Trisha Shetty (Editor)

The Guardian Project (software)

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Commercial?
  
No

Established
  
2009 (2009)

Founder
  
Nathan Freitas

Website
  
guardianproject.info

The Guardian Project (software)

Motto
  
People, Apps and Code You Can Trust

Type of project
  
Research and development, Open-source software, Encryption software, Mobile security, Internet privacy

The Guardian Project is a global collective of software developers, designers, advocates, activists and trainers who develop open source mobile security software and operating system enhancements. They also create customized mobile devices to help individuals communicate more freely and protect themselves from intrusion and monitoring. The effort specifically focuses on users who live or work in high-risk situations, and who often face constant surveillance and intrusion attempts into their mobile devices and communication streams.

Contents

History

The Guardian Project was founded by Nathan Freitas in 2009 in Brooklyn, NY. Since it was founded, the Guardian Project has developed more than a dozen mobile applications for Android and iOS with over two million downloads and hundreds of thousands of active users. It has also partnered with prominent open source software projects, activists groups, NGOs, commercial partners and news organizations to support their mobile security software capabilities.

In November 2014, "ChatSecure + Orbot" received a top score on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's secure messaging scorecard, along with Cryptocat, TextSecure, "Signal / RedPhone", Silent Phone, and Silent Text. "Jitsi + Ostel" scored 6 out of 7 points on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's secure messaging scorecard. They lost a point because there has not been a recent independent code audit.

In March 2016, Freitas announced a partnership with F-Droid and CopperheadOS with the goal of creating "a solution that can be verifiably trusted from the operating system, through the network and network services, all the way up to the app stores and apps themselves".

Funding

The Guardian Project has received funding from Google, UC Berkeley with the MacArthur Foundation, Avaaz, Internews, Open Technology Fund, WITNESS, the Knight Foundation, Benetech, and Free Press Unlimited.

Through work on partner projects like the Tor Project, Commotion mesh and StoryMaker, the Project has received indirect funding both from the US State Department (through the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Internet Freedom program) and from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (through HIVOS).

Active projects

  • Orbot: A Tor client for Android. Tor uses Onion Routing to provide access to network services that may be blocked, censored or monitored, while also protecting the identity of the user requesting those resources.
  • Orfox: A mobile counterpart of the Tor Browser. The Guardian Project announced the stable alpha of Orfox on 30 June 2015. Orfox is built from Fennec (Firefox for Android) code and the Tor Browser code repository, and is given security hardening patches by the Tor Browser development team. Some of the Orfox build work is based on the [Fennec] F-Droid project. In Orfox, the project removed the WebRTC component, Chromecast connectivity, app permissions to access the camera, microphone, contacts (address book), location data (GPS et al.), and NFC. Orfox is to supersede the Orweb browser project.
  • Orweb: A privacy enhanced web browser that supports proxies. When used with Orbot, Orweb protects against network analysis, blocks cookies, keeps no local browsing history, and disables Flash to keep the user safe.
  • ChatSecure: An instant messaging application integrated with the Off-the-Record encrypted chat protocol. Formerly called Gibberbot, the app is built on Google’s open-source Talk app and modified to support the Jabber XMPP protocol.
  • ObscuraCam: A secure camera app that can obscure, encrypt or destroy pixels within an image. This project is in partnership with WITNESS, a human rights video advocacy and training organization.
  • Ostel: A tool for having end-to-end encrypted VoIP calls. This is a public testbed of the Open Secure Telephony Network (OSTN) project, with the goal of promoting the use of free, open protocols, standards and software, to power end-to-end secure voice communications on mobile devices, as well as with desktop computers.

    • Distribution

    The Guardian Project offers downloads of its apps from Google Play, Amazon Appstore, Aptoide, directly from their website, and through an F-Droid compatible repository. Direct downloads are signed and can be verified with the developer's key.

    References

    The Guardian Project (software) Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA