Tools for Time Travel

This page is for an old project that is not be part of Google Summer of Code currently. If you are a student looking for projects to get involved with we suggest you check out the projects linked to from the main page of this wiki.

Tools for Time Travel is a project, in cooperation with the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, to build tools for "time capsule encryption." Time capsule encryption allows messages to be sent securely into the future so they cannot be read by anyone, including their intended recipient, until a particular date or event.

We are researching a number of separate tools and techniques:

• A distributed network for generating and publishing distributed M-of-N public/private keypairs according to a set schedule.
• A desktop tool for sharding and recombining files using mathematically secure secret sharing techniques.
• A tool for storing digital shards in a visual format on paper for longterm archival storage.

Ideal candidate criteria

We are looking for candidates who want to work on one of these projects or develop new tools and techniques related to time capsule encryption (anything from cryptocurrency integration to undersea data beacons -- you tell us).

In your proposal, please explain what specific strategies or algorithms you believe will be most successful for time capsule encryption; what adversaries your strategy is designed to defend against; and why users would benefit from using your strategy over existing options.