Hi all,
Some people here may remember our ssl logging project, which eventually
evolved into "TLSNotary". We've continued to work on it over the last
several months - both to ensure its security and to make it as easy as
possible to use (for example, it no longer needs browser patching but
uses normal Firefox). It's now ready to be tested; please give it a try
if you feel inclined. It shouldn't be too painful..

The basic idea, for those not aware, is that you can use crypto to prove
that you visited an https page. This means you could provide proof to an
arbitrator that you made a bank transfer or similar payment. The
motivation was to support more decentralised exchange of fiat for
bitcoin. Manfred Karrer's bitsquare (bitsquare.io) is the kind of thing
that TLSNotary would fit in best to - a set up with peer to peer trading
on a DHT, and a set of arbitrators being available. Open Bazaar is of
course another type of project with a possible relationship. As well
as these
scenarios there could be other uses for TLSNotary - one that has crossed
our mind is enabling cryptographic fiat audit of bitcoin exchanges. As a
tool, TLSNotary may have various possible applications.

The introductory info is here: https://github.com/tlsnotary/tlsnotary.
You might find useful the README on that page, the FAQ and the
introductory video
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKdEhuiXYz4&list=PLnSCooZY6_w9j5tQ8jAeZtrl9l4NnL48G&index=3).

For those interested in delving into the details of the algorithm and
the code, there's a "whitepaper" (algorithm description,
https://github.com/tlsnotary/tlsnotary/blob/master/data/documentation/TLSNotary.pdf):
and a video about the crypto to help understand it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4ukd4I8S9A&index=2 (warning, long and
technical) . Obviously, that
subset of people that can understand this - we would greatly appreciate
any comments or questions about the crypto.

The application can be downloaded from there directly (download zip or
clone).

As is explained, you need Firefox and Python 2, nothing else.

There are two ways you could help us out by testing:

1. just trying the 'self-test' (running entirely on your own machine)
and trying out various https protected pages (including things like bank
statement pages). Read the user guide
(https://github.com/tlsnotary/tlsnotary#user-guide) or watch the vid
mentioned above to get started. If you run self test you are only
'sharing' data with yourself, so even in the absence of a better
understanding, there isn't any reason to be worried about security here.

2. Trying out between friends (or with one of us) the normal audit
process, where one person acts as auditee (chooses a page) and the other
person audits it. To act as auditor you should read the auditor guide:
https://github.com/tlsnotary/tlsnotary/blob/master/data/documentation/AuditorGuide.md.
It's a bit long, but that's because the auditor role is obviously
serious business if someone is doing the audit for real.

The best way to contact us, for example if you need technical help, is
on freenode at #bitsquare.io: waxwing (me), dansmith_btc and oakpacific.
We're usually around during European hours. Or, use the github repo
Issues if necessary, or tlsnotarygroup at gmail.com for more general
questions.

Best wishes,
Adam