"Freedom Box": Internet free of government control?

Lindsy — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 06:11:08 +0000

Speaker(s) Eben Moglen Speaker(s) Peter Eckersley Speaker(s) Daniel Sieberg

Language spoken English

Date of Recording Sun, 2011-03-06

Player-image:

What if there were a network of computers all over the world that operated outside government or corporate control? As Daniel Sieberg reports, that is the premise for the so-called “freedom box”.

Read more at CBS News

Additional information

CBS News: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7358702n&tag=mncol;lst;2

00:00 [Commentator] A long time pioneer for the open Internet Eben Moglen champions the idea of a Freedom Box.

00:08 [Eben Moglen] They are inexpensive, compact, low power machines like this (showing the device). That can do everything a much larger server computer can do.

00:16 [Commentator] It starts with a device made by global scale technologies in California, which sells for a 100 dollars. Think of it as a blank canvas. The company says it can be used for many tasks, like controlling the lights in your house but combined with Moglen’s software initiative it would become a Freedom Box: designed to circumvent government’s censorship.

00:36 [Eben Moglen] If you have one and your friend Suzie has one, then you and Suzie can have sharing of your lives like with Facebook or with Twitter except insecurity using encryption.

00:48 [Commentator] Even though it does’t look like a computer, it can act like one. Instead of a mouse or a keyboard you use a smartphone or a tablet like an iPad to run it. The device plugs in in a power outlet and communicates through regular Internet access or if that’s get shut of: a wireless connection.

01:05 [Interviewer] How would this be used in a country like Libya?

01:09 [Eben Moglen] They have no Internet because the government has cut their ability to communicate, and cellphone systems are either shut or jammed. Boxes like these in people’s houses could make a mesh that is just the boxes communicating by wireless between themselves.

01:27 [Peter Eckersley, Electronic Frontier Foundation] Maybe that’s possible, that’s very ambitious.

01:31 [Commentator] Peter Eckersley is from the Electronic Frontier Foundation that supports online freedoms but he worries that the Freedom Box acquires too much computer know-how.

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Recordings by Daniel Sieberg

"Freedom Box": Internet free of government control?