[A2k] GNU Telephony Releases VoIP Encryption per Zimmerman's ZRTP and RFC 3711

[Seth Johnson]

For many people, net neutrality was an issue that reared its head
when the FCC proposed to regulate VoIP protocols in 2004.  The
following announcement is a blow for independent and autonomous
protocol development and neutral Internet communications, as much
as it is for privacy.

A lot of different groups forged stronger connections right at
that point -- one event that came together then was the Internet
Commons Congress in March of 2004, where people in areas such as
communications policy and copyright/patents and technology, plus
domestic and international arenas, all recognized the need to
work together the protect the Internet Commons (See
http://www.nyfairuse.org/icc/audio/byspeaker/).


Seth

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Secure Call announcement, for immediate review and
comment
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2006 18:04:00 -0400
From: David Sugar <dyfet@gnu.org>
To: Seth Johnson <seth.johnson@RealMeasures.dyndns.org>
CC: David Sugar <dyfet@gnu.org>, jays@panix.com

< SNIP >

---

October 1, 2006; Bayonne NJ --- GNU Telephony is happy to
announce that with the latest release of the GNU RTP Stack, GNU
ccrtp 1.5, we are introducing a free software framework for
developing both the secure RTP profile for VOIP (as defined by
RFC 3711), and also a GNU GPL licensed implementation of Phil
Zimmermann's ZRTP protocol for voice encryption as used in
"Zfone". By offering a native secure RTP framework that can be
directly embedded in newly developed VOIP applications, GNU
Telephony intends to promote the development and widespread use
of secure and intercept free voice and video communication
services worldwide.

The Twinkle softphone package, immediately available with
SRTP/ZRTP support, is the first complete free software package to
make use of Secure call features offered in the GNU RTP Stack.

The GNU RTP stack can be used to develop secure communications
for GNU/Linux hosted applications. The stack may also be used to
develop application on various BSD systems including Mac OS/X, on
Microsoft Windows, and even for embedded systems. We have tested
and built the GNU RTP Stack with Handhelds Open Embedded build
environment, and we look forward to implementing a Twinkle based
secure calling solutions on Linux kernel powered cell phones in
the future.

Securing RTP sessions is part of our vision in GNU Telephony to
help make passive voice communication intercept a thing of the
past. By making "secure by design" encryption capabilities simple
to embed, and by enabling the largest possible participation in
developing such solutions through free software, we hope to break
down those remaining barriers that prevent secure telephony from
being widely deployed over next generation telephone networks.
Part of this vision includes offering TLS encapsulated SIP over
TCP, and deployment of anonymous calling proxies, to further deny
passive data mining of call session and connection associative
information in the future.

Downloads:
http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/commoncpp/commoncpp2-1.5.0.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ccrtp/ccrtp-1.5.0.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ccrtp/libzrtpcpp-0.9.0.tar.gz
http://www.xs4all.nl/~mfnboer/twinkle/download/twinkle-0.9.tar.gz

Additional Resources:
Phil Zimmermann's zrtp specification;
http://www.infosecwriters.com/text_resources/pdf/Zfone_SSotillo.pdf.

Zfone project;
http://www.philzimmermann.com/zfoneproject/index.html.

GNU Telephony Secure Calling;
http://wiki.gnutelephony.org/index.php/Secure_Call. Twinkle
Softphone;
http://www.twinklephone.com/.

Open Embedded;
http://www.handhelds.org/geeklog/index.php.

About GNU Telephony:
GNU Telephony is a meta project dedicated to the development and
promotion of the use of free software for telephony. GNU
Telephony is used to directly support the GNU Common C++ family
of libraries and telephony application servers such as GNU
Bayonne, which are part of the GNU Project, as well as other
packages that we regularly use. We will also support several
special projects from this site, including CAPE runtime
libraries, Secure Calling, and GNU Telephony Open Embedded.