News and Announcements Archive

2003-2007

July 2007 — FamilySafe Funding Update
The Rose Foundation's Consumer Privacy Rights Fund has been prevented from approving any applications by a dispute between its funders. So now, CRF's FamilySafe R&D project really needs your help: please make a tax-deductible donation to protect family safety on the Internet!

June 2007 — CryptoRightsCast Nearing Launch!
CRF's podcasting team is now finalizing the first episodes for launch in August. To suggest a topic or guest, let us know! More...

May 2007 — HighFire/FamilySafe 2008 Scholarship
CRF is creating a hosted scholarship program for two security engineers to work on HighFire/FamilySafe code at CRF for Summer 2008. Donors and software engineers are encouraged to contact CRF headquarters and apply! Pair programmers preferred!

April 2007 — CRF & NGOs in Asia
CRF's tech support team has been working remotely with NGO fieldworkers in southeast Asia to protect sensitive evidence. The first CryptoRightsCast will feature an interview with one of them, so stay tuned! CRC podcast

15 September 2006
FamilySafe Grant Submitted to Rose Foundation
CRF today submitted a grant application for basic FamilySafe project research and development funding to the Rose Foundation Consumer Privacy Fund. You can help by encouraging the Rose Foundation's Board of Directors & Consumer Privacy Fund advisors to support CRF's proposal, which requests very modest funding to cover basic project expenses, development and hardware prototypes over a 2-year period. Because funding sources for this type of privacy R&D work are rare, we strongly encourage CRF's supporters and anyone else interested in keeping families safe to (A) read the FamilySafe FAQ and (B) email the Rose Foundation or phone them (at +1 510.658.0702) to express your interest the FamilySafe effort to bring genuine "Homestead Security" to consumers and families with children who use the Internet.

5 August 2006
VoteSecure Project Updated for U.S. Nov 2006 Elections
The growing chilling effects of surveillance on election activists in the months leading up to the November 2006 U.S. national mid-term elections, as well as major security vulnerabilities in proprietary voting technologies that could be exploited to falsify accurate ballot counting, have led several polloing station monitoring groups, voter activism and election reform organizations to request assistance from CRF's Client Services Group for email encryption trainings, increased protections for their private email communications and discussions, and technical security analyses of various commercially-built voting systems. For more information on the latest activities, see our VoteSecure project page for updates.

24 July 2006
Special Thank You to Two Donors
CryptoRights thanks vererable Apple Computer engineer and long-time CRF supporter Leland Wallace for his generous donation of several thousand dollars' worth of brand new Apple MacOSX workstations and servers to CRF. Leland's hardware donations will help CRF staff keep the Foundation operating and will also serve as prototypes for the FamilySafe project. CRF welcomes all useful hardware donations, both used and new, and we encourage employees of large Silicon Valley companies to consider donating hardware like Leland. Thank You for supporting CRF and FamilySafe, Leland! — CRF is also very pleased to acknowledge John Nanninga, our former HighFire product manager and currently a CRF Advisory Board member, for making a generous financial donation to support CRF's overhead costs. In addition John's tax-deductible donation is being matched by his new employer, Genentech, which has a charitable donation matching program. Thanks to Genentech for demonstrating how corporations can still have a positive impact on global human rights and also on the safety of American families. And a very special thank you to John for his continued support and for making this double donation happen!

1 June 2006
New FamilySafe Project Announced
CRF today announced a new software-only R&D project named FamilySafe, designed to protect the privacy of families, consumers and small organizations online. FamilySafe is an public-oriented extension of the main HighFire project. To learn more about the FamilySafe proposal. FamilySafe will provide serious protection against identity theft, online fraud, consumer profiling, warrantless wiretapping, unsolicited commercial email ("spam") and common viruses. Using technologies that enhance locational privacy and provide authenticated/secure communications and persistent pseudonymity, FamilySafe will make the Internet much safer for small families and community and social justice groups. Learn More...

20 October 2005
NNEDV, CryptoRights & Others to Cooperate on Domestic Violence Data Protection
The National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV), the CryptoRights Foundation (CRF) and state domestic violence coalitions including the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence (WSCADV) and the Colorado Coalition Against Domestic Violence (CCADV) today announced work on a Memorandum of Understanding intended to promote cooperation on the development of a new version of CRF's HighFire project for the Domestic Violence community named HighFire-DV (aka "HFDV"). HighFire-DV will combine secure, authenticated hardware and software research already being done by CRF with specific privacy capabilities intended to protect the clients and staff at domestic violence shelters across the US.

19 October 2005
Peter Hope-Tindall joins the CRF Board of Directors
CRF is pleased to announce that Peter Hope-Tindall, well-known Canadian privacy advocate and president of Data Privacy Partners in Toronto, will be joining CRF's Board. "Peter has been a tremendous help to CRF as an advisor," said Dave Del Torto, "and having him on our Board will improve the dialog on how to maintain high privacy standards in our research and development work." Mr. Hope-Tindall brings over 20 years of experience in the technical security and privacy fields.

14 September 2005
Activist Ken Grindall joins the CRF Board of Directors
CRF today announced that social justice technologist Ken Grindall will be joining CRF's Board. "I see this as a complement to my work with humanitarian and human rights projects," said Mr. Grindall. "Early on, Mr. Grindall helped us develop CRF's first real web presence, he helped us establish our second CRF Lab location and he's been a consistent supporter of our work over the years as well as a donor," said Dave Del Torto, "We're very pleased to have him on our Board to increase cooperation between humanitarian groups, inform CRF's longterm research goals and raise funds." Ken will also help CRF to provide authenticated/secure humanitarian information management systems based on HighFire technology to protect the privacy of disaster victims while improving access to community support services. CRF plans to use HighFire's Triangular Registration tools and protocols to help communities develop digital identity and property ownership documents for re-establishing peoples' lives after a catastrophe.

8 September 2005
Crypto-Activist AJ Liles joins the CRF Board of Directors
Longtime privacy advocate and security consultant AJ Liles has joined the CRF Board of Directors. Ms. Liles' responsibilities will include working with major philanthropic donors as well as helping to establish CRF's globally-distributed, secure human rights network. "Ms. Liles was present at the meeting where CRF was first proposed and supported its subsequent founding. She appreciates the challenges in CRF's mission statement because of her technical background and is also a strong advocate for the use of cryptography in social justice organizations," said CRF founder Dave Del Torto. Ms. Liles is the president of InfoGuardian International, which services the information security needs of corporate clients, and is currently writing a book about privacy.

1 September 2005
Physicist Dr. Ornella Bonamassa joins the CRF Board of Directors
After serving for nearly two years as CRF's Acting Chief Technology Officer, physicist and seismologist Dr. Ornella Bonamassa has joined the CRF Board. Dr. Bonamassa is also adding the role os principal investigator on CRF's HighFire project, where she will contribute her considerable experience in human interface design, software development and fundraising for scientific research. "In addition to Dr. Bonamassa's generous contributions of time and funding to CRF, we're also aware of her work in seismic wave propagation research and its potential to provide early warning for humanitarian disaster relief efforts," said CRF's Dave Del Torto.

15 August 2005
Noted Privacy Attorney Deborah Pierce joins the CRF Board of Directors
Well-known privacy attorney and online rights activist Deborah Pierce has joined the CRF Board of Directors. Ms. Pierce is also the co-founder of PrivacyActivism and a former senior attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

16 March 2005
SquirrelMail Developers Join HighFire Dev Team!
CRF's HighFire Dev Team is welcoming two senior members of the SquirrelMail Project to the HighFire:Mobile project's technical group. Rick Castello, who leads the SM project, is taking over Quality Assurance and User Interface design for HighFire:Mobile. Jonathan Angliss, one of SM's primary developers, is joining the HighFire team's other human rights security engineers. Major goals include integrating SM's new "template-ized" version and HighFire, i-Name intergration and advancing development of the HighFire project's two primary modules, HighFire:Mobile (currently being beta tested at dozens of human rights NGOs internationally) and HighFire:Office (hardware, currently in alpha test). The new team members are already adding important synergies to CRF's open source development team.

7 March 2005
HighFire:Mobile Public Bugzilla
CRF's HighFire Dev Team has unveiled a new public Bugzilla issue & bug tracking & resolution server to enable User and open source Developer feedback on the

HighFire:Mobile Public Beta development process. Future plans include intergration of a Bugzilla form directly into the HighFire "Service Portal" user interface.

10 February 2005
HighFire:Mobile at 2005 Computers, Freedom & Privacy conference:
An experimental project is underway to make HighFire:Mobile registration part of the conference registration at the 15th annual Computers, Freedom & Privacy conference in Seattle on 12 April 2005. Deborah Pierce, the 2005 Conference Chair, announced that CFP, one of the longest-running privacy technology conferences (now sponsored by the ACM), has agreed to offer all CFP2005 attendees an experimental option when they register for the conference: a personal HighFireID and a free account on CFP's new IceBox server. Attendees can now experience the Triangular Registration protocol first-hand, and also have an antidote to commercial webmail services that track & scan their messages for consumer profiling and targeted marketing purposes. CFP & CRF urgently need a fast server hardware donation to complete the project.

20 January 2005
CRF Welcomes Human Rights Security Volunteers to the HighFire Project:
Volunteer HighFire:Mobile Public Beta Developers can now contribute new source code under the GPL (Gnu Public License) by registering for a HFID and HFM account through any HighFire Sponsor and using it to send in an SSH key for authenticated/secure access to CRF's development CVS server. CVS (concurrent versioning system) is used to track code changes and developer comments and contributions. HF Dev Team members can check out and commit in source code, as well as subscribing, along with the Public, to the HighFire-Talk mailing list.

1 August 2004
CRF Announces Free HighFire Registration for PlaNetwork Forum Attendees:
To encourage public awareness about HighFire's capabilities, PlaNetwork founder and organizer Jim Fournier is providing time at monthly Planetwork Forum meetings in the SF Bay Area (and eventually worldwide) for a HighFire Triangular Registration presentation. A HighFire Sponsor will be present at each meeting, and social justice workers can register for a HighFire:Mobile (beta) secure webmail account.

20 June 2004
HighFire Source Code Published:
CRF today published the first public HighFire:Mobile NGO Beta 1 open source code on a web-accessible CVS server. The primary modules are the HighFire:Mobile Tools (including Triangular Registration for adding new users to a HF system) and the GPG Plugin for SquirrelMail. HighFire:Mobile is licensed under the Gnu Public License and CRF welcomes contributions to the project under the terms of that extremely popular licensing scheme, which is geared toward community involvement in open projects and particularly appropriate for secure systems development like the HighFire Project.

25 March 2004
HighFire:Mobile NGO Beta 1 Program Begins:
CryptoRights has released HighFire:Mobile secure webmail with integrated triangular registration and crypto key management tools for beta testing by the worldwide social justice NGO community. NGOs can acquire multiple free accounts by starting with our sign-up form.

1 March 2004
CRF Announces HighFire:Mobile NGO Beta 1 Test
CRF today welcomed several major international social justice organizations to the initial HighFire:Mobile NGO Beta 1 Test, including Human Rights Watch (HRW), Peace Brigades International (PBI) and The Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR and the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV). "By beginning real world testing of the mobility-oriented web-based e-mail that makes up the first phase of our authenticated & secure social justice technology platform, CRF is making sure the more comprehensive HighFire social justice communications system eventually offers more and better security to nonprofit, nongovernmental organizations doing good works," said Dave Del Torto, HighFire's principal investigator. The complete HighFire System &em; including the HighFire:Mobile web-based software, the HighFire:Office hardware devices (IceBox servers & FireBox desk appliances) and the HighFireFone SVoIP system &em; will form a complete end-to-end communications solution with cryptographically-enhanced chain-of-evidence capability. Because social justice organizations must send observers and investigators wherever problems exist in the world, CRF is also seeking major donor support for integration of the HighFire system with wearable computing and digital witnessing devices which will bring full HighFire capability (email/voice/realtime-AV) to journalists, human rights and humanitarian aid fieldworkers at any location on the planet.

01 January 2004
GPG Plugin Team Thanks CRF Funding and Co-Developing Open Source OpenPGP Security Plugin to SquirrelMail
GnuPG Plugin lead developer Brian Peterson of BraveRock today publicly thanked CryptoRights for ongoing funding and development support throughout 2003 for the work his team has contributed to the open source effort to integrate GnuPG's OpenPGP encryption into SquirrelMail web-mail. "CryptoRights generous funding and technical cryptography assistance made it possible for us to provide greatly enhanced security and digital signatures to over four million freeware Squirrelmail users worldwide," said Peterson.

16 January 2004
CRF Thanks international team for translating HighFire into 7 languages:
CRF sends thanks to Hernán Collazo, Roland Fritz, Nicoletta Godbout, Tomas Kuliavas, Alex Lemaresquier, Marcio Merlone, Mij, Philippe Mingo, Michael Prinsen and Marcos Tadeu for helping make HighFire:Mobile available in German, Spanish, French, Italian, Lithuanian, Dutch and Brazilian Portuguese.

3 October 2003
CRF Teams Up with Squirrelmail:
CRF welcomes support from Squirrelmail team for HighFire; CRF's work to benefit all Squirrelmail users, Too.

18 August 2003
CRF Presents HighFire Alpha at Crypto 2003:
Seeks the Contribution of the Security Community
BoF & Rump session presentations to include first hardware demo of CRF's human rights communications security system.

2 April 2003
CRF Launches HighFire Project at CFP2003:
Human Rights Communications Security System will help NGOs Protect Privacy, Data Integrity
First phase of project is introduction of Communications Assessment Tool (CAT); NGO participation sought.

31 March 2003
CRF quoted on "PATRIOT Act II"
New anti-encrption provisions troubling.
In a major AP Newswire article carried by hundreds of papers around the country, CRF and other organizations came out against new privacy-threatening legislation. More...