Current Events 2
"Minority and dissident communities face a perplexing challenge in countries with authoritarian governments. They need to remain anonymous to avoid persecution, but also must establish a trustworthy identity in their communications." Computer science and researchers traveled to three countries to help assess their challenges of maintaining a secure social media presence. They designed an app for android that would create a safeguard for the members for their anonymity and reliability of posts. The three countries were Mongolia, Zambia, and Turkey. These countries suffer from restricted speech, like Russia and China. "The problem with anonymous communication is you don't know if it's credible," said Miriam Metzger. This is where the app SecurePost comes into play because it allows the community to create secure groups on famous media, like Facebook, to maintain consistent presence on social media. The app allows total anonymity and flags any potential post that lacks proper credentials. This keeps them from revealing any information even if hacked or infiltrated. One main problem was that members wanted to extend their invitation to others and to do so they would write passwords on paper and send it to each other which is unsafe. The developers created a solution by allowing secure QR codes to be transmitted visually or over trusted connection to send encrypted messages. SecureApp can also run without a continuous internet connection which allows these regions to still use it and upload once it connects back again. "At the end of the day, we're not a company, we're researchers," said Metzger. They continue to add that these researchers create systems that businesses can build off of.
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