[Freedombox-discuss] Raining on the parade

[timschmidt@gmail.com (Tim Schmidt)]

On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 11:07 PM, Sandy Harris <sandyinchina at gmail.com> wrote:
> In many of the countries where one might hope
> to see Boxes used to resist oppression, they
> would be illegal under existing law.

I think for many of your questions, you've fallen into the trap of
thinking of a freedom box as something physical.  Sure, plug computers
make a nice, inexpensive form factor to run a freedom box, but a
freedom box is just a particular sort of collection, and configuration
of software.  Much of the same software that already runs the web,
billions of phones, and millions of PCs.  As we've seen with digital
music, movies, and television, stamping out the trading of software
between people who are motivated to trade it is effectively
impossible.

Similarly, finding, and proving the existence of a freedom box can be
made challenging.  Freedom boxes can communicate through
steganographically hidden encrypted tunnels which - from the outside -
appear to be normal unencrypted browser, or SMTP traffic.  Further,
freedom boxes can be easily distributed, and ran, as virtual machine
images - a simple software file one can download, and 'boot up' on an
existing desktop, laptop, or other home computer without interfering
with it's regular use for other tasks.

So, while there's much talk of the small, inexpensive computers making
this goal easier, they're just another type of computer.  Eventually,
it will be possible to run the freedom box stack on most smartphones.
No one seems likely to ban the computer any time soon, and all it
takes are some free 1's and 0's to turn any computer into a freedom
box.

--tim