[guardian-dev] Haven Android 0.2.1-beta-1

[Nathan of Guardian]

On Tue, Jul 20, 2021, at 6:51 PM, Greg Troxel wrote: 
> I've always found Haven intriguing but have been confused by two things:
> 
>   Signal has its good points, but a signficant bad point is needing a
>   phone number.  It's never been clear to me if the Haven hone needs a
>   SIM with a phone number, or if one can send to a
>   phone-number-linked-Signal-account from a device which is SIM-less and
>   not registered with Signal.  Ideally, I would understand that from
>   REAME.md.

Yes, that is a challenge. Given the original collaborator/imagineer behind the project was Ed Snowden, it was deemed that only Tor and Signal were worthy enough to be integrated with the project. We did at one point have SMS support, but Google took the ability for apps to send direct SMS messages away for most developers.

You can setup Signal easily with a google voice or other virtual number. That is our recommendation for a SIM-less device.

Otherwise, we are looking at adding Telegram and Matrix support, since those are both relatively easy to add, and can work without a phone number.

>   The emphasis seems to be on Signal as the sole notification mechanism
>   (disregarding SMS as 1) needing a SIM and 2) being cleartext).
>   Obvious mechanisms that should be supported are XMPP and matrix, and
>   perhaps email and/or deltachat.  (FWIW, I have found that XMPP
>   notifications with Conversations on a phone to receive them to work
>   well, being prompt and not losing them if the receiver is
>   disconnected.  Sender buffering is a bit trickier, but entirely
>   doable.)  I am guessing it is in order to open a bug for each of
>   these, although only 10^-4 as helpful as actually providing code.
> 

My hope is that we can make a generic interface for "Notification Channel" and find a way to support a variety of channels. 

We'll be pushing forward on more work here in the coming weeks, so please continue the suggestions, requests and code!