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The readme does explain that you could censor it by blocking access the chain entirely, it's not pretending otherwise. But by embedding the information into th

The readme does explain that you could censor it by blocking access the chain entirely, it's not pretending otherwise. But by embedding the information into the chain, if you are just reading posts I don't know how snoops could notice. You just need to run a node that keeps up with the state of the chain; there's no obvious way for network snoops to know whether you're doing that because you are using Handshake to resolve domain names or to read messages embedded in it, since you can do all that offline.

phoe-krk 5y ago
As long as there is illegal content on the blockchain, they can simply state that you are hosting a node connected to a network that downloads and shares illegal content, which will be true, and therefore that you possess it, which will also be true. And that can be enough to get you prosecuted regardless of how many crypto bros are going to try to convince you, or them, otherwise.
- roywiggins 5y ago
  Well, sure. They could make owning a computer illegal, or whatever. Anything outside your skull is censorable. The readme doesn't pretend that this works if you can't access the Handshake chain.
  - dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
    > Anything outside your skull is censorable Given a bullet and a gun, anything inside your skull is also censorable.
- dannyw 5y ago
  They being who, under what law? It's widely known there's child porn on the bitcoin blockchain, not familiar with any prosecutions that have happened. Pretending that the law trumps all technology is as naive as pretending technology trumps all law. No extreme is true: you can build technological problems to solve many social or political problems (example: VeraCrypt with plausible denialability)
  - jasode 5y ago
    >It's widely known there's child porn on the bitcoin blockchain, Are there actual bytes of child porn embedded in Bitcoin blockchain or only encrypted-or-obfuscated urls of possible websites that lead to child porn? Example story from 2018 saying child porn bytes are not in the blockchain and non-tech journalists are misreporting it: https://news.bitcoin.com/no-isnt-child-porn-bitcoin-blockchain/ https://news.bitcoin.com/no-isnt-child-porn-bitcoin-blockcha... Any credible embedding of child porn bytes in the blockchain since that story?
    - dataangel 5y ago
      If not, an enforcement agency could always upload it itself to create the pretext. It might be expensive, but nation states can afford mining hardware.
    - vorpalhex 5y ago
      Related question: does the cost of storing data on the blockchain on a byte basis decrease over time? Meaning would such attacks (attaching CSAM content to a blockchain) become more feasible at lower cost in the future?
      - magicjosh 5y ago
        There's no fundamental link between the cost of storing data on a blockchain and time. However, practically, it does look like the most common blockchains have gotten more expensive over time: Bitcoin, Ethereum, even Dogecoin. However, you could imagine a blockchain that gets cheaper over time i.e. by issuing more coins or even stays the same.
  - dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
    > They being who, under what law? Governments, under any law they wish to create. In some countries (eg Australia) they can (and have) created retrospective legislation that makes what was perfectly legal when you did it now illegal, and then prosecute you for it.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  So, if some bad actor embedded child sexual abuse material in the blockchain it would become illegal to run a Bitcoin node? Seems like somebody could short Bitcoin or eth, do that, make it pubic, cause a furor, and profit despite the cost.
acdha 5y ago
Okay, so now you’ve downloaded the entire chain. Does that seem safe to have in your possession in this scenario? Even if I have the storage, I would not want to find out that someone else had uploaded something illegal when the police search my computer/phone and I have to prove to their satisfaction that I didn’t know. If you don’t download the entire chain, your traffic connecting to certain nodes and downloading certain sizes can be enough to track you - there are academic papers about using this to figure out what movies you’re watching over HTTPS – and that’s assuming that you don’t learn the hard way that the fast server with all of the underground content is the secret police’s honeypot. This is all probably moot in any case because it’s tricky to build something like this which never does DNS resolution, connects to a suspicious server, etc. The average user is going to have a very hard time avoiding mistakes like that, and that’s assuming you don’t have police informants encouraging unsafe opsec or use of treacherous apps — real things which happen to dissidents and activists all over the world. Remember Citizen Lab’s report on the use of NSO’s malware to go after supporters of a soda tax? What bothers me most about cryptocurrency proponents are that most of the claims are being made by people who will not personally suffer the consequences of being wrong if someone follows their advice. If you care about people in dangerous legal environments, that really needs to focus on changing the system rather than advocating use of electronic systems which even experts cannot use safely in those environments.

phoe-krk 5y ago

As long as there is illegal content on the blockchain, they can simply state that you are hosting a node connected to a network that downloads and shares illegal content, which will be true, and therefore that you possess it, which will also be true. And that can be enough to get you prosecuted regardless of how many crypto bros are going to try to convince you, or them, otherwise.

roywiggins 5y ago
Well, sure. They could make owning a computer illegal, or whatever. Anything outside your skull is censorable. The readme doesn't pretend that this works if you can't access the Handshake chain.
- dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
  > Anything outside your skull is censorable Given a bullet and a gun, anything inside your skull is also censorable.
dannyw 5y ago
They being who, under what law? It's widely known there's child porn on the bitcoin blockchain, not familiar with any prosecutions that have happened. Pretending that the law trumps all technology is as naive as pretending technology trumps all law. No extreme is true: you can build technological problems to solve many social or political problems (example: VeraCrypt with plausible denialability)
- jasode 5y ago
  >It's widely known there's child porn on the bitcoin blockchain, Are there actual bytes of child porn embedded in Bitcoin blockchain or only encrypted-or-obfuscated urls of possible websites that lead to child porn? Example story from 2018 saying child porn bytes are not in the blockchain and non-tech journalists are misreporting it: https://news.bitcoin.com/no-isnt-child-porn-bitcoin-blockchain/ https://news.bitcoin.com/no-isnt-child-porn-bitcoin-blockcha... Any credible embedding of child porn bytes in the blockchain since that story?
  - dataangel 5y ago
    If not, an enforcement agency could always upload it itself to create the pretext. It might be expensive, but nation states can afford mining hardware.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    Related question: does the cost of storing data on the blockchain on a byte basis decrease over time? Meaning would such attacks (attaching CSAM content to a blockchain) become more feasible at lower cost in the future?
    - magicjosh 5y ago
      There's no fundamental link between the cost of storing data on a blockchain and time. However, practically, it does look like the most common blockchains have gotten more expensive over time: Bitcoin, Ethereum, even Dogecoin. However, you could imagine a blockchain that gets cheaper over time i.e. by issuing more coins or even stays the same.
- dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
  > They being who, under what law? Governments, under any law they wish to create. In some countries (eg Australia) they can (and have) created retrospective legislation that makes what was perfectly legal when you did it now illegal, and then prosecute you for it.
ALittleLight 5y ago
So, if some bad actor embedded child sexual abuse material in the blockchain it would become illegal to run a Bitcoin node? Seems like somebody could short Bitcoin or eth, do that, make it pubic, cause a furor, and profit despite the cost.

acdha 5y ago

Okay, so now you’ve downloaded the entire chain. Does that seem safe to have in your possession in this scenario? Even if I have the storage, I would not want to find out that someone else had uploaded something illegal when the police search my computer/phone and I have to prove to their satisfaction that I didn’t know. If you don’t download the entire chain, your traffic connecting to certain nodes and downloading certain sizes can be enough to track you - there are academic papers about using this to figure out what movies you’re watching over HTTPS – and that’s assuming that you don’t learn the hard way that the fast server with all of the underground content is the secret police’s honeypot. This is all probably moot in any case because it’s tricky to build something like this which never does DNS resolution, connects to a suspicious server, etc. The average user is going to have a very hard time avoiding mistakes like that, and that’s assuming you don’t have police informants encouraging unsafe opsec or use of treacherous apps — real things which happen to dissidents and activists all over the world. Remember Citizen Lab’s report on the use of NSO’s malware to go after supporters of a soda tax? What bothers me most about cryptocurrency proponents are that most of the claims are being made by people who will not personally suffer the consequences of being wrong if someone follows their advice. If you care about people in dangerous legal environments, that really needs to focus on changing the system rather than advocating use of electronic systems which even experts cannot use safely in those environments.