Re: Tails

[Paul E Condon <pecondon@mesanetworks.net>]

On 20140517_0902+0900, Joel Rees wrote:
> On Sat, May 17, 2014 at 8:12 AM, Theodore Alcapotaxis
> <theotaxis@mail.com> wrote:
> >> ----- Original Message -----
> >> From: Brian
> >> Sent: 05/17/14 02:26 AM
> >> To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> >> Subject: Re: Tails
...snip...
> 
> > BTW what is Tails? Is it the next version of Debian? The current version 7.5 is codenamed "Wheezy", correct?
> >
> 
> https://www.google.co.jp/search?q=tails
> 
> First result when I checked just now, but since the archives will
> likely outlast the ranking, it's a live derivative of Debian with a
> useful collection of privacy/anonymity tools, which would be
> particularly useful to a journalist.

More info...
Tails is an acronym from The Amnesic Incognito Live System. It is
the result of a merger of two earlier projects, Amnesia and Incognito.
Amnesia was a effort to wrap Tor inside a system that made sure to
erase all 'memory' of a Tor communication after it is completed, thus
frustrating after the fact forensics. Incognito was a project to create
a live system to manage all the details of securely setting up and 
dismantling a Tor communication channel. The combined system is an
effort to gather into one project all the best practice in using Tor
to accomplish completely private and secure communication over the
internet. It is used by the security expert and blogger Bruce Schneier,
who mentions it in his most recent monthly blog, available at:

http://www.schneier.com

It was also used by Edward Snowden in effecting his famous leak of NAS
documents, as I discovered by following some of Schneier's links.
The developers of Tails use it to maintain their own secret identities
while working on the project, so it is a significant departure from
the traditional open software development ethic(1). The liveness of
Tails stems from it using Debian Live as its live starting point.
There is plenty to argue and bloviate about here. I only know what
I learned/surmised from about 30 min of googling.

HTH
-- 
Paul E Condon           
pecondon@mesanetworks.net

1) From what I can tell, the software *is* free as in freedom and as
in beer. But the process of producing it is very much secret for fear
of it being disrupted by law enforcement authorities, I suppose.