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We have been talking a lot about privacy so far: from Facebook and the way our profiles’ information can be used, to Edward Snowden’s revelations about PRISM (the surveillace program operated by the United States NSA), it really seems that nowadays people are more concerned about privacy and security than ever. “So now is the time to give people an alternative”.

This words were pronounced by Michael Powers. He is the developer behind Trsst, an online social network that is outside the grip of any company, that ” looks and feels like twitter, but encrypted and anonymized and decentralized and only you hold the key”, as it’s said in the home page of its website.This means that keys to decrypt messages are not stored on any servers, making it virtually impossible for an outside party to see what is being said. The founder has succeeded in collecting more the 65.000 $ (with an initial goal of 48.000 $) via the crowdfunding website Kickstarter.

Another interesting example is Mailpile, an open source e-mail client with a strong emphasis on security that has raised more than 160.000 $ ad around 50 Bitcoins. The creators’ view is explained in the website: “Edward Snowden’s recent leaks were a wake-up call, confirming what many had long suspected, that the troves of e-mail stored on our behalf by Google, Microsoft and others are irresistable targets for those who would like to invade our privacy, be they criminals or overzealous government organizations like the NSA. […] So, if we want to take control of our e-mail, if we want privacy and encryption, we have to do it ourselves. Mailpile is free software, a web-mail program that you run on your own computer, so your data stays under your control.”

If we talk about open source software and privacy, Camlistore has to be mentioned. Camlistore is a personal storage system, and the name is an acronym for “Content-Addressable Multi-Layer Indexed Storage”. It is explicitly said in the mai page of the website that it is “paranoid about privacy, with everything private by default” and entirely under users’ control.

But the most extreme example is SecureDrop. It is an open source whistleblower submission system managed by Freedom of Press Foundation. It  can be used by media organization (any organisation can install it for free) to securely accept documents from anonymous sources.

As shown above, there are a lot of different options for everyone who is particularly concerned about the privacy issue. But, even if I think that most of them are interesting and easily usable for every kind of user and not only for the experts, I don’t think that most of us would choose any of them instead of keeping using twitter, dropbox…and any other social media we daily use.

Wired article: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/08/trsst/

Trsst: http://www.trsst.com/

Mailpile: http://www.mailpile.is/

Camlistore: http://camlistore.org/

SecureDrop: https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/securedrop

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In this post I want to talk about women. In particular, the precence and roles of women in tech: it seems that IT business world is far from being gender equal.

It’s a matter of fact that the Silicon Valley has to face up a male chauvinistic way of thinking. A awkward episode concering Twitter can be explanatory. Last Saturday, Twitter’s CEO pushed back against criticism of the company’s apparent lack of female higher-ups with an ad hominem attack against one of its critics.

This is what happened: when last week Twitter’s list of board members, executive officers and investors released in its IPO filing featured only one woman, Claire Cain Miller, a New York Time reporter, wrote an article about women executive position and male chauvinistic thinking. This article is enriched with the opinion of Vivek Wadhwa, a professor at Stanford’s Rock Center for Corporate Governance who is writing a book on women in tech, who told the reporter: “It’s the same male chauvinistic thinking. The fact that they went to the I.P.O. without a single woman on the board, how dare they?”. This was Mr Costolo react:

Instead of addressing Wadhwa’s point, Costolo compares him to Carrot Top, a comedian generally criticized for being excessive and irritating. I do not think this can be acceptable.

The way the story develops shows that the masculinist way of thinking (as well as the impoliteness Mr Costolo demonstrates) is ingrained in the IT environment. Do you think Twitter should have done something, like take a different position from Costolo’s one? Do you think that the ‘women issue’ is a widespread problem through the IT word or not?

Sources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/07/twitter-ceo-women_n_4056922.html?utm_hp_ref=technology

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/05/technology/as-tech-start-ups-surge-ahead-women-seem-to-be-left-behind.html