Re: 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 the long  
> term
> on a darknet, and since nobody who isn't trusted by you can find  
> your IP
> address, people should be able to vote in accordance with their
> consciences. Technical forms of voterigging will be very difficult due
> to this being a local rather than a global vote, and since votes are
> public, and nodes' operators can talk to other nodes' operators (with
> free anti-spam mechanisms of course), buying votes etc shouldn't be  
> a big
> problem. Secret ballot protocols might be possible but would be  
> difficult
> and dubious given that each node will participate in many votes  
> with the
> same vote (one for each node it is connected to).
> -- 
> Matthew J Toseland - toad-EI5O+8PHWbJeeLb3ft/[email protected]
> Freenet Project Official Codemonkey - http://freenetproject.org/
> ICTHUS - Nothing is impossible. Our Boss says so.
> _______________________________________________
> chat mailing list
> [email protected]
> Archived: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.general
> Unsubscribe at http://dodo.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/ 
> listinfo/chat
> Or mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe

_______________________________________________
chat mailing list
[email protected]
Archived: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.general
Unsubscribe at http://dodo.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/chat
Or mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe