[liberationtech] Skype Open Letter: CALL FOR SIGNATORIES

[John Sullivan]

Nadim Kobeissi <nadim at nadim.cc> writes:

> Dear Privacy Advocates and Internet Freedom Activists,
>
> I call on you to review the following draft for our Open Letter to Skype
> and present your name or the name of your organization as signatories:
>
> http://www.skypeopenletter.com/draft/
>
> The letter will be released soon. Feedback is also welcome.
>

Thank you for the opportunity to give feedback.

We would sign if it included a request that Skype be released as free
software.

This seems important for many users. Even if Skype published a
transparency report indicating abuse of user information, users are
unable to use modified versions of Skype to address those abuses and
instead would have to drop it entirely in favor of something else -- a
very high cost path for many, who may have to just submit to the abuse
instead. 

Of course a free client wouldn't necessarily be sufficient on its own
either, but we do think it's necessary.

Admittedly I don't know much (anything) about how existing transparency
reports are verified, but I worry that this would give people a false
sense of security. Does someone with sufficient access audit them? Other
than law enforcement agencies publishing info which would help verify
some subset of the commitments made in a transparency report.

-john

-- 
John Sullivan | Executive Director, Free Software Foundation
GPG Key: 61A0963B | http://status.fsf.org/johns | http://fsf.org/blogs/RSS

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