On Sep 17, 2007, at 1:49 AM, Seth Johnson wrote: > OneWebDay, Sept. 22, is an Earth Day for the internet. > [...] > The idea behind OneWebDay is to encourage people to think of > themselves as responsible for the internet, and to take good and > visible actions on Sept. 22 that (1) celebrate the positive impact of > the internet on the world and (2) shed light on the problems of access > and information flow.
This is the first time I've heard of this event; is it just starting this year? If this is a serious thing, it looks like the organizers have already done half the work involved in implementing a proposal I made a while ago, to use just such a yearly occasion to give the Internet a real defense against sybil attacks, ballot stuffing, sock puppetry, etc., while preserving online privacy and anonymity. Now we just need to take it the rest of the way. Original proposal (Sep '06): http://www.brynosaurus.com/log/2006/0924- SybilParties.html Slightly more fleshed out (Mar '07): http://www.brynosaurus.com/log/ 2007/0327-PseudonymParties.pdf Abstract from the latter: Many unsolved Internet security vulnerabilities reduce to a lack of user accountability: any user who misbehaves---e.g., by spamming from a free E-mail account or stuffing an online ballot box---can simply open other anonymous accounts or connect from other IP addresses. The obvious solution of requiring all users to identify and authenticate themselves to online services, through a universal public-key infrastructure (PKI) for example, is inconvenient and impractical to deploy universally, and raises serious privacy concerns. Ensuring accountability does not in general require identifying users, however: it only requires enforcing a principle of "one person, one persona" for a given online service. This paper proposes "pseudonym parties", a decentralized scheme that combines technical tools (pseudonymous online accounts) with in-person social occasions (parties) to provide online accountability while preserving the ability of users to participate anonymously in online services. This approach is fully decentralized, can be deployed incrementally at minimal cost, and may even be fun to participate in. Cheers, Bryan _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list [email protected] http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers
