[liberationtech] Google Hangout the new, better skype? Was Re: Skype redux

[Adam Fisk]

The content of the communication should be direct in 90% of cases though -
not going through Google's servers at all. Granted the Google Voice plugin
is a bit of an enigma at this point - not yet based on libjingle or webrtc
yet in my understanding. It should migrate though, at which point it will
be just as open source as Jitsi.

Passing that 10% through Google servers is definitely an issue though, and
that'll be 100% with 3 or more on a call. The alternative is to set up your
own TURN, STUN, and XMPP servers though.

-Adam



On Friday, December 21, 2012, Jacob Appelbaum wrote:

> Adam Fisk:
> > I'm not entirely clear on why this is advantageous versus say Google
> > Hangouts. You're likely using Google Talk servers in both cases, which is
> > the central point of control no matter what. What am I missing Andrew? I
> > trust Google's encryption more than I do Jitsi's, and my pretty darn
> > thorough walk through the Jitsi code (granted years ago now) was a pretty
> > frightening experience -- not security-wise but just code wise.
>
> If you're trusting Google for your account/relationship data, you're not
> *also* trusting them with the content of the communication when OTR
> and/or ZRTP are used.
>
> Did you find problems with the OTR or ZRTP crypto?
>
> Most code is terrible - I consider it an improvement over Skype which
> likely also has terrible code but we can't even inspect it to learn that
> fact. Rather, we just learn that they wiretap and fuck people over by
> reading their policy documents; generally far too late, I might add.
>
> All the best,
> Jake
>
> > -Adam
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 11:29 PM, <liberationtech at lewman.us<javascript:;>>
> wrote:
> >
> >> On Fri, 21 Dec 2012 06:52:35 -0800
> >> Brian Conley <brianc at smallworldnews.tv <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >>
> >>> So I guess the question is, is there a more/similarly convenient
> >>> video/audio chatting tool that can be advocated as a standard?
> >>
> >> Here's a single data point, extrapolate at your peril, I use Jitsi,
> >> https://jitsi.org/.
> >>
> >> I use jitsi daily for all my phone calls, text chats, and video chats.
> >> It's not as slick as Skype, yet. It's just a piece of software, you
> >> need to setup your own chat or voip accounts. It works with gchat,
> >> facebook, aol, msn, etc. It just works. It's effectively the open
> >> source version of skype. It's the same UI and functionality across
> >> operating systems (windows, macs, linux, bsds). I've watched non-tech
> >> people figure it out in 10 minutes and start chatting/calling, etc.
> >>
> >> I have zrtp-encrypted video and voice chats with people around the
> >> world. I can share my screen so others can see what I'm doing. For
> >> zrtp-encryption and screen sharing, all parties have to use jitsi. And
> >> OTR-wrapped text chat works well so far with any client on the other
> >> end.
> >>
> >> It's still a work in progress, much like Skype was when it was first
> >> released, but it's functional and gets out of the way so you can
> >> communicate. My $0.02.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Andrew
> >> http://tpo.is/contact
> >> pgp 0x6B4D6475
> >> --
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> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
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> >
>
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