I've been reading the ZKS license agreement at their Web site (www.zks.net). It sure looks like they reserve the right--and will likely use it freely, given the boilerplate--to cancel a nym on essentially the mere suspicion that some kind of "abuse" is involved. Abuse meaning: complaints, over use of the nym, too much traffic, legal concerns, pornography, etc. The legal agreement is at http://www.freedom.net/legal-useragreement.html. Here are a few excerpts (posting of which apparently would be grounds for having my nym cancelled, were I signed up): --begin excerpt-- "3.3 You agree that ZKS retains the right, but not the obligation, to restrict or terminate your use of any Identity or the Freedom Network at any time, if ZKS, in its sole discretion, determines that you are in violation of this agreement, which includes the ZKS Freedom Network Policies. You agree that, if ZKS determines that you are in violation of this agreement, any restriction or termination of your use of any Identity or the Freedom Network may be effective immediately, without prior notice. You agree that ZKS will have no liability to you for any restriction or termination of your use of the Freedom Network pursuant to such violation. "3.4 You agree that if ZKS terminates an Identity or your access to the Freedom Network as a result of your violation of ZKS' Freedom Network Policies, you forfeit any right to any credit or refund of any amount paid with respect to that Identity, such forfeiture being agreed to by you and ZKS as liquidated damages and not as a penalty. " --end excerpt-- (There's also a bunch of stuff about how ZKS may change the rates at any time and the only recourse of a customer is to cancel his account, no refunds possible.) As to restrictions on content ("Content" in the contract), there is much about illegal material, violations of copyright, "applicable laws" (in which country, by the way? Barbados, which is their contract country, or Canada?), etc. (By the way, if Barbados is the country for which the "applicable laws" bit applies, why have liasons with the Canadian government? And if ZKS doesn't know anything about the meatspace identity of a nym, what other laws besides Barbado law (directly) or Canadian law (practically) could conceivably apply? My hunch, not supportable by concrete evidence at this time, is that ZKS will cancel accounts based on the merest whiff of unsavoriness. It will be interesting to see what is legal in Barbados but illegal in Canada and see if they cancel.) Here's another excerpt: --begin excerpt-- 5.3 You agree not to transmit Content using your Identity or otherwise over the Freedom Network that is subject to another party's Rights through the Freedom Network without that party's express permission. Should ZKS become aware of any breach of this undertaking, such transmission: 5.3.1 may result in termination of this agreement, and 5.3.2 may result in civil or criminal liability. --end excerpt-- ZKS may then cancel a nym, and pocket the $50 or whatever that was prepaid, for what is now very common Internet behavior. We'll see how often they exercise this right of cancellation. Will they? Unclear. But it's interesting to note how much space is devoted to laying out the many circumstances that they will use for cancelling an account. Their stance on child porn: "In the case of individuals who wish to spread child pornography using a freedom account, Zero-Knowledge deals with these individuals in the same manner as any service provider would. We endeavor to shut down the account. " Advertisement posted via FreedomNet to a Usenet group: "Two young males frolic in the nude with 9-year-old female. Uncut, fun, not to be missed. Post a public key to alt.sexy.kitties." Given that Freedom doesn't know the precise content, will they cancel or not cancel? Except for the fact that their monitors will be fielding complaints constantly, I'll bet that if some bluenose complains they'll cancel. (*) "Illegal Activities" Consider this excerpt: 'How does Zero-Knowledge limit criminal abuse of Freedom? Zero-Knowledge is certainly concerned about the possibility that our technology may be used by some individuals to pursue illegal activities. For this reason we are reaching out to law enforcement agencies in an effort to educate them about our product, listen to their concerns, and, most importantly, show them how they can use our technology to 'go undercover' to combat illegal activity. Moreover, although the actual identity behind a Freedom pseudonym is not readily identifiable, the individual's activities are tied to that pseudonym, which means the offending activities can be prevented by turning off a nym if required by law enforcement. In other words, Zero-Knowledge reserves the right to delete any nyms or restrict nyms' activities for participating in criminal activity via the Freedom Network or otherwise breaching the terms outlined in the Freedom Network Access Agreement. " Many questions arise: * Most things are illegal in one or more jurisdictions. We've addressed this many, many times. The list is too long to go into here. So, which items specifically/ * What threshold does ZKS plan to let putatively illegal activity rise to? Posting images of women without veils? Posting images of young males frolicking nude with a 9-year-old female? Or offering to? Denying the Holocaust (illegal in Canada)? Violating the Official Secrets Act (illegal in the U.K. and hence presumably illegal in Barbados)? * ZKS refers many times to "not readily identifiable" and uses similar language which suggests that while it may be difficult to correlate online nyms with purchasers of the software, it may be possible to do if the need arises. Is this so? But Does it _Work_? I don't know. There have been no peer reviews of the underlying model. Considering the effort which has gone into analzying Mix nets and DC Nets to uncover weaknesses and to find how collusion can defeat untraceability, the lack of analysis of Freedom is not confidence-inspiring. Here's something which opens a can of worms: "Nym-specific information that is stored by Zero-Knowledge includes: * the nym's public key + reply blocks * information related to when the nym was created or renewed * the number of messages sent by the nym * the e-mail address, and date of sent messages * record of customer service complaints about or by a nym " It seems to me that simple arithmetic with this information is enough to correlate a nym to the putative owner of the original token. (Ideally, one buys tokens at Fry's, but some of the ZKS documentation refers to ZKS needing to collect enough information to ensure that the customer is a legitimate one, blah blah. Where are the details? Not only is there no detailed analysis of how Freedom protects nyms against the Usual Attacks, at least none that I could find, but the legal and governmental cruft is mind-boggling. They even have a liason officer to work with government agencies. (With the _Barbados_ government, one wonders?) This is bad stuff. From what I have seen here, using Freedom is a step backward. At least for any kind of controversial use. For those who may think that my postulated controversial uses are immoral, nearly everyone and every group has been an Enemy of the People to one group or another, and to one nation or another. Controversial and "illegal" uses are the only ones where speech really matters. --Tim May (* And of course those "two young males" would be my Bluepoint Siamese, 13, my Havana Brown, 9. That "9-year-old female" would be my Himalayan. Perhaps ZKS would claim this is fraud, if not pornography. Read the ad again. No fraud. No pornography. Such is the dilemma for those who set up nominally untraceable systems and then undercut the whole thing with nonsense about abuse, applicable laws, etc. Note that there is no finding of illegality, not even a subpoena, before ZKS pulls the plug. Gonna be a lot of pissed-off folks...whoops, he said "pissed-off"...YOUR FREEDOM.NET NYM HAS BEEN CANCELLED.) -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
