Re: 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.  Their need for a link to the rest of the world is 
> more important than the problems democracy activists and christians have 
> with Freenet, much as I sympathise with all of them.  And they really 
> are far more likely to be hunted down and disappeared, so their security 
> has to be protected more carefully.
> 
> To generalise: the weaker the minority the more important I think 
> Freenet is.  The more oppressed the group, the less likely they are to 
> care about what else might be going through their nodes.  It seems like 
> this proposal tilts the balance too far towards majorities who can 
> probably take care of themselves.
-- 
Matthew J Toseland - toad-EI5O+8PHWbJeeLb3ft/[email protected]
Freenet Project Official Codemonkey - http://freenetproject.org/
ICTHUS - Nothing is impossible. Our Boss says so.

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