Privly Update

[Sean McGregor]

Privly People,

It has been far too long since the last update. We have been busy
getting the system ready and have a backlog of updates for you:

**Privly Project Development Status**
The Privly Project's core architecture is built and is far more
powerful than the proof-of-concept we had during the Kickstarter
campaign. However, as a completely new way of providing privacy on the
web [0,1], we are appropriately skeptical of the security of our
current implementation. Time and critical evaluation have yet to
validate the security of the system. Backers wanting an account right
now can email for one [2], but the system will warn you that it is not
yet secure [0].

We will soon email Alpha users their accounts, but we will warn you
against giving us any private information. These accounts will be
provided strictly so that you can help steer future developments.

**Privly Project Developments**
This summer Google funded two students to work on mobile versions for
the Privly Project. They developed two open source mobile applications
[3,4] that allow for posting encrypted content to mobile apps as well
as reading encrypted content discovered by the Privly app. Thank you
Google for supporting Privly!

A major update to the Firefox extension is in the pipeline that will
bring it near the level of security found in the Chrome and Opera
extensions. All are presently usable, but we don't recommend
non-developers use them before unaffiliated developers evaluate their
security [0].

We have updated websites [5,6], including a priv.ly website that is
now built as a hub for current and future hosts of Privly-type
content.

We also have information for you regarding Privly's security glyphs
[7] and functionality we removed because it would not provide
sufficient security from content hosts [8].

**New In-Kind Contributions**
This summer Rackspace began offering the Privly Foundation
complementary hosting. A big thank you to Rackspace for their
contribution! The privlyalpha.org and dev.privly.org servers are both
hosted by Rackspace. The priv.ly and privly.org websites will continue
to be hosted by the always amazing OSUOSL. We will be marketing the
Privly Project from the priv.ly website, but all Privly Foundation
user account hosting will take place at privlyalpha.org.

**Privly's Response to Governments**
"Don't Trust Us" has always been a goal we strive for with the Privly
Project. The virtue of this philosophy became apparent this summer.
The Privly Foundation has subsequently published a philosophy for our
responses to government requests [9]. At this time, Privly's only
contact with governments has been regarding our non-profit
organization filing.

**Non-Profit Filing**
In the United States, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), determines
whether you are a non-profit entity. We are presently answering IRS
questions regarding the education and development activities of the
Privly Foundation and hope to have an update regarding this before
year end.

**Techno-Activism Third Mondays**
The Privly Foundation has hosted a series of meetups in the United
States in coordination with the Open Internet Tools Project [10]. If
you are in Portland, Oregon on a Third Monday, come and meet us in
person! Guest speakers have included leaders from at-risk citizen
journalism, systems security, and technological non-profits. These
events are hosted worldwide-- look to see if there is one in your area
[11]!

**Privly Foundation Board**
Privly Foundation Board Meeting Minutes from the last meeting can be
found here [12].

**More Information?**
More is happening than we can possibly put into an email. Feel free to
contact me by email [2] or ping me on irc [13].

Thank you for your continued support and patience. While things are
taking longer than we had hoped, our group of volunteers has produced
something that will flexibly evolve with the web while providing much
needed privacy [14].

Best,
Sean McGregor

[0] http://www.privly.org/content/responsible-publishing-privacy-software
[1] http://programming.oreilly.com/2013/07/securing-user-content-in-the-javascriptable-web.html
[2] pri...@privly.org
[3] https://github.com/privly/privly-ios
[4] https://github.com/privly/privly-android
[5] priv.ly
[6] privlyalpha.org
[7] http://www.privly.org/content/privly-projects-glyph
[8] http://www.privly.org/content/chopping-block
[9] http://www.privly.org/content/privly-foundations-response-governments
[10] https://openitp.org/
[11] https://wiki.openitp.org/doku.php?id=events:techno-activism_3rd_mondays
[12] http://www.privly.org/content/privly-foundation-minutes-13-09-24
[13] smcgregor on irc.freenode.net
[14] http://www.privly.org/content/introducing-privly-applications
[15] If you have the extension installed, you will see this content
repeated again at the bottom of this email.
https://privlyalpha.org/apps/PlainPost/show?privlyApp=PlainPost&privlyInject1=true&random_token=db356b7f73&privlyDataURL=https%3A%2F%2Fprivlyalpha.org%2Fposts%2F1116.json%3Frandom_token%3Ddb356b7f73