[Replicant] Report from CCC Camp 2019

[Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli]

On Sun, 01 Sep 2019 19:47:59 +0000
Fil Lupin <fillupin at protonmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Denis,
> thanks a lot for this report. It sounds it was an interesting meeting!
> 
> One question :
> 
> On Wednesday, August 28, 2019 10:54 PM, Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli
> <GNUtoo at cyberdimension.org> wrote:
> 
> > -   I learned that the serval protocol didn't require an accurate
> > clock as it used its internal clock for the messages. Serval is a
> > free software Android application that enables calls and message
> > without having to rely on the infrastructure. It's interesting
> > because on Replicant, the clock is reset if you remove the battery,
> > and also because many WiFi access point completely lack a hardware
> > clock.  
> 
> How does android do to avoid reseting the clock?
It doesn't. After removing the battery you need to either set it up
manually or to connect to some network and have the setting to set it
automatically enabled.

> Does this reset stands to protect privacy or is it a side-effect?
It's an annoying hardware limitation present in many devices like
smartphones and single board computers. As the software cannot always
cope with a bad time it can lead to annoying side effects.

You need an accurate enough time to use certificates. So it can be
quite problematic if you need a VPN to get Internet and you need
Internet to get a valid time, as the VPN usually uses certificates
which also need a mostly valid time.

A way to minimize the issue in Android and GNU/Linux would be
to have some package or scripts that stores the last known date at
shutdown.

> Another question linked to this: do you recommand an app to make
> international call?
I still need to look into that for my own use case.

I know that SIP and XMPP are protocols that enables that.

However I'm still looking for a system that would make encrypted calls
to XMPP, so I thought of using one of the free software SIP
applications for Android and Asterisk to make the bridge between SIP
and XMPP, but I ended up needing to repair Asterisk in Parabola and by
extension in AUR. Now the work is probably merged in AUR, but I still
need to merge it back in Parabola. I'll get back to merging the
changes in Parabola when I manage to find the time. 

However It might be a long time before I manage to find the time to do
the asterisk setup and test applications.

Denis.
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