An outline of what a Privly Application does, and why.
Privly non-technical video: vimeo.com/83073455
More Information
GitHub: github.com/privly
IRC: #privly on irc.freenode.net
Development List: groups.google.com/group/privly
Wiki: github.com/privly/privly-organization/wiki
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Transcript:
Recent months have brought a flowering of privacy open source projects that offer distinctive and powerful functionality for internet privacy. While many projects have passionate user bases, they still suffer from terrible adoption rates. Privly solves these adoption issues by invoking DRY at the scale of the web. In this video I will describe what Privly is, and what it can do.
Privly's design inspiration comes from the property of "content indifference," which means every website presents user-contributed content in the same way--in rectangles. We turn these rectangles into "privacy applications" that have properties determined by special URLs.
To give you an idea of what universal DRY for the web looks like, here are a few examples of the same privacy application viewed in different contexts, starting with "business as usual" for the web.
This application is hosted by a web server, but let's turn on the browser extension to change where the application code is served from.
Here is the same application with the benefit of "local trust" since it is hosted inside the browser extension. No remote code is running in this application, so we have eliminated the fundamental security challenge from web browsers--the remote party.
Now here is the magic-- we can view the same application stripped of all user interface and distinguishing markings and embed it into a remotely served web application. Now we can click this application and it is the application as hosted by the browser extension.--we still have local trust.
Privly builds on this concept with a privacy application stack so any web application can run inside the browser extension. This has profound implications for both bootstrapping privacy onto the web, and providing robust novel functionality.
You should note that Privly allows for shared credentials and state even for websites the user has not visited.
So if you are developing open source privacy software--or just want to experiment--let's explore using the Privly application stack as a new way of reaching users.
Thanks for watching, if you have any questions you can post to the mailing list or drop in on our IRC channel.
