What data is a pod hoster able to intercept?

[Raffael Vogler]

Hi!

What data is pod hoster able to intercept?

I didn't find anything on the security measures preventing a pod server from reading my messages for example.

Regards

Raffael

[Raphael Sofaer]

Hi Raffael,

Diaspora does not protect you from the administrator of your pod.  We've discussed implementing features that would make something like that possible, but it would be a lot of development work and it has to come after we have a more mature federation protocol.  It's very difficult to make a website which protects users from the website administrators.  

Cheers,

Raphael

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[Raffael Vogler]

Hi Raphael,

I can totally see that this would be extensive in effort! But wouldn't be as well the most important feature in the same time?

Personally, I am growing sick of facebook for several reasons - I don't want one corporation to know every detail about my life and my families and my friends life. Just as well the application development itself is unsatisfieng as it always becomes when the primary incentive of a company is making investors and share holders happy. 

So what I and millions of other people around the world are waiting for is a new SN. Decentralization is a key concept here for two reasons:

1) Decentralization prevents data monopoly

2) Decentralization makes the system independant of a single group of people who might become bored of running the servers or suddenly have funny business ideas

Let's be honest - for most of the people (me included) the purpose of a SN is to lubricate the communication and make it more organic. You can see what your friends are doing, you can share stupid pictures of your latest party, flirt around - all that stuff. I would not want somebody to host my "collected works of boozing and stupidity" in the form of pictures and messages. The thought is awkward (I am exaggerating actually, my facebook account is very clean). What keeps black hats from running a pod and capitalizing on it?

Two "solutions":

1) "Simply, don't store or send around stupid stuff.": but as I said, this IS the biggest incentive of having a SN for you and your friends. And if it is not party-pics then you are maybe writing to a friend about problems you have ...

2) "run your own pod!": wouldn't this inevitably restrict the audience to tech-savvy nerds who are also wealthy enough to run a server? 

Also, if the server part is made SO simple that the threshold for doing is very low, then a lot of actually good people offering servers will lack competence and be vulnerable to hackers compromising the system.

It seems like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. 

My worries with the NSA in context of SNs is not because of individual concearns but b/c of systemic ones. It is important to make the surveillance as expensive to NSA & friends as possible. If they want your data only serious encryption will keep them from it. diaspora* makes it even easier because they just have to compromise some server or call up the admin offering a few bucks.

Somehow the data (profile, pics, messages, chat, status updates, ...) has to leave users computer already encrypted. The meta-data still is exposed if not further measures are applied (TOR f.x.). The decryption is only possible by people holding the necessary keys. 

Regards

Raffael

[Raphael Sofaer]

Hi Raffael,

All those reasons are good, and if there were a dozen developers working full time on Diaspora, I would say that client-side encryption was going to happen in the foreseeable future.  Diaspora moves forward every day from the many volunteers that put their time and sweat into it, but we can't do everything at once.

Best,

Raphael