The need was identified by Eben Moglen, president of the FreedomBox Foundation board. He saw the potential of the DreamPlug and created the FreedomBox project. James Vasile is running with it.
On the technology side, an inital set of hardware, networking, OS and apps exists. Kind of.
The DreamPlug forms the base layer of hardware and networking. Globalscale built this as a complete hardware and software package, but it has multiple issues.
Debian is the OS controlling the Dreamplug.
An initial collection of Software to build on - the off-the-shelf, ready-to-wear stuff - is listed in the wiki.
The first application for the end user - FreedomBuddy - was recently built by Nick Daly. The next apps to concentrate on are being discussed on the discussion mailing list.
The obstacles, such as the speed of tor, information leaked from the TLS protocol and chicken-and-egg problems with trust, are also discussed on the discussion mailing list.
where to find the latest news
The most up-to-date discussions happen on the mailing lists. A full list of is on the http://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox homepage.
The discussion list is useful for development updates.
To follow UX progress, join the visual list.
where else to look for progress updates
All the places where announcements may appear are listed in the FBX discuss page.
A (very high level) roadmap lists the typical project steps - requirements, design, implementation an so on - but as the FBX project is going in a new direction, there will be plenty of looping back to repeat steps.
Videos are periodically added to the FBX video page and Youtube.