5 ms·

How feasible is Freenet for email? We can use PGP today, but the metadata is available to all. But what journalists who need to communicate more anonymously tha

• kaoD 13y ago
  It's just non-feasible. Freenet is a distributed file/web database, not realtime internet.
  • rlpb 13y ago
    Email does not have to be real time.
    • kaoD 13y ago
      Maybe realtime was not the best choice of a word, but Freenet cannot handle email in any case. Freenet is a global distributed p2p file database. Email does not fit that medium.
      • rlpb 13y ago
        > Email does not fit that medium. Why not? Email can be implemented in a global p2p file database. Every "email" simply adds another file. Privacy can be ensured with encryption (as long as the encryption is not broken, at least). See existing Freenet message boards for an example. It may not be Internet RFC821/822 (and subsequent standards) Email, but it is email. What part of this will not fit the Freenet model?
        • kaoD 13y ago
          How would you send the new file to your recipient?
          • rlpb 13y ago
            The same way that message boards do this already on Freenet. See https://freenetproject.org/understand.html https://freenetproject.org/understand.html. Something like: Publish a site using a USK (perhaps one per recipient), containing all encrypted messages sent recently. Update the site with an additional message when you need to send one. The recipient checks it for updates periodically. I'm not sure if my understanding is inaccurate, but since Frost already achieves something like this, I don't see that it's automatically impossible such as what you seem to be inferring. In fact, now that I look, there's: https://freenetproject.org/freemail.html https://freenetproject.org/freemail.html I'm dubious about the safety of using non-Freenet clients, but surely this demonstrates that it's possible to build a messaging system built over Freenet?
            • kaoD 13y ago
              Yep, you're right.
  • deleted 13y ago
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  • dvdkhlng 13y ago
    Should be feasible with GNUnet [1] which has pretty generic foundations for implementing anonymous and secure peer-to-peer services. Think of an encrypted overlay network that uses addresses that cannot be linked to IP addresses and relaying transfer mechanisms that are hardened against traffic analysis attacks. There seems to be research under way to get a messaging protocol built into GNUnet. Google turns up this pdf [2] for example. [1] https://gnunet.org/ https://gnunet.org/ [2] http://rp.delaat.net/2012-2013/p88/presentation.pdf http://rp.delaat.net/2012-2013/p88/presentation.pdf
• nwh 13y ago
  When you think about totalitarian internet monitoring, like the one the US seem to have, there's almost no point aiming for anonymity. Almost all sensible means are broken when you have deep levels of traffic interception in many countries. The Tor Anonymity Router mentions the types of monitoring they attempt to subvert, and mention that full internet monitoring is not one of their design goals. This is simply because with any low-latency system, correlation between the entry and exit can be obtained. Similar attacks exist for networks such as Bitcoin for similar reasons. > But what journalists who need to communicate more anonymously that that used pseudonymous PGP keys - one per story In this case you run into troubles with authenticity. Without persistent keys being authenticated in some way (see "web of trust"), there's no way in telling if the person is communicating with a government proxy or the real target journalist. That's the issue with the "encrypt everything" mantra, authenticity is stupid difficult to verify.
• einhverfr 13y ago
  I think Tor would be a better idea of what to try to emulate, but the full envelope (including envelope from) would have to be encrypted such that it would be decrypted at the end-point. I think something sufficiently secure is possible for email. I think it would require a whole new set of protocols and approaches, and for some things (like voice) it is not.
• fmoq 13y ago
  It works. Freenet has Freemail[0]. I'd like to bring attention to I2PBote[1] too. Both of these solutions are distributed, encrypted entirely (even metadata) and solve email's privacy problems. [0] http://freenetproject.org/freemail.html http://freenetproject.org/freemail.html [1] http://i2pbote.i2p.us/ http://i2pbote.i2p.us/
• deleted 13y ago
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