[messaging] Tahoe-Lafs + miniLock: A device agnostic & user friendly zero knowledge file system?

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor]

On 11/04/2014 12:16 PM, Ximin Luo wrote:
> On 04/11/14 16:53, totient at riseup.net wrote:
>> Currently, there is no zero knowledge file system that is user friendly and fully open source.
> 
> Hi, I haven't yet read through the rest of it, but my first comment is that "zero-knowledge file system" sounds like mystical marketing terminology. I haven't heard of this term before, and only found it in reference to Spider Oak: https://spideroak.com/zero-knowledge/

fwiw, i hadn't heard "zero knowledge" applied to remote filesystems
until yesterday evening, when someone bent my ear about it as a
desirable property in a chat at a bar.  I had to double-check what they
meant specifically, and it turns out they referred to spideroak as a
system that had this property, though they weren't sure what it implied
aside from the "end-to-end" property (or "server can't access the data").

> The term sounds like it is inappropriately trying to associate with the impressive-sounding nature of a "zero-knowledge proof/protocol", which (AIUI) is the original use of the term "zero-knowledge".

I had the same impression.  I'd really like to not let this technical
term get blurred into marketing speak.  It's hard enough to catalog the
properties that we want in these systems without having well-established
terms applied to two distinct (or not so distinct) meanings.

is there someone who is friendly with the spider-oak folks who can
politely encourage them to shift their messaging on this?

	--dkg


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