How it works
From the paper to the archive, without ever showing it to the server
A few steps, one single idea: every piece of content is sealed where it is born, and outside the lodge no one can reopen it, not even us.
Step 1
You write or upload the paper
You draft a paper with the sober editor, or upload a document that is already finished. Up to this point everything is on your device: nothing has yet left for the server.
Step 2
It is encrypted in your browser
Before leaving the device, the content is sealed in a box that only your lodge can reopen. The server receives only that sealed box: it does not know the key that opens it.
Step 3
One single key, the lodge's
The box opens with the lodge's single key, received when you join and kept only on your device: the server does not have it. What you can read depends on your degree and your offices, and it is the service that shows you only what you are admitted to, nothing more.
Step 4
Meetings on the calendar
Sessions are scheduled on the calendar, with their agenda, in person or online. The summons composes itself from the details of the session, ready to print or to leave attached; attendance is gathered there, and the secretary keeps their own overview.
Step 5
The room of the online session
A session can also be held online, in a room that evokes the setting of the Temple. At the entrance stands a Tyler: they welcome those at the door, the vetting stays a human act in real time, and they admit or turn away whoever knocks, with no self-admission at all. Brothers and sisters enter from the portal with a tap, guests with a link and an invitation code. In the room those present take their places by column and by degree, with the East in its place, and the work follows the control of the floor, the open vote and the gavel. Like papers, minutes and the cash register, with high privacy the audio and video stream too is encrypted end-to-end: it leaves the devices of those present already protected, and what reaches our media server, which routes it so that each may see and hear the others, are only opaque envelopes it cannot open. We do not record it and we do not keep it, and only the metadata of the sitting stays visible. The media service is ours, with no third-party video providers and on the same European infrastructure as the rest of the service. Live encryption requires a recent browser: on a browser too dated that participant falls back to the clear, and the room declares it to everyone.
Step 6
The minutes in the register
Every session leaves its minutes in the register: a continuous, encrypted memory of the work, available to those entitled to it.
Step 7
The treasury, under the same reserve
Subscriptions and the cash register are encrypted like everything else, and only those the lodge appoints can open them. The report for the assembly is generated in the treasurer's browser; each member of the lodge sees only their own subscriptions.
Step 8
The memory of the lodge
The membership register keeps each member's journey, from initiation onwards, with the anniversaries that come from it; the library keeps its catalogue and its loan register. Encrypted like everything else, readable only by those entitled.
The metaphor
One single key, and the rules of the house
Picture the archive as a building of rooms. The lodge has one single key, which lives only on the devices of its members: the server has none. Which rooms open to you depends on your degree and your offices, according to the rules of the house, not on different keys. No master key, not even for the administrators: whoever runs the platform looks after the building, they do not enter the rooms.