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Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System (2000) [pdf]

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Re: Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System (2000) [pdf]

#31

Post by pdimitar »

Jhsto wrote: post #19
zzzcpan wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not tor. I guess ipfs would be somewhat similar today, but it has its own problems and I don't see it succeeding either.

Care to elaborate problems of IPFS? I just recently set up a node (which I run while I heat my apartment with GPU mining) and am wondering if there's some other project I should give my spare cycles to.

Well, for one thing, they don't care about anonymity at all. And already implemented a mechanism to blacklist content hashes on the demand of law-enforcement agencies. Both these things essentially defeat the purpose of many enthusiasts who would use it -- and its only function remains that of a volunteer-driven p2p network for making sure certain data doesn't die. And that's it, nothing else. Even that is somewhat ruined by paid pinning services.

For many IPFS is enough for what it does. But in a world where WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden are facts of life, it falls vastly behind on what's needed out there.

Re: Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System (2000) [pdf]

#32

Post by rolandog »

mirimir wrote: post #18
Nerada wrote: post #15

>A recent court case in the Peel Region of Ontario, Canada R. v. Owen, 2017 ONCJ 729 (CanLII), illustrated that Law Enforcement do in fact have a presence, after Peel Regional Police, located who had been downloading illegal material on the Freenet network. I haven't looked into the architecture of Freenet, but would someone be able to give a quick rundown of how this is possible? I was always surprised there weren't…

Investigators run modified Freenet nodes that serve illegal content. They log connections with peers, and track chunks of illegal files, based on hashes. So if your node peers with one or more of their nodes, they can see if it requests any of those illegal chunks. If it does, you are "downloading illegal material". Freenet is a pure P2P system. Your peers know your IP address, and vice versa. So your only defense is…

If that is the case, I would imagine it's like prosecuting a lobbyist for the bribe they're relaying.

Re: Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System (2000) [pdf]

#33

Post by FakeComments »

chocolatebunny wrote: post #29
mirimir wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the public Freenet opennet contains lots of horrible content. But then, Freenet's focus has always been censorship resistance. Content gets distributed and replicated according to its popularity. It's a lot like BitTorrent, but with serious transport encryption and randomized routing. And arguably it's worked pretty well for that, given that there's been consistently lots of horrible content for 18 years. Conten…

I think there needs to be a way to have personal filters on P2P systems. I don't want censorship but I don't want to support the distribution of child pornography, not because it's illegal but because it doesn't align to my personal moral compass.

We already have that — it’s normal communication.

There’s no way to make the change you’re proposing without seriously compromising the set up of such digital, secure communications, though. You’re asking to MITM the secure net, as a feature.

You and the feds, both.

Re: Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System (2000) [pdf]

#34

Post by Nerada »

mirimir wrote: post #25
rayvy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoyed this nugget of info. But a few questions (if you can answer them) > They log connections with peers Of course (I'm assuming via just IPs) > and track chunks of illegal files meaning what exactly? How could they track a 5KB chunk being sharded across say 10 different nodes? (further, flexible nets like freenet adjust the location of data over time based on the use of said data) > they can see if it requests…

Missouri Law Enforcement's Freenet Attack Now Public Record[0] Levine et al. (2017) Statistical Detection of Downloaders in Freenet.[1] 0) https://www.reddit.com/r/Freenet/comments/66f0n3/missouri_la... 1) http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1873/IWPE17_paper_12.pdf

I'm going to assume Ontario is using the same method that the Missouri police are using above. Here's a response from Freenet outlining an 83% false-positive rate.

https://freenetproject.org/police-departments-tracking-effor...

Re: Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System (2000) [pdf]

#35

Post by tbrownaw »

mirimir wrote: post #28
athrun wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it even possible to anonymously lease a VPS? I guess you would need to use cash, at a minimum.

Sure. Do everything via Tor, using Whonix to avoid leaks. Hit Tor through nested VPN chains. Buy some Bitcoin, and then mix two or three times. Use a different Whonix instance for each mixing step, and a different mixing service. Then lease your VPS. And if it really matters, you can daisy chain VPS via Tor .onion SSH.[0] 0) https://www.ivpn.net/privacy-guides/onion-ssh-hosts-for-logi...

[...] Then lease your VPS

... With a credit card (which of course has your name on it), since AFAIK the providers tend to only accept bitcoin for established accounts.

Re: Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System (2000) [pdf]

#36

Post by mirimir »

Nerada wrote: post #34
mirimir wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Missouri Law Enforcement's Freenet Attack Now Public Record[0] Levine et al. (2017) Statistical Detection of Downloaders in Freenet.[1] 0) https://www.reddit.com/r/Freenet/comments/66f0n3/missouri_la... 1) http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1873/IWPE17_paper_12.pdf

I'm going to assume Ontario is using the same method that the Missouri police are using above. Here's a response from Freenet outlining an 83% false-positive rate. https://freenetproject.org/police-departments-tracking-effor...

Yes, that's the Freenet Project response that I was thinking of. Thanks for citing it.

But the problem now is that there's technical backup for both sides. So defense counsel will likely need a credentialed expert to submit a report, be deposed, and testify. Although I haven't followed any of these cases, I'm guessing that many defendants have accepted plea bargains. Because battles of experts can get expensive fast.

And then you've got the challenge of explaining this stuff to a jury. And countering the emotional "evil child molester" rhetoric. I wonder if the Freenet Project would provide such an expert?

Re: Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System (2000) [pdf]

#37

Post by mirimir »

tbrownaw wrote: post #35
mirimir wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Do everything via Tor, using Whonix to avoid leaks. Hit Tor through nested VPN chains. Buy some Bitcoin, and then mix two or three times. Use a different Whonix instance for each mixing step, and a different mixing service. Then lease your VPS. And if it really matters, you can daisy chain VPS via Tor .onion SSH.[0] 0) https://www.ivpn.net/privacy-guides/onion-ssh-hosts-for-logi...

[...] Then lease your VPS ... With a credit card (which of course has your name on it), since AFAIK the providers tend to only accept bitcoin for established accounts.

No, of course not. I've found lots of VPS providers who accept Bitcoin. Just search a while, and you'll find them. Some of them have rather "unsavory" reputations, I admit. And you want to avoid the ones that charge a huge premium for being "bulletproof".

Re: Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System (2000) [pdf]

#38

Post by zrm »

nyolfen wrote: post #20
FooHentai wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VOAT turning into a cesspool of everything that was being banned from Reddit is another example of that, too.

“The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches.”

The solution to that may be to separate the hosting from the discovery.

If the hosting is anonymous and censorship-resistant then you'll get every type of content, but for anybody to use it they would first have to find it.

Then you have a slew of independent discoverability portals. Some are created for child pornography, so the FBI hacks into them and then uses them to arrest everybody there. Others are created to replace Tumblr and YouTube and refuse to link to child pornography, so child pornographers have no reason to go there and the people disgusted by child pornography can safely use them.

But setting up a discoverability portal is a lot less expensive than setting up a hosting service (because a link uses much less bandwidth than high quality video), so there should be more competition, and in particular it should still be difficult to censor anything that has more than a modest amount of popular support.

Re: Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System (2000) [pdf]

#39

Post by bitwize »

simcop2387 wrote: post #4

I've always loved the ideals and design of Freenet for what it does, but the main issues I always ran into when I'd check it out were that discoverability was horrible and then once you did manage to dig into things and find content it was usually stuff I wouldn't want to find to begin with. That's left a lot of bad impressions on people I think, and caused it to have a reputation for only illegal things on it.

And this is why censorship is the future of the internet. If you run an online service and don't censor, you become a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Exhibit A: USENET. Exhibit B: Freenet.

Re: Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System (2000) [pdf]

#40

Post by nickpsecurity »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #7
simcop2387 wrote: post #4

I've always loved the ideals and design of Freenet for what it does, but the main issues I always ran into when I'd check it out were that discoverability was horrible and then once you did manage to dig into things and find content it was usually stuff I wouldn't want to find to begin with. That's left a lot of bad impressions on people I think, and caused it to have a reputation for only illegal things on it.

That's rather inherent: if you create a network whose primary feature is anonymity and lack of rules, your early adopters will be everyone barred by the rules of other services, which means you become a cesspool. Tor did a good job with marketing and optics early on, to make its intended use cases highly visible.

I'm glad they did. The "Who uses Tor?" page is still what I give to people thinking privacy/anonymity tech is only for crooks. I always point out it helps cops, folks fighting terrorism, journalists, and victims of domestic abuse. And that the only way it works right is if lots of people are using it so they can hide in the crowd. I add that crooks can use it, too, but they also use cars, cameras, cheap phones, and so on. Doesn't mean we keep those things public or under government control. These pieces together in the argument gets agreement or at least sympathy out of lots of people who media freaks out about Tor, etc.

https://www.torproject.org/about/torusers.html.en

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