---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Shaddi Hasan <shaddi@cs.berkeley.edu> Date: Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 9:41 AM Subject: [TIER] Hiring now: Rangzen -- Circumventing Government-Imposed Communications Blackouts To: "tier@tier.cs.berkeley.edu" <tier@tier.cs.berkeley.edu> Exciting stuff from TIER's own Yahel Ben-David. They're also hiring for a R&D lead: http://denovo.theresumator.com/apply/hGQLuw/RD-Team-Leader-Software-Engineer... FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE. July 22th, 2013 – Berkeley, CA. Project “Rangzen” – Kickoff. Circumventing Government-Imposed Communication Blackouts The De Novo Group, a non-profit corporation based in Berkeley, California, is launching a technology research and development project into digital communication solutions that preserve anonymity and are infrastructure independent. The target beneficiaries of these solutions are citizens of oppressive regimes faced by government-imposed communication blackouts. The first stage of the project, budgeted at two million dollars, is primarily funded by the US State Department’s bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL). It will produce an Android application that relies on cutting-edge computer science research from the University of California at Berkeley. The project was conceived and is led by UC Berkeley PhD candidate and De Novo Group co-founder, Yahel Ben-David. Yahel is a member of the TIER (Technology and Infrastructure for Emerging Regions) research group, led by Prof. Eric Brewer in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) and is co-advised by Prof. Scott Shenker who actively helps guide this research. “We are excited to undertake this important, practical, and urgent work and are thankful for the trust vested in us by our esteemed supporters. Especially, we are proud of our distinguished advisory board that will help propel this diverse, multidisciplinary initiative,” said Ben-David. A key challenge for any community-owned, decentralized, communication network is that of resource allocation and control. A network’s finite resources must be shared among citizens in a manner that deprioritizes unwanted traffic and abusive users, while desired content is allotted higher capacity. Current prioritization mechanisms often depend on a community reputation system: content from reputable users receive higher priority. However, use of reputation mechanisms conflicts with anonymity as it reveals and exposes its users. Anonymity is a critical property for dissent networks due to fear of persecution, but anonymity cripples traditional reputation systems which require authentication of users to defend against fake identities and Sybil attacks. This ostensible paradox has been the focus of the Berkeley research group over the past two years; the technical solution identified for this dilemma forms the cornerstone of the Rangzen project. Project website/contacts: http://rangzen.denovogroup.org/ _______________________________________________ TIER mailing list Website: http://tier.cs.berkeley.edu TIER@tier.cs.berkeley.edu https://www.millennium.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tier