Privacy index metrics in digital communication
Showing Caliopen's users how public their private messages are.
Caliopen handles all your private exchanges
Private communication is no longer only email
Caliopen is not about protocols: it’s about content
Protocols matter only for privacy measurement
Privacy indices are nothing new
Wax sealed letters and glued envelopes are well known public concepts
Wax seals were a guarantee for both authenticity and confidentiality
People don’t write the same kind of content in sealed envelope as they do on a postcard
Caliopen tries to recreate in digital communications what was already known long ago
The Internet was not designed for privacy
We all know it was for cats and porn
None of the first Internet tools were privacy oriented
Today, Email may be secured, but we use many other tools for private messaging
As long as some of the tools we use are unencrypted, at least our social graph is at risk
“LAN Login Security. This asks for a Telnet option or mechanism for encrypting the login password. Several in the audience panned this on the grounds that Ethernets can’t be secure.”
IETF proceedings, July 1987
Make privacy comprehensible again
Clearly showing how naked the king is
Each element of the User Interface should show how private the communication is and how to improve it
The user account itself should be graded globally, to stimulate upturn
Showing someone his weaknesses drives him to act better (or at least accordingly)
What’s in a mailbox ?
Computing a message privacy level
Based on its transport protocol, we can compute part of a message privacy index (PI), but it’s the easy part
A message privacy also depends on its storage, its encryption, its recipients and their own privacy, and many more
Privacy is not only a technical issue, but also a social, behavioural and contextual one
The device case
The security of the device used to access a message is a main component of the message privacy index metrics
One should never read a message with high privacy index on a low privacy indexed device
Connection type is a contextual concern and will impact the device privacy index
Displaying the flag
Monkey see, monkey do
By displaying messages, devices, contacts and global privacy indices, Caliopen restores confidence that was long forgotten
By seeing his privacy level, the user can act accordingly, improve his security, and chose what to say and how to say it
Caliopen Privacy Index metrics will be submitted as an RFC for wide use in messaging apps
We aim to be good, join us