[freenet-chat] Re: [Tech] Crazy idea: How trust in darknets enables secure democratic censorship
On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 10:59:13PM -0400, Evan Daniel wrote: On 7/12/05, Matthew Toseland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: /me renames Freenet PornNet. ;) I have friends who rsync their porn. But I can see your point. Is this an issue only for porn? What class of material is subject to this consideration? Personally I avoid material that could be used to blackmail me, traceable or not. And I have friends who watch porn in coed groups. I think they're weird, but then they probably say the same about my ex-poultry :) Co-ed groups? Other classes of material: anything that could be seen as incitement to revolt probably counts. The difference between rebels that history approves of vs condemns appears to be decided after the fact. Having Freenet be relevant to revolutions would be damaged by this, right? So if you are trying to start a revolution, and the network as a whole disapproves, you don't want that fact to be revealed to your friends. And it seems entirely reasonable for me to want to anonymize my revolutionary plots by mixing them up with other people's searches for deceased fowls. Writings about drug use also come to mind, though these seem to be relatively accepted on the public internet. That probably isn't as true in, say, much of Asia, though. Your privacy against local nodes is only an issue if your content is voted down. If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear. Hah. Evan Daniel -- Matthew J Toseland - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freenet Project Official Codemonkey - http://freenetproject.org/ ICTHUS - Nothing is impossible. Our Boss says so. signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ chat mailing list chat@freenetproject.org Archived: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.general Unsubscribe at http://dodo.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/chat Or mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[freenet-chat] Re: [Tech] Crazy idea: How trust in darknets enables secure democratic censorship
On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 11:10:08PM -0400, Evan Daniel wrote: On 7/12/05, Matthew Toseland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: When you say part of more than one darknet, are you referring to separate clusters within one large network, or entirely divorced networks? Divorced networks. So, does that mean I have to run separate nodes, and participate in different sets of groupthink manually? Isn't that asking a *lot*? Also, suppose I decline to vote on a particular item (or decline to vote in general)? Does my node participate in the correlation attack? Your node will normally participate if the vote around that node is successful. Your vote is only one that your node would consider. Since votes are public, the network can determine whether your node is doing what it is supposed to be doing. This is cost of doing business. You can refuse, but that would likely result in your node's expulsion. If so, why on earth would I want it doing that? If not, don't you need to get rather high involvement? Do I take the blame for the objectionable content too in that case? If so, that seems likely to produce truly rabid groupthink. If not, it seems unlikely to work. And finally, let's suppose I use freenet for a variety of non-illegal things, and don't partake in local votes to censor content at all (on libertarian grounds). In the event the govt seizes my node looking for (nonexistent) illegal activities, aren't I likely to find myself liable for failing to vote correctly, since the network has provided a convenient method to do so? And isn't this threat also likely to create more negative voting than would otherwise occur, and thus exacerbate the chilling effects? If we don't provide such a mechanism, they will still find a way to make you liable for crimes conducted involving your node. The whole darknet architecture assumes nodes will eventually be illegal in and of themselves. If I'm running an illegal freenet node, that means I'm willing to risk the chance of being prosecuted for one count of whatever crime they make it. It doesn't mean I'm also willing to risk prosecution for 238 counts of knowingly allowing my computer to transmit child porn. As best I can tell, the law is reasonably tolerant of I did everything I could reasonably be expected to do as a defense. If the network is such that I can't easily do anything about child porn, and there's no evidence I personally looked at or posted it, then I'm at least somewhat optimistic about avoiding prosecution. If I actively failed Really? If there is primary legislation making it a crime to run a node, that will presumably make it far easier to convict you of related crimes.. Why should it? In many cases the legal system is more sane than that. If I'm pulled over for speeding, that doesn't make it much easier for them to find the body in the trunk. And if it turns out I'm driving a stolen car, and the body was in there without my knowledge, they're likely to have to find additional evidence to accuse me of murder instead of just grand theft auto. How is this legally different? (I'm sure there's something illegal about being in possession of the body, but I'd be really surprised if you could convict for murder on just that without showing eg motive). Well, if you accidentally kill someone during a robbery, you'll usually go down for murder in most states; that's all I was thinking of. Evan -- Matthew J Toseland - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freenet Project Official Codemonkey - http://freenetproject.org/ ICTHUS - Nothing is impossible. Our Boss says so. signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ chat mailing list chat@freenetproject.org Archived: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.general Unsubscribe at http://dodo.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/chat Or mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[freenet-chat] Re: [Tech] Crazy idea: How trust in darknets enables secure democratic censorship
On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 10:33:59AM +0200, Matthew Exon wrote: Evan Daniel wrote: It sounds to me like this has potential to enforce groupthink through network value effects. Please elaborate... The central large network is against some content. The fact that it is larger makes it much more valuable as a network. Therefore I am inclined to act in such a way as to stay on the big network. That means participating in and reinforcing any existing groupthink, right? And that positive feedback loop means there will be groupthink and that it will probably be strong and evident. In fact, I think this would go even further: the network would inevitably split not into x not allowed/x allowed darknets, but effectively into x not allowed/ONLY x allowed darknets. Hrrm. My reasoning: As Toad said, you can participate on more than one darknet simultaneously. If you can do that, why would you ever limit yourself to just one tiny darknet of dead chicken lovers? Of course you're going to be on both. So I'm on two darknets now; the nice darknet with no dead chicken fetishism and the nasty darknet where dead chicken fetishism is allowed. The nice darknet is 100 times bigger than the nasty darknet. If I want to download star trek episodes where do I go? The nice darknet; it'll be way faster. If I want to download dead chicken porn, I go to the nasty darknet. A little complicated, but overall I'm happy. Okay, this is reasonably rational. Except that many people would only be on one darknet, because of the bandwidth (human and computer) involved. Now, eventually everyone's going to behave the same way. Everyone will figure out that there's just no point posting star trek episodes to the nasty darknet, since they'll always be more easily available on the nice darknet. Result: the nasty darknet will have nothing but dead chicken porn. There's no reason to post anything else there, and no-one will ever download anything else from it. It is quite possible to manually migrate content between darknets (without being the content author, and without disrupting the linkage). My question is: how secure is the nasty darknet now? It seems that much of the security or plausible deniability of freenet stems from having a good quantity of legitimate content alongside the punishable content. But now the nasty darknet is 100% dead chicken porn. If the authorities can demonstrate that I participated in that particular darknet at all, I'm screwed. Hmmm. Plausible deniability, yes. Security, no. (Sure, I know that you're assuming freenet is illegal; but there's illegal and then there's illegal. An Al Qaeda darknet will have a lot more resources thrown at it, and a lot more rules bent, in order to uncover all the participants than, say, an MP3 sharing network.) Al Qaeda could use the main darknet, and make sure nobody found their content. That is if they used freenet at all. This option is open to any sufficiently closed group, of course, but they are vulnerable to a disgruntled member (or a mistake). So it seems to me that any dead chicken porn fetishist reading this discussion should be totally opposed, because it would leave him more exposed. And the whole point of Freenet is to be there for persecuted minorities, right? A small darknet may actually be safer in terms of its likelihood of exposure. If the state randomly searches people's computers, obviously you're in trouble no matter what. I should say though, I think Toad is doing the right thing by thinking about this. He's absolutely right that many people who could and should benefit from Freenet will be turned off by the thought of who else they're helping. In fact, these are precisely the people (Tibetan independance activists, Burmese pro-democracy supporters, Iranian secularists) And Chinese religious minorities, and more. who deserve Freenet more than people who just swap MP3s or porn. Yes, and right now most of them can't use it in a clear conscience because they are not either sufficiently cynical or sufficiently libertarian. If local censorship can be implemented without discriminating against minority opinions, I think it's worth pursuing. Depends what you mean by discriminating against, I suppose. Minorities who the majority vehemently opposes would have to form their own darknets. When they try to join with the main darknets, they'd be expelled en bloc. I doubt that even a censorable freenet would ever be so mainstream that what is mistakenly illegal in real life is always voted down - but if it is we can always build an alternative community. But I must admit I'd be rather more satisfied if the answer turned out to be no, it's not possible after all; we're just going to have to learn to get along as one big disfunctional family. One small disfunctional family, for the reasons we've discussed. :| -- Matthew J Toseland - [EMAIL
Re: [freenet-chat] Crazy idea: How trust in darknets enables secure democratic censorship
What a terrible idea. Censorship by majority is still censorship. Ian. On 11 Jul 2005, at 16:17, Matthew Toseland wrote: Here's a really whacky idea I came up with on the train back from Strasbourg (please read the whole email before flaming me): Personally I support Freenet being uncensorable and providing untraceability for posters, because there is no way to prevent censorship abuses by the powerful (including governments and corporations), while still allowing censorship to prevent e.g. child porn. I propose below a means that could provide some form of self regulation, under locally democratic control, which would provide a powerful deterrent to people posting objectionable materials. This is only possible because of the trust relationships underlying a scalable darknet such as Freenet 0.7/Dark. There is an argument that unpopular content will fall out of the current Freenet; it won't if the original insertor keeps on pushing it back in. Maybe, just maybe, we can have our cake and eat it too. The result would be that freenet could be far more mainstream, usable by far more people (e.g. oppressed religious groups in china are likely to object to all the kiddy porn on freenet), and its content would reflect what its users want rather than what the state wants. Definition: Premix ID: - Each node has two identities. One is its pubkey and physical location to connect to it. This is only given out to its immediate peers, and they may not forward it, on a darknet. The second is its premix pubkey. This is the key which is used to encrypt premix-routed traffic which is sent through the node. This is public, along with the node's connections, in order for premix routing to work through the darknet - we have to expose the network topology in order for premix routing to work. Client C finds some content he finds objectionable. He sends out a Complaint to his friend nodes. This contains a pointer to the objectionable content, and possibly C's premix ID (I'm not decided on this bit). Users can then verify the complaint - voting for it to be upheld or not and for what sanctions to be applied. If it is not upheld by enough nodes it is not propagated, so complaint spamming will be severely limited. Each node can decide whether the complaint is upheld. It will take into account its own vote if any (weight 1), the votes of its friend nodes (weight 1), and the votes of those nodes connected to its friend nodes (probably weighted 1/n where n is the number of nodes connected to a given friend node). There would be turnout requirements (say 2/3), and supermajority requirements which depend on what sanction is called for. If the complaint is upheld, then the network will attempt to trace the insertor, and possibly any requestors, of the data: If a node was on the insert path, AND it considers the complaint to have been upheld, it will check its records and attempt to trace the request. As will the next node on the chain. The original insertor will be found, and its premix ID exposed. Possible sanctions are: - Reprimand; upheld complaint is recorded on the node's record - Premix disconnect; node may no longer use premix routing - Full disconnect; node may not remain connected to the network. Requires a larger supermajority. - Blow the node; node's IP address is broadcast (endangers the network itself, would require 80% or so majority, and could be turned off on some networks). The idea here is that we produce a deterrant. Nodes won't insert content regarded as bad by the majority of a particular network, because of the risks involved, and therefore complaints should be rare. The content itself would be blocked, but only after the vote, which could take a reasonable time - say 2 weeks - during which any interested individuals could inspect the objectionable content (many will simply follow others, but this is not a problem as the content _is_ available; provided the system works, complaints will be rare and people will not have to browse through filth on a regular basis). This should keep the whole process accountable. If the original insertor is not found, we can get as close as possible. Since there will likely be several blocks to trace (even if the objectionable content is a single file), and since we know the network topology, we can do some form of correlation attack - and narrow it down to a particular area of the network. If it is one node, we can take the above sanctions; if it is a group of nodes (or a particular link or set of links), then we can break those connections and fork the network into two disconnected darknets with different standards (it should be reasonably easy to determine this given enough data to trace). Votes would have to be public for this to work (at least, public to nearby nodes). There is no secret ballot. On the other hand, since we are assuming that Freenet nodes are illegal in any case in
Re: [freenet-chat] Re: [Tech] Crazy idea: How trust in darknets enables secure democratic censorship
Dont implement this. I dont like CP, but once you start down the slippery slope, there's no going back. my $.02 ___ chat mailing list chat@freenetproject.org Archived: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.general Unsubscribe at http://dodo.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/chat Or mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [freenet-chat] Re: [Tech] flaming ;-)
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: RIPEMD160 On Tue, 12 Jul 2005 15:01:07 +0200, you wrote: Matthew Toseland wrote: Well, the point is: The alternative is that the only people who will ever use freenet are: a) Seriously dedicated libertarians like us, who consider the kiddy porn to be a price worth paying, and b) Psychos who don't care. I have no further arguments than the ones presented by others, but for the record I'm too against any censorship. C.p. and whatever are problems to be dealt with in the real world. Internet is already full of questionable content. What I think is that Freenet must be an attempt at the purest free speech. The moment it has some censorship in place it will be worth no more than any other politically correct project (just IMO, of course). This is my point exactly. Absoulte freedom of speech is, in my mind, the ONLY proper goal for something like freenet. Anything less is a betrayal of the whole idea of freenet. I hate the c.p. also, but in spite of that, ANY form of censorship must be made to be impossible or at the very least, EXTREMELY difficult. I would honestly suggest: 1) Effort should go to make freenet even more anonymous than it is now. It should be absolutely without question as impossible to identify a poster.. OR prevent them from posting. 2) It should be made as difficult as possible to identify what content is stored on what node, and / or to comply with a 'remove this' order from a TLA 3) Freenet needs to be increasingly difficult to detect or block by ISP's or govt agency's, including NSA/CIA/FBI/Homeland Security. (yes, I believe that IS possible, and achiveable) - -- My gpg public key (0x92769D7E) can be found on my freesite: http://127.00.1:/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/mytwoce nts/23//m2ckey.html (you must be running freenet for this link to work) -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32) - GPGshell v3.44 iD8DBQFC1HTDz+9G5ZJ2nX4RA7qyAJoDwvNvDDy2BLeCjMLJkFnWY5UqKACfZWS3 UZRRATFxW5lr4h0IWV++Xfw= =ME5K -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ chat mailing list chat@freenetproject.org Archived: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.general Unsubscribe at http://dodo.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/chat Or mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [freenet-chat] Re: [Tech] Crazy idea: How trust in darknets enables secure democratic censorship
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: RIPEMD160 On Tue, 12 Jul 2005 22:59:13 -0400, you wrote: On 7/12/05, Matthew Toseland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: /me renames Freenet PornNet. ;) =20 I have friends who rsync their porn. But I can see your point. Is this an issue only for porn? What class of material is subject to this consideration? Personally I avoid material that could be used to blackmail me, traceable or not. And I have friends who watch porn in coed groups. I think they're weird, but then they probably say the same about my ex-poultry :) Other classes of material: anything that could be seen as incitement to revolt probably counts. The difference between rebels that history approves of vs condemns appears to be decided after the fact. Having Freenet be relevant to revolutions would be damaged by this, right?=20 And it seems entirely reasonable for me to want to anonymize my revolutionary plots by mixing them up with other people's searches for deceased fowls. Writings about drug use also come to mind, though these seem to be relatively accepted on the public internet. That probably isn't as true in, say, much of Asia, though. =20 Your privacy against local nodes is only an issue if your content is voted down. If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear. The problem with THAT kind of thinking is that over the course of history, it has gotten a lot of people needlessly killed. Don't forget the perfectly well meaning people who thought they were being Good German Citizens by turning in Jews and those who sympathized with and helped them. PLEASE! Keep Freenet Anonymous! Keep Freenet FREE! Keep Freenet UN-detectable and UN-Traceable Perhaps next time it won't be Jews, maybe it will be some perfectly reasonable person who just happens to have a Politically Incorrect opinion, politics or religion. Mark my words, someday there WILL be another Dachau! The question is, Will we sit by and be 'Good German Citizens', or will we act in some way to help whoever's lined up at the ovens next time? The ghost of Bergen Belsen looms on the horizon and the blood of ten million Russian citizens almost all innocent bystanders waits to see how we will handle OUR turn. May we Honor their sacrifice. - -- My gpg public key (0x92769D7E) can be found on my freesite: http://127.00.1:/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/mytwoce nts/23//m2ckey.html (you must be running freenet for this link to work) -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32) - GPGshell v3.44 iD8DBQFC1Jdfz+9G5ZJ2nX4RA+hwAKD3U8xRk0/qBOmHEZnLJ5bOnELCfgCeI60V avudAucJHLR2A2RlXrGH79Q= =Vym7 -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ chat mailing list chat@freenetproject.org Archived: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.general Unsubscribe at http://dodo.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/chat Or mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[freenet-chat] Re: [Tech] Crazy idea: How trust in darknets enables secure democratic censorship
Evan Daniel wrote: It sounds to me like this has potential to enforce groupthink through network value effects. Please elaborate... The central large network is against some content. The fact that it is larger makes it much more valuable as a network. Therefore I am inclined to act in such a way as to stay on the big network. That means participating in and reinforcing any existing groupthink, right? And that positive feedback loop means there will be groupthink and that it will probably be strong and evident. In fact, I think this would go even further: the network would inevitably split not into x not allowed/x allowed darknets, but effectively into x not allowed/ONLY x allowed darknets. My reasoning: As Toad said, you can participate on more than one darknet simultaneously. If you can do that, why would you ever limit yourself to just one tiny darknet of dead chicken lovers? Of course you're going to be on both. So I'm on two darknets now; the nice darknet with no dead chicken fetishism and the nasty darknet where dead chicken fetishism is allowed. The nice darknet is 100 times bigger than the nasty darknet. If I want to download star trek episodes where do I go? The nice darknet; it'll be way faster. If I want to download dead chicken porn, I go to the nasty darknet. A little complicated, but overall I'm happy. Now, eventually everyone's going to behave the same way. Everyone will figure out that there's just no point posting star trek episodes to the nasty darknet, since they'll always be more easily available on the nice darknet. Result: the nasty darknet will have nothing but dead chicken porn. There's no reason to post anything else there, and no-one will ever download anything else from it. My question is: how secure is the nasty darknet now? It seems that much of the security or plausible deniability of freenet stems from having a good quantity of legitimate content alongside the punishable content. But now the nasty darknet is 100% dead chicken porn. If the authorities can demonstrate that I participated in that particular darknet at all, I'm screwed. (Sure, I know that you're assuming freenet is illegal; but there's illegal and then there's illegal. An Al Qaeda darknet will have a lot more resources thrown at it, and a lot more rules bent, in order to uncover all the participants than, say, an MP3 sharing network.) So it seems to me that any dead chicken porn fetishist reading this discussion should be totally opposed, because it would leave him more exposed. And the whole point of Freenet is to be there for persecuted minorities, right? I should say though, I think Toad is doing the right thing by thinking about this. He's absolutely right that many people who could and should benefit from Freenet will be turned off by the thought of who else they're helping. In fact, these are precisely the people (Tibetan independance activists, Burmese pro-democracy supporters, Iranian secularists) who deserve Freenet more than people who just swap MP3s or porn. If local censorship can be implemented without discriminating against minority opinions, I think it's worth pursuing. But I must admit I'd be rather more satisfied if the answer turned out to be no, it's not possible after all; we're just going to have to learn to get along as one big disfunctional family. ___ chat mailing list chat@freenetproject.org Archived: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.general Unsubscribe at http://dodo.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/chat Or mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [freenet-chat] Crazy idea: How trust in darknets enables secure democratic censorship
On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 01:41:37PM +0200, Rainer Kupke wrote: Matthew Toseland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 11:52:00AM +0200, Rainer Kupke wrote: Matthew Toseland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [voting against nodes that insert objectionable content] After a night of sleep I came up with two strategies to defeat your idea: First strategy: 1. run several small nodes and never use them to insert stuff. These nodes are good citizerns. This is perfectly valid. You can run a node. 2. Create a new node N 3. Use N to insert content 4. Delete N before reprimands hit. This is quite possible, however I don't see how you are going to be able to repeat it, due to the nature of a darknet. Also it might hurt the people you connected through. I assume that the inserting node gets more blame than the surrounding nodes and that blame does not stick around forever. Maybe for a very long time, but definitely not forever. So I can surround my inserter with one (as above) or more layers of nodes which act as blame absorbers. When I insert evil stuff my inserter will be blamed for it. The nodes next to it will get some fraction of the blame, but definitely less. the nodes on the outer layer will get nearly no blame. They will get no blame, unless they oppose the complaint. Before the nodes on my outer layer get blamed for talking to evil nodes I shutdown the core of my little evilnet and replace it with new nodes. If complaints are repeatedly held up against new nodes connected to a specific small number of nodes, it should be possible for the community to notice this and take action against _them_. The network topology has to be open for premix routing to work, and the node which was punished is revealed when a complaint is upheld. -- Matthew J Toseland - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freenet Project Official Codemonkey - http://freenetproject.org/ ICTHUS - Nothing is impossible. Our Boss says so. signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ chat mailing list chat@freenetproject.org Archived: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.general Unsubscribe at http://dodo.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/chat Or mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [freenet-chat] Crazy idea: How trust in darknets enables secure democratic censorship
On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 02:53:38PM +0200, Rainer Kupke wrote: Matthew Toseland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I assume that the inserting node gets more blame than the surrounding nodes and that blame does not stick around forever. Maybe for a very long time, but definitely not forever. So I can surround my inserter with one (as above) or more layers of nodes which act as blame absorbers. When I insert evil stuff my inserter will be blamed for it. The nodes next to it will get some fraction of the blame, but definitely less. the nodes on the outer layer will get nearly no blame. They will get no blame, unless they oppose the complaint. They could even support the complaint. The inserter is expendable. Before the nodes on my outer layer get blamed for talking to evil nodes I shutdown the core of my little evilnet and replace it with new nodes. If complaints are repeatedly held up against new nodes connected to a specific small number of nodes, it should be possible for the community to notice this and take action against _them_. They are expendable unless they belong to the outer layer. The inner layers can be replaced every two weeks, the outer layers every year or so. Obviously I have to keep the outermost layer. The network topology has to be open for premix routing to work, and the node which was punished is revealed when a complaint is upheld. How long would it take for the community to identify the outer layer of evilnet? Even a single person should be able to protect the inserter with 4-6 layers of blame absorbers. It would be obvious that every single evil insert has gone through that person's node. Because he has one node that connects to the rest of the network. The blame absorbers only connect to his node, and to other blame absorbers, and to the nodes which send the data out. -- Matthew J Toseland - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freenet Project Official Codemonkey - http://freenetproject.org/ ICTHUS - Nothing is impossible. Our Boss says so. signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ chat mailing list chat@freenetproject.org Archived: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.general Unsubscribe at http://dodo.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/chat Or mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[freenet-chat] Re: [Tech] Crazy idea: How trust in darknets enables secure democratic censorship
On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 02:01:15PM +0200, Matthew Exon wrote: No, we're not. We know for example that child porn is not being *openly* distributed. And this is for a very broad definition of open. On IIP I knew a certain channel where you could obtain keys for such filth; on a network like the one proposed it would be easy to find it, and then complain about it. Why do I, or Chinese christians, care whether the content is being distributed openly or secretly? It's still being distributed, right? It's entirely possible that Al Qaeda are swapping jokes about the London Underground through my node right now. The fact that it's invisible to me doesn't make me any happier about it. It would be distributed primarily on paedophile only darknets. And although SOME might be distributed on the open-ish darknets, they could not be used for recruitment. It would be a MAJOR improvement on the current situation. Yes and no. The scenario I was thinking of is the agent provocateur. Guy I meet down the pub offers to bring me into a darknet, but of course he's actually a cop. If it's a general darknet without any particular focus, no-one can know for sure that I set out to find dead chicken porn. But if I specifically needed a dead chicken porn darknet, then this would have come up somehow when I was talking to the cop, so it's rather more serious. It still seems like trying to find dead chicken porn is going to be far riskier with the censorship system in place than without it. If you only have one connection onto the darknet, you're screwed in any case. Same applies if you got several connections all from him. But in an agent provocateur scenario, only one of my contacts has to be a cop. If you're telling me I need to get several connections, that only makes my chances of one of them being a sting operation so much higher. What I mean by discriminating against is, where does this lie on a continuum from has no effect on to making it more difficult to making it impossible? Ideally, it wouldn't be any harder to find minority material than to find majority material. In which case the system would be ineffective, and there would be no point. Ah, in that case I think I've been misinterpreting your emails. You talk about would have to set up their own darknet as if that's no big deal. That is, you're not forbidding content, just moving it around. But if your goal really is to stop people distributing the stuff, that's different. And no, when it comes to the particular minority material I want to distribute (my explosive and controversial revelations that the planet Jupiter is actually made of frogs), I don't want anyone censoring me, not even a majority of Freenet users. I thought you were trying to set it up so that porn can be traded as easily as now, but that I could still ensure that no porn passes through my node. So I'd have a clear conscience, without anyone being cut off from the data they want. In theory. In practice, it looks like it won't work out so neatly. No, that would be pointless. I want to set up a system whereby a darknet can have its own standards for content, which are determined democratically. If paedophiles aren't welcome, they have to go elsewhere. They may be able to set up their own network, but the main network wouldn't be helping them, and obviously it'd be a smaller network (and not usable for recruiting). So the question is, how do we ensure that the Tibetan activists can participate on Freenet without unnecessary fear of reprisal? Does the censorship system put them at risk? I still don't know if it does or not, but I certainly don't have a lot of faith in the view of the majority, even the Freenet majority. Well, what is the alternative? Most of the pro-democracy people, and almost all of the oppressed churches, not able to use Freenet at all, because of the knowledge that their PCs will carry child porn if they do, and their objection to it along with most of the rest of humanity. The alternative is for pro-democracy students to have to make a choice as to whether democracy is or is not more important than the integrity of the Chinese nation. I believe many students would decide that democracy is indeed more important. This would in turn mean that the Tibetans can communicate with the rest of the world. Of course, these are long-haired yobbo students. For christian priests it might come out differently. It's a balancing act for all of us. Here, I'm giving a higher priority to a small number of Tibetan bhuddists than a large number of Han christians, but of course that's just one corner of the planet, and it's not as if I live anywhere near the place. I don't think there's a simple answer. We're certainly not going to have our cake and eat it too. As an aside, I wouldn't put too much faith in Chinese christians spending a lot of
Re: [freenet-chat] Crazy idea: How trust in darknets enables secure democratic censorship
Matthew Toseland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How long would it take for the community to identify the outer layer of evilnet? Even a single person should be able to protect the inserter with 4-6 layers of blame absorbers. It would be obvious that every single evil insert has gone through that person's node. One of that person's nodes. And nobody would know that the nodes belong to the same person. Because he has one node that connects to the rest of the network. After I establish my first node on a darknet I can create a new node and have it connect to my first node. If the net is somewhat popular I should be able to find people who want to join. I give them the address of my new node. Sooner or later some of the newbies will make connections to other nodes. Now my new node is established on the network and I can start establishing the next one. Once I have a few established nodes I cut the connections between them and use them to form the outer layer of my evilnet. ___ chat mailing list chat@freenetproject.org Archived: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.general Unsubscribe at http://dodo.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/chat Or mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [freenet-chat] Crazy idea: How trust in darknets enables secure democratic censorship
On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 04:00:25PM +0200, Rainer Kupke wrote: Matthew Toseland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How long would it take for the community to identify the outer layer of evilnet? Even a single person should be able to protect the inserter with 4-6 layers of blame absorbers. It would be obvious that every single evil insert has gone through that person's node. One of that person's nodes. And nobody would know that the nodes belong to the same person. Oh, they would. Because the only way to get onto a network is to connect to people who know you. This means you have a severely limited number of connections to the rest of the network. This is a property of any darknet. Because he has one node that connects to the rest of the network. After I establish my first node on a darknet I can create a new node and have it connect to my first node. If the net is somewhat popular I should be able to find people who want to join. I give them the address of my new node. Sooner or later some of the newbies will make connections to other nodes. Now my new node is established on the network and I can start establishing the next one. You'll be severely limited nonetheless. Once I have a few established nodes I cut the connections between them and use them to form the outer layer of my evilnet. -- Matthew J Toseland - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freenet Project Official Codemonkey - http://freenetproject.org/ ICTHUS - Nothing is impossible. Our Boss says so. signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ chat mailing list chat@freenetproject.org Archived: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.general Unsubscribe at http://dodo.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/chat Or mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[freenet-chat] Re: [Tech] Crazy idea: How trust in darknets enables secure democratic censorship
On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 03:48:13PM +0200, Matthew Exon wrote: Matthew Toseland wrote: On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 02:01:15PM +0200, Matthew Exon wrote: Why do I, or Chinese christians, care whether the content is being distributed openly or secretly? It's still being distributed, right? It's entirely possible that Al Qaeda are swapping jokes about the London Underground through my node right now. The fact that it's invisible to me doesn't make me any happier about it. It would be distributed primarily on paedophile only darknets. And although SOME might be distributed on the open-ish darknets, they could not be used for recruitment. It would be a MAJOR improvement on the current situation. So it's a reduction in the volume of bad stuff, not a complete solution. I can buy this argument, but I'm not sure it's going to convince very many people. You guess that you reduced the problem by 90%, but the problem was unmeasurable both before and after, so what can you really promise to these people? Only that you're pretty certain you haven't solved the problem completely. Largely solved. You won't run into it on the web interface, even if you go looking for it. Nor can they use the open network as a meeting point by posting stuff on it. I thought you were trying to set it up so that porn can be traded as easily as now, but that I could still ensure that no porn passes through my node. So I'd have a clear conscience, without anyone being cut off from the data they want. In theory. In practice, it looks like it won't work out so neatly. No, that would be pointless. I want to set up a system whereby a darknet can have its own standards for content, which are determined democratically. If paedophiles aren't welcome, they have to go elsewhere. They may be able to set up their own network, but the main network wouldn't be helping them, and obviously it'd be a smaller network (and not usable for recruiting). OK. This is a philosophical disagreement. I'd go so far as to say I'd rather have the government censoring my communications than a simple majority of freenetters. At least with the government, mob rule is moderated somewhat by courts and constitutions. To really climb onto the soapbox for a bit, democracy is horribly overrated: the real source of freedom in our society is the humanist philosophical underpinnings of a legal system built from the experience of hundreds of years. Democracy is an important piece of the machine, without which it doesn't work very well, but democracy on its own isn't much better than nothing. I'm not ready to submit to the tyranny of the majority yet. As an aside, I wouldn't put too much faith in Chinese christians spending a lot of time worrying about child porn. I'm sure they're not in favour of it, but it's just not the hot-button issue that it is in the West. Porn in general, maybe, but probably not enough to stop them joining the students' porntastic darknet. Well it's certainly a big deal in the West. And the future of democracy in the West is by no means assured. Democracy isn't looking particularly healthy in the USA right now, but comparing it to China or Burma would be a gross exaggeration. If Americans struggling against oppression in the US are too worried about the possibility of child porn to use Freenet, frankly, screw 'em. They can use bittorrent. I'm less than convinced that those worries would stop Chinese christians or democracy activists, and they're a far bigger concern for me. Why do Chinese christians not care about child porn, then? Tibetans would be free to set up their own darknet within Tibet, but what's the point if they can't smuggle footage of human rights abuses out to Amnesty International? And the new darknet would be such a tempting target for the Chinese government; much more so than a million students who, at the end of the day, much of the government regards as pretty harmless. So harmless that they murdered 2000 of them in 1991. Obviously I don't want to get backed into the position of seeming to minimise the horror of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and I don't want arguments about that to get in the way of my arguments about the accessibility of Freenet. But there's no comparison between the level of oppression in the west and in the east of China today. And I stand by my comment that much of the government regards the pro-democracy movement as pretty harmless. The military doesn't, because they fear being locked up for what they did in 1991; but any move to round up students wholesale and throw away the key is going to be tough to get through the Politburo as it stands now. More because the students aren't the threat they were in 1991 than because China has liberalised, unfortunately. Tibetan and Uyghur activists, on the other hand, are still considered very much a threat.
[freenet-chat] Crazy idea: redux
The bottom line is that in order to support this functionality we would have to keep extensive records of inserts. This would make it way too easy for an attacker with the ability to bust a small number of nodes to trace the original poster of some content. Back to normal folks! Please insert something that isn't child porn every day. :) -- Matthew J Toseland - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freenet Project Official Codemonkey - http://freenetproject.org/ ICTHUS - Nothing is impossible. Our Boss says so. signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ chat mailing list chat@freenetproject.org Archived: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.general Unsubscribe at http://dodo.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/chat Or mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[freenet-chat] Re: [Tech] Crazy idea: How trust in darknets enables secure democratic censorship
I'm not getting sucked into this, mainly because I share Matthew Exon's position on this and he is doing a pretty good job of defending it. Censorship by majority is just as bad as censorship by your government, if not worse in many cases. Toad, if you lived in Iran just how far do you think you would get sharing information about Christianity if you could be censored by those around you? Is that the kind of Freenet we want to create? It certainly isn't the kind of Freenet I have been working towards for the last 6 or 7 years... Ian. On 13 Jul 2005, at 14:48, Matthew Exon wrote: Matthew Toseland wrote: On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 02:01:15PM +0200, Matthew Exon wrote: Why do I, or Chinese christians, care whether the content is being distributed openly or secretly? It's still being distributed, right? It's entirely possible that Al Qaeda are swapping jokes about the London Underground through my node right now. The fact that it's invisible to me doesn't make me any happier about it. It would be distributed primarily on paedophile only darknets. And although SOME might be distributed on the open-ish darknets, they could not be used for recruitment. It would be a MAJOR improvement on the current situation. So it's a reduction in the volume of bad stuff, not a complete solution. I can buy this argument, but I'm not sure it's going to convince very many people. You guess that you reduced the problem by 90%, but the problem was unmeasurable both before and after, so what can you really promise to these people? Only that you're pretty certain you haven't solved the problem completely. I thought you were trying to set it up so that porn can be traded as easily as now, but that I could still ensure that no porn passes through my node. So I'd have a clear conscience, without anyone being cut off from the data they want. In theory. In practice, it looks like it won't work out so neatly. No, that would be pointless. I want to set up a system whereby a darknet can have its own standards for content, which are determined democratically. If paedophiles aren't welcome, they have to go elsewhere. They may be able to set up their own network, but the main network wouldn't be helping them, and obviously it'd be a smaller network (and not usable for recruiting). OK. This is a philosophical disagreement. I'd go so far as to say I'd rather have the government censoring my communications than a simple majority of freenetters. At least with the government, mob rule is moderated somewhat by courts and constitutions. To really climb onto the soapbox for a bit, democracy is horribly overrated: the real source of freedom in our society is the humanist philosophical underpinnings of a legal system built from the experience of hundreds of years. Democracy is an important piece of the machine, without which it doesn't work very well, but democracy on its own isn't much better than nothing. I'm not ready to submit to the tyranny of the majority yet. As an aside, I wouldn't put too much faith in Chinese christians spending a lot of time worrying about child porn. I'm sure they're not in favour of it, but it's just not the hot-button issue that it is in the West. Porn in general, maybe, but probably not enough to stop them joining the students' porntastic darknet. Well it's certainly a big deal in the West. And the future of democracy in the West is by no means assured. Democracy isn't looking particularly healthy in the USA right now, but comparing it to China or Burma would be a gross exaggeration. If Americans struggling against oppression in the US are too worried about the possibility of child porn to use Freenet, frankly, screw 'em. They can use bittorrent. I'm less than convinced that those worries would stop Chinese christians or democracy activists, and they're a far bigger concern for me. Tibetans would be free to set up their own darknet within Tibet, but what's the point if they can't smuggle footage of human rights abuses out to Amnesty International? And the new darknet would be such a tempting target for the Chinese government; much more so than a million students who, at the end of the day, much of the government regards as pretty harmless. So harmless that they murdered 2000 of them in 1991. Obviously I don't want to get backed into the position of seeming to minimise the horror of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and I don't want arguments about that to get in the way of my arguments about the accessibility of Freenet. But there's no comparison between the level of oppression in the west and in the east of China today. And I stand by my comment that much of the government regards the pro-democracy movement as pretty harmless. The military doesn't, because they fear being locked up for what they did in 1991; but any move to round up
Re: [freenet-chat] Re: [Tech] Crazy idea: How trust in darknets enables secure democratic censorship
On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 04:27:31PM +0100, Ian Clarke wrote: I'm not getting sucked into this, mainly because I share Matthew Exon's position on this and he is doing a pretty good job of defending it. Censorship by majority is just as bad as censorship by your government, if not worse in many cases. Toad, if you lived in Iran just how far do you think you would get sharing information about Christianity if you could be censored by those around you? Is that the kind of Freenet we want to create? It certainly isn't the kind of Freenet I have been working towards for the last 6 or 7 years... Then go to another darknet. Anyway there are technical issues preventing this, namely the need to keep records of inserts (which would obviously be very useful to attackers who can bust nodes). Ian. On 13 Jul 2005, at 14:48, Matthew Exon wrote: Matthew Toseland wrote: On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 02:01:15PM +0200, Matthew Exon wrote: Why do I, or Chinese christians, care whether the content is being distributed openly or secretly? It's still being distributed, right? It's entirely possible that Al Qaeda are swapping jokes about the London Underground through my node right now. The fact that it's invisible to me doesn't make me any happier about it. It would be distributed primarily on paedophile only darknets. And although SOME might be distributed on the open-ish darknets, they could not be used for recruitment. It would be a MAJOR improvement on the current situation. So it's a reduction in the volume of bad stuff, not a complete solution. I can buy this argument, but I'm not sure it's going to convince very many people. You guess that you reduced the problem by 90%, but the problem was unmeasurable both before and after, so what can you really promise to these people? Only that you're pretty certain you haven't solved the problem completely. I thought you were trying to set it up so that porn can be traded as easily as now, but that I could still ensure that no porn passes through my node. So I'd have a clear conscience, without anyone being cut off from the data they want. In theory. In practice, it looks like it won't work out so neatly. No, that would be pointless. I want to set up a system whereby a darknet can have its own standards for content, which are determined democratically. If paedophiles aren't welcome, they have to go elsewhere. They may be able to set up their own network, but the main network wouldn't be helping them, and obviously it'd be a smaller network (and not usable for recruiting). OK. This is a philosophical disagreement. I'd go so far as to say I'd rather have the government censoring my communications than a simple majority of freenetters. At least with the government, mob rule is moderated somewhat by courts and constitutions. To really climb onto the soapbox for a bit, democracy is horribly overrated: the real source of freedom in our society is the humanist philosophical underpinnings of a legal system built from the experience of hundreds of years. Democracy is an important piece of the machine, without which it doesn't work very well, but democracy on its own isn't much better than nothing. I'm not ready to submit to the tyranny of the majority yet. As an aside, I wouldn't put too much faith in Chinese christians spending a lot of time worrying about child porn. I'm sure they're not in favour of it, but it's just not the hot-button issue that it is in the West. Porn in general, maybe, but probably not enough to stop them joining the students' porntastic darknet. Well it's certainly a big deal in the West. And the future of democracy in the West is by no means assured. Democracy isn't looking particularly healthy in the USA right now, but comparing it to China or Burma would be a gross exaggeration. If Americans struggling against oppression in the US are too worried about the possibility of child porn to use Freenet, frankly, screw 'em. They can use bittorrent. I'm less than convinced that those worries would stop Chinese christians or democracy activists, and they're a far bigger concern for me. Tibetans would be free to set up their own darknet within Tibet, but what's the point if they can't smuggle footage of human rights abuses out to Amnesty International? And the new darknet would be such a tempting target for the Chinese government; much more so than a million students who, at the end of the day, much of the government regards as pretty harmless. So harmless that they murdered 2000 of them in 1991. Obviously I don't want to get backed into the position of seeming to minimise the horror of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and I don't want arguments about that to get in the way of my arguments about the accessibility of
Re: [freenet-chat] Re: [Tech] Crazy idea: How trust in darknets enables secure democratic censorship
On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 05:46:59PM +0100, Ian Clarke wrote: On 13 Jul 2005, at 17:14, Matthew Toseland wrote: On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 04:27:31PM +0100, Ian Clarke wrote: I'm not getting sucked into this, mainly because I share Matthew Exon's position on this and he is doing a pretty good job of defending it. Censorship by majority is just as bad as censorship by your government, if not worse in many cases. Toad, if you lived in Iran just how far do you think you would get sharing information about Christianity if you could be censored by those around you? Is that the kind of Freenet we want to create? It certainly isn't the kind of Freenet I have been working towards for the last 6 or 7 years... Then go to another darknet. The whole point of this is that there is only one darknet, a global one where everyone is (indirectly) connected to everyone else, so there is no other darknet. Given other social networks, e.g. PGP WoT, it's likely there will be fragmentary darknets. But certainly there will be one very big darknet that a lot of nodes are on. I can see that there are network effects that would make it helpful to have a single darknet. Anyway there are technical issues preventing this, namely the need to keep records of inserts (which would obviously be very useful to attackers who can bust nodes). Good, although I would rather the discussion ended for the right reason (ie. the idea is fundamentally contrary to Freenet's goals), rather than a technicality. It's a pretty fundamental technicality. As far as goals go - maybe. I'll bounce you an interesting mail from Matt. Ian. -- Matthew J Toseland - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freenet Project Official Codemonkey - http://freenetproject.org/ ICTHUS - Nothing is impossible. Our Boss says so. signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ chat mailing list chat@freenetproject.org Archived: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.general Unsubscribe at http://dodo.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/chat Or mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [freenet-chat] Re: [Tech] Crazy idea: How trust in darknets enables secure democratic censorship
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: RIPEMD160 On Tue, 12 Jul 2005 20:58:13 -0500, you wrote: Dont implement this. I dont like CP, but once you start down the slippery slope, there's no going back. my $.02 Exactly my point! As a matter of fact, How about implementing something very much the reverse? Make censorship of ANY kind as close to impossible as can be managed. The same goes for ANY kind of ability to trace back to the insertion point or identify an author (excepting of course any clues or slipups on the author / inserter's part, that's their responsibility) and then make sure that freenet will work if the connections to and from it are piped through an anonymizing proxy such as TOR. - -- My gpg public key (0x92769D7E) can be found on my freesite: http://127.00.1:/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/mytwoce nts/23//m2ckey.html (you must be running freenet for this link to work) -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32) - GPGshell v3.44 iD8DBQFC1VByz+9G5ZJ2nX4RA8HCAKDKkYNoGij+L8Y2ZWat32xjJ6wZaQCcDdRI VPG0KCQp7AXspf8JGdPgXuc= =QDzM -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ chat mailing list chat@freenetproject.org Archived: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.general Unsubscribe at http://dodo.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/chat Or mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [freenet-chat] Re: [Tech] flaming ;-)
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: RIPEMD160 On Wed, 13 Jul 2005 13:32:27 +0100, you wrote: What do you think we've been doing for the last N years? The whole purpose of a darknet would be to make it hard to detect. As far as absolute freedom of speech goes, nobody has yet convinced me that the Church of Scientology, Diebold or the office of Richard Nixon would be able to censor material which is in the public interest. The problem is that VERY FEW people ever agree 100% on what constitutes 'public interest' - -- My gpg public key (0x92769D7E) can be found on my freesite: http://127.00.1:/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/mytwoce nts/23//m2ckey.html (you must be running freenet for this link to work) -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32) - GPGshell v3.44 iD8DBQFC1VQ3z+9G5ZJ2nX4RA5dbAJ9v0WZvjFUcWXzSR1WkzpIpyDeObQCg/fEO TvmigEeDgi6Vqg0Qo8rWFNc= =utRx -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ chat mailing list chat@freenetproject.org Archived: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.general Unsubscribe at http://dodo.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/chat Or mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
