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My (Michael Anders) goals with the Open Source project Academic Signature and with my other activities regarding cryptography:

1.
I want to encourage all computer users to gain some very basic understanding of ciphers, privacy protection and securing authenticity of digital documents.

2.
Based on that understanding I want to empower individuals to protect their privacy against billion$ state funded eavesdropping and snooping organizations in the digital realm. It may sound overly pathetic but basically I want to contribute to the defense of democracy and freedom against current threats originating from within our western democracies.

3.
I want computer users to be able to come to an informed decision on whether to use Academic Signature for privacy protection, to use another cryptographic tool or not to employ cryptography altogether. There may be good reasons for either decision. People should neither be bedazzled by academic titles nor by the overwhelming chorus of "experts" telling them to leave thinking to the experts and believe in(or even buy) what they say.


I do not and will not:

a) Have any commercial interest regarding my project Academic Signature.

b) Comply with any demands to limit the cryptographic strength of my software.
(You are more than welcome to import it into the US without restrictions on key size or block size.)

c) Mitigate my software just for the sake of compatibility with a standard I do not appreciate.

d) Mitigate my software such that it can be "safely" run by truly stupid people.

e) Intend to bedazzle anyone with my academic titles.
 (I had to face this allegation recently. It was expressed by an IT-security expert with an IT engineering background. I am a physicist.)


Another disclaimer:
The safe use of Academic Signature rests on the assumption, that your computer has not been compromised. Protecting your system against compromise by state funded eavesdropping organizations is a near impossible and (logically)dirty business which I do not have any exceptional expertise at.

However, widespread use of strong cryptography will force the tax funded snooping organizations to compromise the computers of targets in order to circumvent encryption and still be able to eavesdrop on them.
This will render government covert dragnet surveillance of children, teenagers, grandmothers, security experts, pacifists, journalists, lawyers, system administrators, politicians, doctors, civil liberty activists, artists, your family and me infeasible and risky for them.
They would then have to go back to sound secret service work against true adversaries of our freedom, which is what we pay them for in the first place.

I recommend using open source software and Linux(e.g. ubuntu) instead of using proprietary operating systems. Please protect your privacy by using TOR or another anonymizing service when browsing the web for content that you would not want hostile organizations to be able to connect to your name, twist everything around and use this against you.



Klein Nordende(Germany), 3/29/2014

      Michael Anders