September 2017 – sebas' blog

Privacy Software

September 29, 2017November 28, 2017 6 Comments

As a means to give our work direction and a clearer purpose, KDE is currently in the process of soul-searching. Here’s my proposal of what we should concentrate and focus on in the coming years. I’d welcome any feedback from the community to make this proposal better, and rally up more support from the community, and others interested.

So here’s the Big, hairy, audacious goal that — in my opinion — KDE should focus on, and should adapt its strategy for:

“In 5 years, KDE software enables and promotes privacy”

Privacy is the new challenge for Free Software. KDE is in a unique position to offer users a complete software environment that helps them to protect their privacy. KDE, being community-driven and user-focused, has the opportunity to put privacy on top of the agenda, arguably, being in this position, KDE has the obligation to do this, in the interest of the users.

The effect is expected to be two-fold:

Offer users the tools to protect privacy and to lead a private and safe digital life without compromising their identity, exposing their habits and communications
Setting a high standard and example for others to follow, define the state of the art of privacy protection in the age of big data and force others to follow suit, thereby increasing pressure on the whole industry and eco-system to protect users’ privacy better

Leaking user data, allowing users to be tracked, collecting their most private information in databases across the world means that users lose control of their identity and what parts they want others to know, and what they want to keep for themselves. Worse, collecting data in so many places, often commercially, but also by governments means that the user has little way of knowing what is known about him or her, let alone being able to determine who should be able to control what. Data being persistently collected means that not only today's security measures and policies are relevant, but also the future's. This poses multiple great risks.

KDE adds a 5th Freedom to the 5 principal software Freedoms:

“The freedom to decide which data is sent to which service”.

Personal Risks for Users

Orwell's 1984 is not an instruction manual — Orwell’s 1984 is not an instruction manual

Risks that individual users run are, among others:

The more data that is collected, the bigger the risk of Identity Theft becomes
More collected data means that decisions will be made for the user based on skewed or incomplete information (imagine insurance policies)
Collected data may end up in the hands of oppressive regimes, posing risks to the user when travelling, or even at home
Blackmail
User's most private secrets may end up in the wrong hands

Socio-economic Effects

Socio-economic effects that effect how society, national and international communities work, are:

Free speech is compromised
Journalists need tools to communicate secretly, lacking that, freedom and independence of press cannot be guaranteed
Trade-secrets cannot be kept, free markets cannot function without tools protecting privacy
Sovereignty of nations cannot be guaranteed
Cyber-attacks may lead to shift in power

What it will take?

TL;DR:

Security
Privacy-respecting defaults
Offering the right tools in the first place

Security

We can only guarantee privacy if we also value security.
Possible approaches:

Functioning code-review
Quick turn-around times for software updates, especially security fixes
Prefer to use encrypted communication where possible, prefer HTTPS over HTTP where possible, avoid unencrypted connections
Storing sensitive information only in an encrypted way
Moving away from inherently insecure technologies, i.e. default to Wayland instead of X11
Avoiding single points of failure and centralized control

Privacy-Respecting Defaults

KDE software supporting this goal should:

Only collect and send data when necessary and clear and sensible from within the context. No hidden telemetry sending user stats, not HTTP connections downloading content, no search queries to online services without the users explicit consent (or where it's entirely clear from the context, e.g. web browsers, software updater, etc.).
Use anonymity where it is possible, for example by using Tor connections for things like weather updates that don't require user identification
No collection of privacy-relevant data without clear purpose.
Conservative defaults: a user should not have to make changes to the software configuration to avoid leaking data. Secure and private by default. (Software may be configured to be more leaky if that benefits the user, but the risk to that should be clear, either from context or explicitely stated.)
Use clear and consistent UI and design language around network-related options

Offering the Right Tools

KDE needs to make an effort to provide a comprehensive set of tools for most users' needs, for example:

An email client allowing encrypted communication
Chat and instant messenging with state-of-the art protocol security
A webbrowser (self-provided) that has private default settings
File storage and groupware solutions
Other tools that allow offline operation and independence from popular cloud services
Support for online services that can be operated as private instance, not depending on a 3rd party provider
State-of-the-art support and integration for services like Tor, Matrix, Zeronet, etc.

Others

KDE e.V. allows anonymous donations via bitcoin (or other crypto currencies)
Adaption of blockchain where useful

How we know we succeeded

Static and runtime analysis tools:

KDE software can be audited for compliance with common, security related standards, such as:

NIST Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF)
ISO 15408
RFC2196
Cyber Essentials (UK Government Standard)
… etc.

"Soft" criteria include:

Press and 3rd party refer to KDE as carrying the gold-standard for such software
Journalists prefer KDE software for their work
The NSA hates KDE
The CCC loves KDE ♥

The full proposal has a little more details and pointers (and may still be updated, it’s not final yet), but I’d like to keep it at this for my weblog, and also add a note here: Coincidentally, shortly after starting the work on this proposal, KDE’s Plasma team was contacted by Purism who are building a privacy-focused phone. I was immediately excited since I think privacy is more or less an extension of the core values of Free software and the librem5 could provide a really valuable target for KDE’s privacy efforts, I see a fantastic degree of synergy there.

Plasma Mobile and Convergence

September 26, 2017September 26, 2017 14 Comments

Convergence, or the ability the serve different form factors from the same code base, is an often discussed concept. Convergence is at the heart of Plasma‘s design philosophy, but what does this actually mean to how apps are developed? What’s in it for the user? Let’s have a look!

Plasma -- same code, different devices — Plasma — same code, different devices

First, let’s have a look at different angles of “Convergence”. It can actually mean different things, and there is overlap between these. Depending on who you ask, convergence could mean any of the following:

Being able to plug a monitor, keyboard and mouse into smartphone and use it as a full-fledged desktop replacement
Develop an application that works on a phone as well as on a desktop
Create different device user interfaces from the same code base

Convergence, in the broadest sense, has been one of the design goals of Plasma when we started creating it. When we work on Plasma, we ultimately expect components to run on a wide variety of target devices, we refer to that concept as the device spectrum.

Alex, one of Plasma’s designers has created a visual concept for a convergent user interface, that gives an impression how a fully convergent Plasma could look like to the user:

Input Methods and Screen Characteristics

Technically, there are a few aspects of convergence, the most important being: input methods, for example mouse, keyboard, touchscreens or combinations of those, and screen size (both physical dimensions, portrait vs. landscape layout and pixel density).

Touchscreen support is one aspect when it comes to run KDE software on a mobile device or within Plasma Mobile. Touchscreens are not specific to phones any more however, so making an app, or a Plasma component ready for touchscreen usage also benefits people who run Plasma on their convertible laptops, for example. Another big factor is that the app needs to work well on the screen of a smartphone, this means support for high dpi screens as well as a layout that presents the necessary controls in a way that is functional, attractive and user-friendly. With the Kirigami toolkit, which builds on top of QtQuick, we develop apps that work well on both target devices. From a more general point of view, KDE has always developed apps in a cross- platform way, so portability to other platforms is very much at the heart of our codebase.

The Kirigami toolkit, which offers a set of high-level application flow-controls for QtQuick applications achieves exactly that: it allows to built responsive apps that adapt to screen characteristics and input method.

(As an aside, there’s the case for Kirigami also supporting Android. Developing an app specifically for usage in Plasma may be easier, but it is also limiting its reach. Imagine an app running fine on your laptop, but also on your smartphone, be it Android or drive by Plasma Mobile (in the future). That would totally rock, and it would mean a target audience in the billions, not millions. Conversely, providing the technology to create such apps decreases the relative investment compared to the target audience, making technologies such as QtQuick and Kirigami an excellent choice for developers that want to maximize their target audience.)

Plasma Mobile vs. Plasma Desktop

Plasma Mobile is being developed in tandem with the popular Plasma desktop, in fact it shares more then 90% of the code with it. This means that work done on either of the two, mobile and desktop often benefits the other, and that there’s a large degree of compatibility between the two. The result is a system that feels the same across different devices, but makes use of the special capabilities of a given device, and supports different ways of using the software. On the development side, this means huge gains in terms of productivity and quality: A wider set of usage scenarios and having the code running on more machines means that it gets more real-world testing and bugs get shaken out quicker.

Who cares, anyway?

Whether or not convergence is something that users want, I think so. It takes a learning curve for users, and I think advancements in technology to bring this to the market, you need rather powerful hardware, the right connectors, and the right hardware components, so it’s not an easy end-goal. The path to convergence already bears huge benefits, as it means more efficient development, more consistency across different form factors and higher quality code.

Whether or not users care is only relevant to a certain point. Arguably, the biggest benefit of convergence lies in the efficiency of the development process, especially when multiple devices are involved. It doesn’t actually matter all that much if users are going to plug their mouse and keyboard into a phone and use it as a desktop device. Already today, users expect touchscreen to just work, even on laptops, users already expect the convertible being usable when the keyboard is flipped away or unplugged, users already expect to plug a 4K into their 1024×768 resolution laptop and the UI neither becoming unreadable or comically large.

In short: There really is no way around a large degree of convergence in Plasma (and similar products).

The Evolution of Plasma Mobile

September 22, 2017November 28, 2017 7 Comments

Back around 2006, when the Plasma project was started by Aaron Seigo and a group of brave hackers (among which, yours truly) we wanted to create a user interface that is future-proof. We didn’t want to create something that would only run on desktop devices (or laptops), but a code-base that grows with us into whatever the future would bring. Mobile devices were already getting more powerful, but would usually run entirely different software than desktop devices. We wondered why. The Linux kernel served as a wonderful example. Linux runs on a wide range of devices, from super computers to embedded systems, you would set it up for the target system and it would run largely without code changes. Linux architecture is in fact convergent. Could we do something similar at the user interface level?

Plasma Netbook

In 2007, Asus introduced the Eee PC, a small, inexpensive laptop. Netbooks proved to be all the rage at that point, so around 2009, we created Plasma Netbook, proving for the first time that we could actually serve different device user interfaces from the same code-base. There was a decent amount of code-sharing, but Plasma Netbook also helped us identifying areas in which we wanted to do better.

Plasma Mobile (I)

Come 2010, we got our hands on an N900 by Nokia, running Maemo, a mobile version of Linux. Within a week, during a sprint, we worked on a proof-of-concept mobile interface of Plasma:

Well, Nokia-as-we-knew-it is dead now, and Plasma never materialized on Nokia devices.

Plasma Active

Plasma Active was built as a successor to the early prototypes, and our first attempt at creating something for end-users. Conceived in 2011, the idea was not just to produce a simple Plasma user interface for a tablet device, but also deliver on a range of novel ideas for interaction with the device, closely related to the semantic desktop. Interlinked documents, contacts, sharing built right into the core, not just a “dumb” platform to run apps on, but a holistic system that allows users to manage their digital life on the fly. While Plasma Active had great promise and a lot of innovative potential, it never materialized for end-users in part due to lack of interest from both, the KDE community itself, but also from people on the outside. This doesn’t mean that the work put into it was lost, but thanks to a convergent code-base, many improvements made primarily with Plasma Active in mind have improved Plasma for all its users and continue to do so today. In many ways, Active proved valuable as a playground, as a clean slate where we want to take the technology, and how we can improve our developemnt process. It’s not a surprise that Plasma 5 today is developed in a process very similar to how we approached Plasma Active back then.

Plasma Mobile (II)

Learning from the Plasma Active project, in 2015 we regrouped and started to build a rather simple smartphone user interface, along with a reference software stack that would allow us not only to develop Plasma Mobile further, but to allow us to run on a growing number of devices. Plasma Mobile (II)’s goal wasn’t to get the most innovative of interfaces out, but to create a bread-and-butter platform, a base to develop applications on. From a technology point of view, Plasma is actually very small. It shares approximately 95% of the code with its desktop companion, widgets, and increasingly applications are interchangeable between the two.

Plasma Mobile (in any shape or form) has never been this close to actually making it into the hands and pockets of end users. A collaboration project with Purism, a company bringing privacy and software freedom to end-users, we may create the first Plasma phone for end users and have it on the market as soon as januari 2019. If you want to support this project, the crowdfunding campaign has just passed the 40% mark, and you can be part of it — either by joining the development crew, or by pre-ordering a device and thereby funding the development.

North Sea Maritime Training

September 17, 2017September 17, 2017

Today, we went out onto the North Sea for a day of maritime training, a course how to rescue, survive and help in the case of being lost at sea, or going overboard from a ship at high sea. The course was extremely valuable towards my long-term goal of being able to do clean-ups of North Sea shipwrecks from ghost nets, abandoned fishing nets which harm marine life.
We went out this morning for two hours of class-room training and then boarded a ship and went out to sea, where we learned how to use flares, smoking pots, floats and various means to rescue men over board and victims of drowning.
Some impressions:

Staying together and increasing visibility

This training was organized by Get Wet. I can highly recommend it.

Help us create a privacy-focused Free software smartphone!

September 14, 2017November 28, 2017 9 Comments

The news is out! KDE and Purism are working together on a Free software smartphone featuring Plasma Mobile. Purism is running a crowdfunding campaign right now, and if that succeeds, with the help of KDE, the plan is to deliver a smartphone based on Plasma Mobile in January 2019.

Why do I care?

Data collection and evesdropping has become a very common problem. Not only governments (friendly and less-friendly) are spying on us, collecting information about our private lives, also companies are doing so. There is a lot of data about the average user stored in databases around the world that not only allows them to impersonate you, but also to steal from you, to kidnap your data, and to make your life a living hell. There is hardly any effective control how this data is secured, and the more data is out there, the more interesting a target it is to criminals. Do you trust random individuals with your most private information? You probably don’t, and this is why you should care.

Protect your data

The only way to re-gain control before bad things happen is to make sure as little data as possible gets collected. Yet, most electronic products out there do the exact opposite. Worse, the market for smartphones is a duopoly of two companies, neither of which has as a goal the protection of its users. It’s just different flavors of bad.

There’s a hidden price to the cheap services of the Googles and Facebooks of this world, and that is collection of data, which is then sold to third parties. Hardly any user is aware of the problems surrounding that.

KDE has set out to provide users an alternative. Plasma Mobile was created to give users a choice to regain control. We’re building an operating system, transparently, based on the values of Free software and we build it for users to take back control.

Purism and KDE

In the past week, we’ve worked with Purism, a Social Purpose Corporation devoted to bringing security, privacy, software freedom, and digital independence to everyone’s personal computing experience, to create a mobile phone that allows users to regain control.
Purism has started a crowdfunding campaign to collect the funds to make the dream of a security and privacy focused phone.

Invest in your future

By supporting this campaign, you can invest not only into your own future, become an early adopter of the first wave of privacy-protecting personal communication devices, but also to proof that there is a market for products that act in the best interest of the users.

Support the crowdfunding campaign, and help us protect you.