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Yes, the Internet caught many "corporate and political powers" by surprise. But now they're getting it locked down. > I think many will stop seeing the darkweb

Yes, the Internet caught many "corporate and political powers" by surprise. But now they're getting it locked down. > I think many will stop seeing the darkweb as a place of CP and drug dealing, and more of an internet free from regulation. You mean Tor, I presume. But Freenet is still around, although it's too risky to use it, except via Tor. And there are other overlay networks. Some basically just use VPN connections (such as tinc). And they were always about being "free from regulation". It's just that hobbyists, activists and people into recreational drugs and CP were early adopters. If you haven't read Vernor Vinge's True Names lately, I highly recommend it.

smush 8y ago
Sorry, I'm not familiar with Freenet. Why must you use Tor to browse it?
- mirimir 8y ago
  It's a ~20 year old P2P network that relies on traffic obfuscation for plausible deniability. But peers see each other's IP addresses. There's lots of child porn on it. In recent years, investigators have been using customized clients to serve child porn, and track which peers receive it from them. For IPs in their jurisdiction, they get and execute search warrants. Although there is arguably plausible deniability, most defendants lack the will and resources to fight. So they typically plea bargain. Anyway, if you use Tor, they can't find you. But it's not as simple as that, really. Basically, you lease a VPS, working ~anonymously via Tor. You run a Freenet node on the VPS, and access the webGUI as a Tor onion service. They can take down the VPS, if they like, but won't know who was using it.
  - cgtzczykldpq 8y ago
    > It's a ~20 year old P2P network that relies on traffic obfuscation for plausible deniability. But peers see each other's IP addresses. Traffic is not just obfuscated, it is encrypted. Sure, you see the IP of a peer which transfers stuff across your client - but you do not know what the stuff is as it is encrypted. So the IP address is worthless unless you figure out a way to guess what the stuff is, and who requested is. See my other reply in this thread for further details.
    - mirimir 8y ago
      Sure, but some criminal investigators have figured out how to know "what the stuff is". They serve it themselves, and have hashes for the encrypted chunks. As far as "who requested" the stuff, as you say in your other reply, they have some statistical arguments. I agree with the Freenet Project that they're very likely bullshit. However, if you're facing criminal charges, you'd better have resources for expert testimony to discredit their arguments. And if you don't, accepting a plea bargain may be the best option. Even if you are truly innocent.
      - icebraining 8y ago
        AFAIK in the cases of the convicted people, the Freenet stuff was only used to obtain warrants, at which points the cops captured computers and found accessible CP. I don't remember seeing anyone convicted based on the Freenet evidence alone.
        mirimir 8y ago
        Maybe so, but that ex Philly cop is still jailed on contempt, because he says that he's forgotten the disk password. But generally, I'd rather avoid having a warrant served, and my stuff impounded. So advertising my IP address as a Freenet node seems like a dumb move.
cgtzczykldpq 8y ago
> But Freenet is still around, although it's too risky to use it, except via Tor. Hi, I'm a Freenet developer of the past ~ 10 years, so I'd like to clarify upon this :) (The project is still active, there was a release just this week!) While there technically were indeed lawsuits in the US, the situation is not as black and white as "it's dangerous". It is an anonymizing peer-to-peer network as well! What is dangerous under certain circumstances is only one of the three modes to use it: 1) Opennet, where Freenet uses random strangers as peers. 2) Darknet, where you only connect to peers you manually select, e.g. your friends. 3) Opennet with some Darknet peers in addition (I'll call it "mixed mode"). So Opennet allows law enforcement to connect to your Freenet potentially and thus analyze your traffic. Still, this does not mean that your Freenet will plainly tell its peers what you are downloading! Traffic is always redirected across a random number of peers, none of which tells the others who requested it - which provides plausible deniability. All traffic is encrypted, only the recipient can decrypt it. So you cannot just watch traffic and filter out illegal JPEGs or whatever. What LEA did then is to come up some math and then claim to deduct from it that there is a certain probability that the illegal downloads were requested by the people they claim it came from. Their math is known and discussed by the Freenet core team, it may be addressed eventually - but from watching the discussion (not the math) I can say it should be taken with a grain of salt. It's not absolute proof that the claimed downloaders were in fact the downloaders. It's just a probabilistic assumption, which may possibly be wrong because the way Freenet works is rather complex (>200 000 LOC). So as Freenet stores content encrypted on random user's machines (which is the advantage over Tor, Freenet is completely decentralized!), it is imaginable that law enforcement accusses people who did not willingly download it, but just happened to store it. But: You can use Freenet in Darknet or mixed mode to be reasonably safe: The more of your peers are not controlled by attackers, the lower the probability that a statistical attack can be conducted. Further, the said legal cases only happened in the US to my knowledge, and I'd argue that the legal system of that country seems a bit flawed. Outside of the US you can just run Opennet and probably be at the same risk as some random non-exit Tor node. You transport traffic which you cannot look into (because its encrypted) and store files which you cannot look into (because they are encrypted), so what's illegal about it anyway?
- cgtzczykldpq 8y ago

smush 8y ago

Sorry, I'm not familiar with Freenet. Why must you use Tor to browse it?

mirimir 8y ago
It's a ~20 year old P2P network that relies on traffic obfuscation for plausible deniability. But peers see each other's IP addresses. There's lots of child porn on it. In recent years, investigators have been using customized clients to serve child porn, and track which peers receive it from them. For IPs in their jurisdiction, they get and execute search warrants. Although there is arguably plausible deniability, most defendants lack the will and resources to fight. So they typically plea bargain. Anyway, if you use Tor, they can't find you. But it's not as simple as that, really. Basically, you lease a VPS, working ~anonymously via Tor. You run a Freenet node on the VPS, and access the webGUI as a Tor onion service. They can take down the VPS, if they like, but won't know who was using it.
- cgtzczykldpq 8y ago
  > It's a ~20 year old P2P network that relies on traffic obfuscation for plausible deniability. But peers see each other's IP addresses. Traffic is not just obfuscated, it is encrypted. Sure, you see the IP of a peer which transfers stuff across your client - but you do not know what the stuff is as it is encrypted. So the IP address is worthless unless you figure out a way to guess what the stuff is, and who requested is. See my other reply in this thread for further details.
  - mirimir 8y ago
    Sure, but some criminal investigators have figured out how to know "what the stuff is". They serve it themselves, and have hashes for the encrypted chunks. As far as "who requested" the stuff, as you say in your other reply, they have some statistical arguments. I agree with the Freenet Project that they're very likely bullshit. However, if you're facing criminal charges, you'd better have resources for expert testimony to discredit their arguments. And if you don't, accepting a plea bargain may be the best option. Even if you are truly innocent.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      AFAIK in the cases of the convicted people, the Freenet stuff was only used to obtain warrants, at which points the cops captured computers and found accessible CP. I don't remember seeing anyone convicted based on the Freenet evidence alone.
      - mirimir 8y ago
        Maybe so, but that ex Philly cop is still jailed on contempt, because he says that he's forgotten the disk password. But generally, I'd rather avoid having a warrant served, and my stuff impounded. So advertising my IP address as a Freenet node seems like a dumb move.

cgtzczykldpq 8y ago

> But Freenet is still around, although it's too risky to use it, except via Tor. Hi, I'm a Freenet developer of the past ~ 10 years, so I'd like to clarify upon this :) (The project is still active, there was a release just this week!) While there technically were indeed lawsuits in the US, the situation is not as black and white as "it's dangerous". It is an anonymizing peer-to-peer network as well! What is dangerous under certain circumstances is only one of the three modes to use it: 1) Opennet, where Freenet uses random strangers as peers. 2) Darknet, where you only connect to peers you manually select, e.g. your friends. 3) Opennet with some Darknet peers in addition (I'll call it "mixed mode"). So Opennet allows law enforcement to connect to your Freenet potentially and thus analyze your traffic. Still, this does not mean that your Freenet will plainly tell its peers what you are downloading! Traffic is always redirected across a random number of peers, none of which tells the others who requested it - which provides plausible deniability. All traffic is encrypted, only the recipient can decrypt it. So you cannot just watch traffic and filter out illegal JPEGs or whatever. What LEA did then is to come up some math and then claim to deduct from it that there is a certain probability that the illegal downloads were requested by the people they claim it came from. Their math is known and discussed by the Freenet core team, it may be addressed eventually - but from watching the discussion (not the math) I can say it should be taken with a grain of salt. It's not absolute proof that the claimed downloaders were in fact the downloaders. It's just a probabilistic assumption, which may possibly be wrong because the way Freenet works is rather complex (>200 000 LOC). So as Freenet stores content encrypted on random user's machines (which is the advantage over Tor, Freenet is completely decentralized!), it is imaginable that law enforcement accusses people who did not willingly download it, but just happened to store it. But: You can use Freenet in Darknet or mixed mode to be reasonably safe: The more of your peers are not controlled by attackers, the lower the probability that a statistical attack can be conducted. Further, the said legal cases only happened in the US to my knowledge, and I'd argue that the legal system of that country seems a bit flawed. Outside of the US you can just run Opennet and probably be at the same risk as some random non-exit Tor node. You transport traffic which you cannot look into (because its encrypted) and store files which you cannot look into (because they are encrypted), so what's illegal about it anyway?

cgtzczykldpq 8y ago