Re: Tor on Android

[Nathan Freitas <nathan@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Just wanted to introduce myself here, as the guy who got beat to the punch in porting of OnionCoffee to Android. :)
I had the service working, but hadn't wrapped it yet in application, browser, etc. Great work on the app level work, Connell. I've got your source building here now, and am happy to be a contributor. I've also got the Android NDK up with Tor source in it, though I don't have it building yet.

My interesting in this comes from my work on Guardian (http://openideals.com/guardian), a grant-funded open-source project I am leading . The goal is to develop a secure, private, anonymous-as-possible smart phone, based on Android. The funding is specifically for human rights advocates/organizations working in complicated parts of the world, but obviously, much like Tor itself, we expect it to be universally useful for anyone who cares about their privacy.

From a technical perspective, Guardian is a security-focused/audited OS Mod/distro with a specific suite of apps for encryption, remote wipe, secure documentation/video/audio reporting, and of course, anonymous browsing. 

I am eager to support any effort in this work with what energy, funding, hardware, computing resources I can, of course in coordination with Tor and the rest of you.

+nathan

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 8:50 AM, Lexi Pimenidis <siegen@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 02:07:21PM CEST, Connell Gauld wrote:

Hej,

> I'm the guy who who developed TorProxy and Shadow on Android.

Well done, from what I've heared.

> For android, if we are targeting consumers' devices (rather than, say,
> rooted devices) we are restricted to using Java and android's Native
> Development Kit. The NDK makes it possible to write small sections of
> code in C/C++ but doesn't provide much in the way of libraries. It's
> really designed for optimising the small sections of a Java application
> that are bottlenecks. In addition, there may be Java platforms for which
> an NDK isn't available.

If we target to develop a fully featured Java version, as well as a
small memory footprint/small CPU consumption version for small devices
that would be OK. Is it realistic to have a third version (replace the second)
with one specifically targeting Android? (the later resolves to the
question of how significant the share of users and the performance gain is)

[anyway I think we both come to the same conclusion:]

> So perhaps the best way to go is to get a solid Java implementation that
> can be customised (performance wise) for whichever devices are
> appropriate?

I fully agree to your opinion :)

-- Lexi

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