[liberationtech] Burn Note

[Sahar Massachi]

I agree with all of that. Thank you for reassuring me that I'm not crazy.

Here's a fear: for them the real alternative isn't Tor, but sending
passwords via email.

I'm torn between contacting them and warning them off from those sites and
thinking "well at least it's better than the status quo".


On Sat, Feb 4, 2012 at 12:34 AM, Chris Ball <cjb at laptop.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Fri, Feb 03 2012, Sahar Massachi wrote:
> > New Organizing Institute is a prominent resource for activists in the
> > United States. They coincidentally sent out a tip to use a BurnNote-style
> > tool to their list today. This time, the website is onetimesecret.com.
> >
> > Is their Tip of the Day incorrect?
>
> Collapsing the world of trust down to a binary "correct or incorrect"
> usually doesn't make sense, but you can consider some unknown questions:
>
> * What if onetimesecret.com keeps a copy of your secret after removing
>  it from the website?  You can't know whether this is happening, and
>  they could have monetary incentive to -- they might decide to sell
>  secrets to the highest bidder.
>
> * What if they comply with law enforcement requests to turn over viewed
>  and non-viewed secrets?
>
> * What if they *are* law enforcement or another adversary, setting up
>  a site to attempt to obtain private data for their own use, and
>  then advertising it to privacy activists?
>
> I think it's clear that this project is asking you to give more trust to
> it and its operators than state of the art software would -- OTR chat
> and Tor, for example.
>
> Best,
>
> - Chris.
> --
> Chris Ball   <cjb at laptop.org>   <http://printf.net/>
> One Laptop Per Child
>