CryptoAUSTRALIA says proposals have been made to ban, weaken or backdoor encryption in Australia. "The aim is to allow law enforcement agencies to peek into encrypted messages on the wire," the organisation says.

To help you enjoy a secure and free chat experience, CryptoAUSTRALIA has announced a workshop to teach how you can set up your own self-hosted end-to-end encrypted chat server. The workshop will be on 5 July at 6pm in the Sydney CBD.

The technologies to be used are Matrix and Riot.

Matrix is an open standard for decentralised communication and Riot allows teams to communicate across a wide range of collaboration apps.

The goal of this workshop is to teach you how to configure and run your own Matrix/Riot service. By the end of the workshop, you will be able to log into secure chat rooms with your phone and computer and invite others to the same server.

The workshop has limited spaces, so RSVP via Meetup.com if you are interested; you will also find the address on the Meetup page.

The workshop will be Linux-based. Windows users are also free to attend, but should prepare for the workshop by downloading an SSH client such as PuTTY beforehand.

Be sure to bring your own fully-charged laptop. If you wish to keep your server running after the workshop you should also organise a registered domain name of your own, plus a virtual server running in the cloud.

A domain name and virtual server will be made available during the workshop so those without can still participate, and then re-implement their server at a later date.