Bitlbee 3.0.x with OTR (off the records) support
Bitlbee is a wonderful piece of code that let you connect to your various instant message accounts (first of all, XMPP-Jabber) using your favorite IRC client. Once is set up, you connect to localhost, identify to the service, and you'll be on-line. Your buddies will appear as standard nicknames on the channel &bitlbee. You can query them or just speak as you would on IRC, addressing them as
nick: hello!
Bitlbee 3.0.x brought an awesome new feature: the OTR support. OTR (Off-The-Records) is a cryptographic library that has a double feature. It encrypts, but later you can denied to have said what you said.
Assuming you're using debian squeeze, you should backport it (the alternative way could be to install the nightly build which can be found here).
Add to the source.list
deb-src http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free
(it's a deb-src, not deb). Then compile it (as standard user):
apt-get source -b bitlbee
Probably you'll miss some dependencies. No problem, just apt-get them. Then install the resulting packages as root, but don't install the libpurple plugin .
dpkg -i bitlbee-common_3.0.3-1_all.deb bitlbee-plugin-otr_3.0.3-1_i386.deb \
bitlbee_3.0.3-1_i386.deb
Done. The first time you'll (re)connect to bitlbee you'll see
20:56 <bitlbee> otr: starting background keygen for <your account>
You'll have to wait a bit (and read the messages). Once you're notified that the keys are ready, you can set it right. Talking on &bitlbee, say:
set otr_policy opportunistic
set otr_color_encrypted false
The first one will turn on the automatic encryption for incoming and outgoing conversations, if the other side supports it. The second one if your client doesn't strip colors and you don't want to have the encrypted conversations all red!
Saying
otr info
on &bitlbee you'll have some nice information. Just read it and enjoy.