Phil Zimmerman announced yesterday that he has released “Zfone, a new product that takes a new approach to make a secure telephone for the Internet.”

The source is open and beta versions are available for Mac OS X and Linux, and uses Phil’s new ZRTP:

I think it’s better than the other approaches to secure VoIP, because it achieves security without reliance on a PKI, key certification, trust models, certificate authorities, or key management complexity that bedevils the email encryption world. It also does not rely on SIP signaling for the key management, and in fact does not rely on any servers at all. It performs its key agreements and key management in a purely peer-to-peer manner over the RTP packet stream. It interoperates with any standard SIP phone, but naturally only encrypts the call if you are calling another Zfone client. This new protocol has been submitted to the IETF as a proposal for a public standard, to enable interoperability of SIP endpoints from different vendors.

Way to go Phil! We’re all still pulling our hair out over email key management and he announces a PKI-less (server-less!) communication client for voice. This defnitely lowers the bar for adoption of a secure system while increasing trust.

Bruce Schneier started the Individual I campaign last year with an interesting idea. All you have to do is adopt the logo to show that you are in favor of:

• Freedom from surveillance
• Personal privacy
• Anonymity
• Equal protection
• Due process
• Freedom to read, write, think, speak, associate, and travel
• The right to make your own choices about sex, reproduction, marriage, and death
• The right to dissent

All noble causes, but I’m not so sure of the logo concept. The current logo looks like something you might find at a construction site. Contractors always seem to have some giant letter and a globe or world image. Or maybe it just too similar to the international symbol for tourist information. Imagine when people who display the logo suddenly find all the tourists asking them for help — “but your button means you are to give me a map of the local area, no? Can you at least point me to the hostel?” Might be a good conversation starter, but it could also start to annoy the legitimate information booths.

And what is the split down the middle of the “I” supposed to represent? Brackets?

Maybe I’m the wrong kind of person to comment on button and sticker design (having little/no experience myself). But it seems to me that a campaign for human rights based on privacy needs something a little more iconic and unique. I propose some variation of the following as an alternative:

Or does that infringe on the “cats” trademark?

More seriously, I’m kind of curious how an “Individual I” concept might merge or overlap with the “Army of One” campaign. Anyone else notice the very similar themes of ontology? For some reason I would have expected Bruce to have more in common with Martin Buber’s I and Thou than a US military advertising campaign.

Speaking of the US military, here’s another idea: the famous logo from the 1st Armored Division could be transformed into an I, in order to achieve a good mix, like saying “an army of I”:

From this: to this:

Although you wouldn’t be allowed to call it the “big red i”, or “red bone”…

Some updates are critical and deserve immediate attention, such as today’s announcement (Microsoft Security Bulletin MS06-001 and MS06-012) that Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office Could Allow Remote Code Execution (905413).

However, other updates provide little more than amusement (in between the remote code execution crises). Take KB912475 for example, which was officially published on 2/28/2006:

Australia has changed the regularly scheduled end of Daylight Saving Time in five Australian states from March 2006 to the first Sunday of April 2006 due to the 2006 Commonwealth Games. Install this update to enable your computer to automatically adjust the computer clock on the correct date. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

I’m not sure which issue is more strange, that Australia is trying to cheat time for the games or that you may have to restart your OS when you adjust the clock. I guess the bigger issue becomes whether the time changes will cause any kind of application outages among systems that are not patched in time for the games to begin. Imagine a contestant using an unpatched version of the Windows OS while assuming that the time-change will happen automatically and failing to make it to their event on time.

And speaking of changing the system time, when will Microsoft release a patch that pushes back the IRS filing deadline…?