Lawyer Geek starts foundation to keep Big Brother out of your intertubes

[TalkingDog]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/nyregion/16about.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion

On Tuesday afternoon, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke in Washington about the Internet and human liberty, a Columbia law professor in Manhattan, Eben Moglen, was putting together a shopping list to rebuild the Internet — this time, without governments and big companies able to watch every twitch of our fingers.

The list begins with “cheap, small, low-power plug servers,” Mr. Moglen said. “A small device the size of a cellphone charger, running on a low-power chip. You plug it into the wall and forget about it.”

snip

Put free software into the little plug server in the wall, and you would have a Freedom Box that would decentralize information and power, Mr. Moglen said. This month, he created the Freedom Box Foundation to organize the software.

snip

Social networking has changed the balance of political power, he said, “but everything we know about technology tells us that the current forms of social network communication, despite their enormous current value for politics, are also intensely dangerous to use. They are too centralized; they are too vulnerable to state retaliation and control.”


Woot! Thumbs up for lawyer-geeks

[RC]

1. What does this use for the actual communication?

What ties all this together? If your internet provider is in the loop somewhere (AT&T, Comcast, etc.), this is a wasted effort.
Or am I missing something?

[TalkingDog]

3. You can set up your own private server. I know people who have them.

What you need access to is a phone line. Or possibly some sort of wireless transmitter in the worst case scenario.

[TalkingDog]

2. Bump for making Zuckerberg an offer he can't possibly refuse.