Shazzle

Privacy

The lines between private and public information have become blurred in the age of the Web. Large corporations and government organizations collect voluminous data on most actions we take on our computers. The client server architecture of the Web plays right into their hands because all messages on the web travel from the computers where they originate, through servers owned for the most part by large corporations where they are copied and stored, and only then passed on to the intended recipient. Did you know that Google keeps copies of emails passed through its gmail service? So do Yahoo and MSN. It is the way the system works. Likewise Google’s YouTube keeps records of what each user has watched, when, and for how long, and now Viacom has gotten a court order that allows it to review those records. So if you’ve ever been on YouTube not one, but at least two large corporations as well as the court that has jurisdiction in the case will know what you were doing there. In much the same way web companies implant cookies on your computer to track your profile information and what you are doing on the web. How might these corporations use this information for their own profit? Well consider that Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Cisco (confirm this) recently turned over thousands of names of suspected dissident Chinese bloggers to the Chinese Government. Now some of these people are jailed for exercising free speech while Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Cisco continue to turn over user names to the Chinese government to protect their business arrangements with the Chinese.

Big Brother can be stopped in his tracks.

Peer Fusion LLC believes that free political speech can advance the cause of freedom, and free commercial speech can advance the cause of equity. We reject the client server architecture of the World Wide Web that puts the servers in the service of big government (including Red China) and big business. We refuse to cede the field to those businesses that put profits before people. We determined that there had to be a better way, and, with a team of engineers, we have developed a peer-to-peer internet communications protocol that takes a hammer to the central command and control architecture of the servers and places the control instead with the individual user at the peer (PC) level. It is simple yet elegant: move the organizational and tracking tasks (the computer logic) from the server to the individual peer by creating an index and data managing capability at the peer level that persists in communities.

What this means to the layperson is that you can send an email with this architecture directly to the intended recipient without the message passing through any servers at all. No one but you and your recipient will have a copy, not even us at Peer Fusion who facilitate the message. Our application server merely gives you the address of your recipient. You become your own postman, delivering the message directly.

You could watch videos with this technology as well without Peer Fusion knowing what videos you accessed. Viacom could then serve court orders on Peer Fusion until the cows came home without discovering from us what you are watching because we do not know. We do not ever get a copy or record of it. It is your own private business, not ours, not Viacom’s, and not Red China’s. Out of the same respect for your privacy we do not use cookies, nor does our architecture allow anyone else to use them, either. You control what information you give to the sites you access.

This decentralized structure presents a nightmare scenario to censors since there is no central spot to control as in server based architecture. The index of content at the peer level presents a moving target to censors because if one peer is shut down a user can easily be redirected to one of many other peers and connect to uncensored information this way. There are no fixed ‘sites’ to shut down, but merely free information flowing between hundreds, or thousands, or even millions of users so that if one is chopped down many more can spring up in its place.

In summary, the data managing capabilities Peer Fusion has built into its peer to peer technology can bring privacy to the internet by keeping your personal information and habits off servers owned by large corporations who use this information for their own ends. Only you and the people you interact with will have information on what you are doing. In short the permanent ‘wiretap’ that Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and others have built into the web architecture will dissolve, putting you back in charge.

Peer Fusion has licensed this technology to Shazzle LLC to get it into user’s hands. Shazzle has recently launched its beta that allows filesharing including very large files, IM, and community search and creation. Email will be coming soon.

We hope you are as excited about these new developments as we are. We are convinced that as privacy erodes, so does freedom. We are most free when we are in control of our personal space, our personal decisions, and our personal information. Shazzle’s Peer Fusion technology will put this control back in your hands as you access the internet. Just say no to the corporations and governments that want to track your every move. They should only know what you choose to tell them. If we wean ourselves from the Web and its client server technology that makes spying so easy, that will be all they will be able to know.

Tags: internet privacy

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 at 5:20 pm and is filed under privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.