording#idea-encrypted--replicated-video--audio-recording-app) for journalists to record interviews with (then encrypt using a public key so the original audio can't be seized), and for activists to record police interactions and encrypt then store the video recording off-site (where it can't be seized even if the phone is).

• Note: these use cases came directly from activists and journalists themselves who need this now

• HUGE ("yuuuge") thanks to Sam Lanning for diving into this project right away, and for creating user flow mockups (https://github.com/cpunkswritecode/projects/tree/master/project-ideas/encrypted-footage-recording#potential-user-flows-on-first-launch) that we can immediately apply during this event!

4. EFF's CryptoBot Email (https://github.com/EFForg/cryptobot-email), an email bot that helps people learn how to use PGP. Users send CryptoBot a PGP-encrypted and signed email, and it responds telling them whether they signed and encrypted correctly, and offering advice.

5. Absence Alert (https://github.com/Hainish/absence-alert), also an EFF project, which is a FLOSS tool that will help vulnerable populations and activists get the word out to their friends and family in case they are arrested or detained. When you sign up for an account, you enter a message to be sent to a list of email addresses. From that moment forward, you'll have to continually (say, daily) disable that alert from being sent.

6. ...and whatever other privacy- and security-centric software you'd like to build or contribute to!

If you're interested in working on one of these projects, then between now and this event, please take this short survey (https://oasis.sandstorm.io/shared/Ml-alaidrb7kiO3hZeA0MRJFLLFsUncc6dVmGbzJCsy) so I know which project owners, activists, and journalists to work with to create a list of specific features for us to work on!

Survey: https://oasis.sandstorm.io/shared/Ml-alaidrb7kiO3hZeA0MRJFLLFsUncc6dVmGbzJCsy

Once several people have filled out the survey and I've talked to the people behind the projects, I'll send out the final list of people and projects we're getting direct guidance from... and hopefully share with you all an exciting surprise :-).

Lastly, thank you to the Tor contributors, EFF activists, and project maintainers that have helped put this event together, as well as the Cypherpunks Write Code members who voted on the initial project list to help focus our efforts on the projects we care about most.

See you on the 17th!

Schedule

2pm: Let the hacking begin! As people show up I'll help people find a project to work on (if they want help), and help pointing people to project maintainers who've attended to assist you.

8pm: Cake! Birthday party for coder and whistleblower Chelsea Manning, in honor of her 29th Birthday! Toast and cake @ 8.

10pm: That's a wrap... officially, at least. Feel free to stick around to hack hack hack some more!