We’re finally getting to the point that there is enough interest that it makes more sense to distribute updates here than via other channels

The Low-Down

Giving you the long story short of important updates:

• Llámenos is rapidly growing into what will become a mature platform for communications, case management, triage - a hub for whatever spokes you need
• We have pivoted from the v1 web UI to the more ambitious v2 vision out of a need for better end to end encryption - the major change being entirely native apps!
• We hope to begin internal testing of Android apps, have a shipped desktop app, and a deployed server (at least for testing, if not ready for production use) by early June
• The process is underway for submitting our iPhone app as well - this will take longer, however our accounts are at least approved for the app store
• As many have asked, yes we have experts helping to audit our crypto stack, and it’s going suprisingly well.

Who is Llámenos

1. An ambituous engineer with many years of experience building full-scale platforms, supporting and extending jail support and movement defense tech to vulnerable communities for over a decade.
2. Some coding agents. I’m not afraid to admit I’m using LLMs to accelerate the development, and it’s going well, more on this further down.
3. A growing list of security researchers and cryptographers who are providing early audits of our stack, some of them from platforms we already trust
4. A growing list of collectives, technologists and groups spanning jail support, rapid response, mutual aid and more communities who see the value of what we’re offering

I hope to start bringing the community together more, but I don’t want to sacrafice anyones safety in doing so. Signal group chats may happen, more on this soon. Let me know how you want to get involved.

Potential Contributors/Auditors, please join us!

1. If you have experience with Swift and Kotlin, that would help us accelerate. My Swift experience is outdated and so far claude code has gotten us suprisingly far, but a keen eye or several would help tremendously to ensure we’re on the right path
2. Security researchers, Cryptographers, please get ready for some deep audits! Some aspects of the platform are still in transition but we are beginnning the hardening phase
3. Testers! Varying technologist experience is welcome, all the way to minimal. Whether you know how to install servers or only know how to download apps and fiddle with them, you have much you can help us with. There may be signal groups just for user-testing and deployment testing soon, stay tuned!
4. Stakeholder Committee - For those with deep experience in the domains and needs of the community we serve, we may form a committee that meets monthly to ensure our features and priorities are on track. Technical skills are not mandatory at all, only deep lived experience in the trenches of movement defense, mutual aid, immigrant defense, etc, especially the coordination of said efforts

Counterspy.zip presentation

Thanks to the folks who participated in making this event happen, and for everyone who participated and asked questions. You can download odp | pptx the presentation here

Fundraising & Legal Entity

So far I’ve been paying for most things out of pocket - hardware, LLM plans, app store accounts, hosting etc. We’re hoping to set up a fund to help this project scale so that many of our users won’t have to worry about paying for this valuable service soon.

What’s more, we will need a legal entity eventually to “host” the application - as the legal point of contact you see when you download the app from the app store, and to be referenced on the privacy policy/etc. We may even form our own like Signal formed their own foundation, but hitching on to someone else who feels confident doing this would be nifty!

Physical Hosting

We’re partnering with a host in Iceland - 1984 - to host the initial shared platform (self hosting is welcomed and encouraged as well), but eventually it would be great to have a physically secure host in north america who can help run our platform and provide physical security and handle the warrant canary etc.

AI?!?! Whyyy

I know I know, “AI” is super problematic but this has been a very appropriate use of it, I promise

The current threat models have been severely impacted by models like claude and various tools emerging in this space, meaning what used to be “good enough” is now not enough - the sophistication of our adversaries has grown exponentially.

One of the best ways to fight this war is to accelerate our development with the keen and strategic use of LLM agents - claude models as well as kimi and qwen models from chinese companies have proven a well rounded stack. The experts who have begun auditing the stack are impressed. Fully zero knowledge, end to end encrypted systems are what we need, and these are not easy to build quickly, but we’ve found a sweet spot at getting models to help us build, audit and harden platforms.

I recall the essay from Audre Lorde regarding the master’s tools, and I also fully embrace the Tech Workers Coalition motto of “Tech Won’t Save Us”. We protect eachother, and we will liberate eachother, and “AI” wont save us, tech won’t save us, and the tools can play a role, but we won’t’ dismantle fascism without eachother

The growing counter-dragnet

Lastly, an exciting development is that we may become part of a wider platform to counter the orwellian platforms of our enemies. Both a shield and a weapon. Angle and Debil. More on this soon. Many of us involved have the skills and have even had recruiting attempts from these adversaries, but we choose to put our queer shoulders to the wheel to provide counterpower to their horrific and often ill-conceived plans