Re: Crazy idea: How trust in darknets enables secure de

Thrasher Remailer wrote:

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>In message <20050711151749.GA13039-EI5O+8PHWbJeeLb3ft/[email protected]>,
>toad-EI5O+8PHWbJeeLb3ft/[email protected] 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):
>>    
>>
>
>I'm not going to flame, but I cannot begin to state how strongly I disagree
>with this idea or any idea even remotely like it.
>
>  
>
>>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.
>>    
>>
>
>Essentially, this will destroy freenet's original purpose.
>
>You propose introducing traceability.  Bad Idea. The whole point of freenet
>is that it's users are NOT traceable and can remain fully anonymous.  You
>spoke of only people you trust being able to know your IP, I don't trust
>ANYBODY!
>  
>
Fair enough, but that prevents you from using the Darknet all together. 
But that has been flamed about before...

>I use freenet because I can function anonymously, I rely on the fact that
>freenet's distributed nature makes it impossible to identify or take action
>against the insertion of any particular content.
>
>Granted, there are people abusing that to insert wide varieties of porn,
>including c.p. but you see, that's a price that has to be paid.  If freenet
>is to be what it's stated purpose is, then the ONLY action that can be
>taken in regard to content that somebody finds objectionable is to not
>request it.  One can also help push older objectionable content out by
>continuing to insert quality content.
>  
>
I wonder if the existence of the objectionable content is really the 
problem. I mean people know there are things they don't like on the 
normal Internet, but largely ignore it because they don't go to those 
sites. The issue people see with freenet is that they could be spreading 
this content. I think if we could eliminate this it would be better than 
forcing people to look at the content that they don't want to see.

>The problem with tracing and taking action against objectionable content is
>that the definition of objectionable content has a tendency to change.
>
>Today the bad thing is c.p., tomorrow it's a certain political view, next
>it's something else... and so on.
>  
>
It would be great if we could specify criteria for what is acceptable, 
and let the software handle it. However there is no way that software 
can KNOW what the content is, at all. So all such decisions are 
ultimately made by people. However if people did the right thing, we 
would have no need for software.

>I'm thinking ahead to when the thing that is illegal to distribute is
>certain Christian teachings.  Given a system like you describe it is true
>that a lot of c.p. can be removed.  However that same system would cause
>the deaths of a lot of people in the eventual Hyper-Anti-Christian world
>that is developing.
>  
>
DEVELOPING? Where? Today a great number of religious groups including 
various Christian ones are illegal in China. Some provinces in India are 
no better. 5 years ago Christianity was a capital offense in 
Afghanistan, today many of it's neighbors have globalization friendly, 
but internally oppressive governments. The "western" world, however is 
certainly not becoming any more anti-Christian, it is true that there is 
more rhetoric as Christianity has come to the forefront of the political 
scene. But today in the United States for example, weekly church 
attendance as a percentage of the population is at it's highest levels 
ever. (and yes that includes those 200 years before it it was founded.) 
So the "Western" world will not become "Hyper-Anti-Christian" in our 
lifetimes or our grand children's. However the fact remains that all the 
world is not so fortunate. Today more than 2/3rds of the worlds 
population lives in arias where free speach is simply not allowed.

Given that Freenet appeals to a global audience, there are two important 
things to consider:
1. It is easy to filter everything, especially if you control all the 
infrastructure and can pass laws requiring monitoring of people.
2. Most people don't have the Internet.

So it makes since to try to present Freenet as being reasonable and safe 
software to further it's adoption (I doubt most governments really care 
about Kazza, but people like it). On the other hand one could try to be 
more absolute and try to conceal the network completely. In this case a 
darknet makes sense, it might make it's adoption harder, but it would 
not be so easily taken down. However I don't see the gain in doing both. 
(Technical anilisis of proposeal to come...)

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