The U.S. Pirate Party plans to create a new social network that will let Americans communicate without the National Security Agency spying on them, one of the party's "captains" told Business Insider.
Like many third parties, the Pirate Party supports some uncommon ideas. But with the hullabaloo surrounding the NSA's secret surveillance program PRISM, one of its goals sits at the forefront of everyone's mind — online privacy.
"Captain" (but really chairperson of the national committee) Lindsay-Anne Brunner told us the Pirate Party started thinking about creating a new social network two weeks ago. The Pirates even posted a Facebook status requesting a few more deckhands with IT skills.
Brunner told us the group plans to model the undertaking after the social network Diaspora, an NYU brain-child made real by Kickstarter. Diaspora uses Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol, a method for encrypting communication over the Internet. In non-hacker terms, any site that asks for personal information probably uses SSL.
Now, the NSA can decode SSL, but only if the parent company spills the key. The U.S. Pirate Party, of course, would never do that with its social networking site.
Still, Facebook and Google deny having any knowledge of the PRISM program. So the burning question remains: Can the NSA crack SSL without consent?
Before Diaspora even launched, the site attained savior-status online. But the "anti-Facebook" sort of flopped. The Pirates have a hard task ahead of them: creating an NSA-proof platform and then getting people on board.
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