[Cryptography] doorbells for Ukraine

[iang]

On 18/12/2022 09:04, William Allen Simpson wrote:
> Surely somebody else has already thought of this, but....


Yes, but... the ones who have thought of it before also include the 
Russians.


> Ring had/has a Ukraine R&D facility.
>
> Ukraine needs to detect incoming shells, missiles, drones.
>
> Wouldn't a few (thousand) cloud connected cameras and microphones be
> able to determine paths and trajectories?
>
> Also, is there any ongoing public effort to standardize secure
> Nest and Ring interoperable communications?


Ukraine has several apps related to wartime, I've heard. Citizens have 
also been shooting pix on various items of military significance.

This also has a side-effect.  Under Geneva Convention, soliders wear 
uniforms and when captured are required to give name, rank, serial 
number on the one part, and on the other part are in a protected status 
called prisoners of war.  The capturing side has to take care of their 
prisoners - food, medical, shelter.

Civilians are not permitted to participate in acts of war.  If civilians 
are found to commit acts of war, not being in uniform or with 
name/rank/serial, then they are no longer civilians, but participants. 
The common name for their new status is spies.

Spies have no protection under the Geneva convention.  And, in general, 
the punishment for spying includes summary execution, which meant in my 
army that an officer could simply shoot the spy.

This is not an idle situation - in Bucha, I think it was, civilians were 
forced to open their phones to Russian soldiers. Civilians that had 
military sensitive information on it were taken aside, as spies.  
Reporting by journalists suggests that those spies were the ones who 
were tortured and executed by Russian soldiers.

So as a designer of such apps one would have to understand the risks 
that were being taken.  For myself, I'd never encourage civilians to get 
involved in war.  But if someone were to choose to take those dangerous 
steps, one might consider disappearing messages and even disappearing 
apps.  Have a care - the soldiers of the other army aren't stupid as 
they'll look for that too, and it could escalate badly.

iang