Stage 1 – changing services, changing habits. (General talk)

First step is to change our habits and services we use, without actually building any new
infrastructure. General guidelines how to replace insecure services with safer ones can be found – for instance – at https://prism-break.org/en/ and we shall start from this point, selecting specific services (applications), testing them and then making them our standards.

At this stage we do not need our own infrastructure – most of these services are hosted in many places, often for free. It is not a perfect solution in terms of security, but it gives us time for testing and choosing them before making final decision (and spending any substantial money).

There are several key services we need to take care of as a priority. Some of them will need rather deep change in users' habits (means re-training and some self-discipline!).

Email communication

Instead of quitting surveillance-prone emil providers immediately, we shall start from improving security and changing user habits. The most important part is introducing full encryption and electronic signatures as a standard within the network. For outgoing traffic, encryption will be optional, but signing still mandatory.

Signing messages and documents, as a method to protect from disinformation is way more important than simple encryption. Encryption basically means also using a local email client (dedicated program on your computer/mobile device) to handle messages. There are few webmail services supporting pgp/gpg encryption and none of them is really secure. So, until we have our own email server (Stage 2) or the mailpile.is project gets mature enough, we shall be using standalone email clients.

Instant messaging

The alternative for Facebook chat and skype is provided by xmpp/jabber based programs, like Pidgin and Gajim. They feature voice and video communication, full encyption and can “talk” to many various chat systems.

When using own server (Stage 2) they provide also conference rooms and connection to vast IRC chat system.

Websites, social networks, news broadcast

Popular social networks (mostly FB, Twitter) are still indispensable, if we want to interact with broad public. There is, however, a growing group of people (including those most aware and active) who do not want to use them. So, we'd need some other channels to reach this group.

Luckily, there are several methods to connect independent services and to make our texts and other resources secure, while still available through the most popular channels. We shall need to discuss and test some of them before making a selection.

For discussions we shall need a secure forum system, eventually connected to the website system, so all discussions will be routed there. Currently, the strongest candidate is Loomio, which provides additional tools for group decision making process.

Repositories, groupware

For the independent storing and serving data (pictures, documents, movies etc.) we have
OwnCloud – an open source server software.
For daily work cooperation and project management we can use a host of applications. However, as this needs to be accompanied by some additional training, I would rather leave it for future.

Multimedia servers

There is a group of programs used to store and provide multimedia. Sound/video servers, streaming servers, teleconference and webinar systems. They are needed for every advanced education, agitation and organization activity over the net.