Fixing the Internet for confidentiality and security

> The Internet is the glue that is turning us into a super-organism, for better or worse.

Nicely said, and to the extent this is true, people, organizations and governments seeking to damage the Internet for growth and short-term profit are literally cancer. Yes, that includes both the NSA and (black-hat) SEO industry, among others.

It seems like a very uphill battle at best. As the internet becomes more popular, powerful agencies are increasingly interested in controlling or damaging it. Since the largest service providers in the US alone seem determined to end it's open nature, and spy agencies around the world seem determined to do away with anonymity on it, it's easily a losing battle at worst.

If you're interested in decentralized mesh networks, take a look at Project Meshnet [1], Hyperboria [2], and the cjdns [3] routing software. It's a small, but growing community of people working in a similar space as the edgenet idea mentioned in the post. Decentralized routing and end-to-end encryption, plus there are already hundreds of dedicated nodes bootstrapping communication over the existing Internet.

[1] http://projectmeshnet.org/ [2] http://hyperboria.net/ [3] https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns

Re. edgenet: it looks to be overlapping with serval https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.servalproj... - I wonder why not contribute to that project rather than building from scratch ?

This is someone that is actually in a position to make a difference (in practicality - not in law) to our privacy. Maybe he will turn Canonical around from vanity projects (Unity and Mir) and work to make Ubuntu better at controlling our privacy?

On the other hand I have a flying pig if anyone wants to buy one...

It seems like a marketing opportunity missed. Canonical provides the most widely used open source OS. Something like a Web-of-trust key exchange mechanism and secure email service seem like a logical product line extension. I'd pay for that. Their file storage product seemed disconnected from any other advantage they might have.