[liberationtech] Skype Open Letter: CALL FOR SIGNATORIES

[Cindy Cohn]

Please note that EFF has not signed off on this. 

Very busy with post Aaron S stuff; more later.

Cindy

On Jan 16, 2013, at 11:12 AM, John Sullivan <johns at fsf.org> wrote:

> 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
> 
> Do you use free software? Donate to join the FSF and support freedom at
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Cindy Cohn 			        ----Cindy at eff.org
Legal Director 				---- www.eff.org
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