The idea of Kullo

CC BY-ND 3.0 | 2012-09-01 | Update 1 2012-09-03

The idea of Kullo
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When you compose a letter, the first thing you do is to choose the person that it is meant for. Every little detail of your message is determined by the recipient and your relationship towards him or her: the content of the letter, the tone of the language you use and how much personal information you are willing to provide. In short: the message is tailored to one person only, and so it is crucial that nobody else should be able to read what you have written down.

Most people take this privacy for granted, but since we almost stopped writing letters on paper there is a need for a digital equivalent which adapts to our actual security requirements. And this is not the email which was invented years before the internet. The email is the digital equivalent to a greeting card, which can be read, copied, manipulated and disposed of. On the way from its composer to its destination, an email passes hundreds of network nodes controlled by individuals you don't know – telecommunication company employees and managers, some of whom regularly enjoy dinners with government officials. So let me raise a question: Can you trust every single one of these people?

The majority of regular users use what is inexpensive and easy to handle, and it works fine for their everyday needs. They don't have a choice. Yet.

There is a rebellious young generation out there that knows a lot about servers, connection protocols and encryption. It is our responsibility to develop the tools and measures to protect the privacy of every single member of our society. This is not a question of another fancy feature for our phones. This is way more fundamental: the ability to communicate via the written word, with complete control over who reads what you send.

Fortunately, we live in a time where we have everything we need for that: Internet is available to three out of four humans on earth via mobile networks and every year bandwidth is increasing and getting cheaper. An unbelievable computational power fits into everyone's pocket and is affordable. And researchers have created a variety of strong cryptographic algorithms that enable us to secure everything we want. In my opinion there is no reason why sending a message with reliable end-to-end encryption shouldn't be as easy as writing an email is today.

In order to make the world a little better, I am going to create a totally new easy-to-use messaging system, in which the user
(1) does not have to rely on the security of his internet connection,
(2) is protected from censorship,
(3) can be sure that his own messaging provider can not read his messages,
(4) is protected against data gathering by telecommunication companies and network providers,
(5) can authenticate the origin of an incoming message.

More specifically, the messaging system will implement the following features:
(a) End-to-end encryption: On the way from the sender to the receiver, nobody is able to read the message. Unencrypted messaging is not possible – I call this a feature.
(b) Decentralization: Everyone in the internet can set up his own messaging server for personal use, company messaging or as a service provider.
(c) Receiver-only envelope: Letters in the paper world have a key feature that all digital communications miss: the ability to send a letter without a sender name on it. Let's get that option back! No inbox provider needs to know who is writing messages to me.
(d) Signature inside: After opening the digital envelope, it is possible to check the sender's signature. Required signatures make it easy to blackist junk senders.
(e) Opening confirmations: Confirmations which certify that a message was delivered, decrypted and the signature was verified successfully.

I call this project Kullo. And I am convinced it will solve one of the most urged internet issues.

If you like the idea, share this document and follow @kulloproject on Twitter.

Thanks for your attention,

Simon Warta