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Honestly, the Freenet project scares me. I am a privacy advocate and always looking for darknet solutions. But the problem with Freenet is the prevalence and

Honestly, the Freenet project scares me. I am a privacy advocate and always looking for darknet solutions. But the problem with Freenet is the prevalence and availability of child pornography on it combined with the fact that the software can store some of this stuff on your hard-drive to maintain the network (I'm not sure if you have to visit/view the stuff first. I got too spooked when I saw it to stick around.) I like the concept of Freenet, but it seems that the use of it could easily communicate to a jury "this guy is a pedophile" rather than "this guy believes in privacy" if you got hauled in for anything (legitimate or not).

upofadown 12y ago
The "illegal bits" thing always seems to come up whenever anyone mentions Freenet. Has anyone ever actually got in trouble for possession of encrypted illegal stuff on their disk that they don't have the key for? It sounds like a legal case where lots of things could go wrong.
- jayess 12y ago
  Do you want to be the first guy to find out?
  - mentat 12y ago
    Chilling effects
    - mentat 12y ago
      It is a chilling effect, if they've intimidated you into not wanting to find out. Down vote all you want, doesn't change it.
- alyandon 12y ago
  When it comes to child pornography, even the mere accusation makes you automatically guilty in the eyes of the public which can destroy your professional and personal life. So, what happens if your IP address somehow become associated with trafficking child pornography? You run the risk of getting raided by a decidedly non-technical police force, having every electronic device you own confiscated for an indeterminate amount of time and being charged with a felony by a non-technical district attorney's office. Even in the case where they eventually realize you didn't have anything to do with it and drop the charges your life has been turned upside down in the process. In the worst case, a district attorney could choose to try and take the case to trial regardless and then your fate is in the hands of a non-technical jury. I just can't personally accept a risk like that in order to contribute hard drive space and computing power to a darknet project like freenet.
  - htns 12y ago
    If you are hysteric about things like these then just don't use your own IP. Supposedly it's not difficult to buy a VPS with bitcoin. And really, pumping money into such businesses is a greater contribution to enduring internet anonymity than running Freenet.
  - cheako 12y ago
    What happens when random ppl are accused of having child pornography? I'd be Salem all over again, all it takes is one watery tart to convince an entire society that they need to stone the ppl she doesn't like to death. Simply because it's a witch hunt is the problem, not the hunt it's self but the ppl who are to afraid to be called pedophiles to stand up against the hunt. It's not find and good to sit there and watch someone being persecuted unjustly, you've got to keep in mind that it could just as easily happen to you. I like the "this is normal, everybody does it" defense. If everyone were to run Freenet and store child pornography on their computer, then the which hunt ends at that. I've not seen the new MLK movie, but something along those lines where ppl are willing to die so that others may run Freenet without issue. One should not fear the life of a Marter, one should fear living in a world where there are not any. -- Michael Mestnik.
- MrZongle2 12y ago
  Well, that's certainly part of the issue. But even if Freenet users were immune from prosecution for what's in the data store on their hard drives, does that make the possibility of aiding the distribution of child pornography any less repugnant? What about other material that goes far beyond simply being offensive?
  - icebraining 12y ago
    Every ISP is also aiding this distribution. Does that make running an ISP a repugnant activity? I don't think so.
  - upofadown 12y ago
    It would not bother me at all. The stuff in the Freenet distributed store is all hard encrypted in a way I have no access to. I literally believe that the content ceases to exist while it is encrypted. To think any other way would allow me to believe that the file was also haunted by evil spirits and the like. As I am a rationalist I would prefer to avoid that sort of thought.
    - x1798DE 12y ago
      That doesn't make any sense at all. The fact that you can't access it doesn't mean you're not aiding in the distribution of it. If someone puts a ham sandwich in a locked box to which you do not have the key, and you bring the box to someone else who has the key, does that mean you didn't deliver the ham sandwich? I'm not saying I agree with the parent comment, but your reasoning is bizarre.
      - upofadown 12y ago
        There are no physical objects involved here. It is entirely data. The only thing that can possibly happen is that you could gain knowledge of the data. Someone could claim that there was some child porn embedded in the centre of a mountain but it would be just a claim. There would fundamentally be no way to prove that it was any particular thing unless someone admits to putting it there. The people that invented the cryptography very much intended to create this philosophical situation. We can't pretend otherwise without breaking the cryptography.
- api 12y ago
  I've never personally tried Freenet, and there's a reason for that. Everyone I've spoken with who has has told me that it's basically a kidporn network -- absolutely riddled with the stuff. If you dedicate storage to Freenet chances are more than half of the data you store will be child pornography. No thanks. It's a problem you run into with any darknet, but Freenet seems to have it a lot worse than Tor .onions. I have trawled around onionland a few times and saw only a few links that seemed like they might point in that direction, and didn't follow them. Most of Tor seemed pretty free of the stuff, and most of the directories seemed to have a policy against it. I think this is a special case of a more general problem with libertarianism. There are in general two kinds of libertarians: those who want to maximize freedom for humanistic reasons, and those who want to maximize freedom because they want to be free to bully and exploit people without supervision or interference. Child pornographers fit into the latter, a category they share with people who want financial deregulation so they can fleece investors with pump and dump scams or KKK types who want the Federal government out of our lives so they can establish local tyrannies and oppress minorities.
  - mike_hearn 12y ago
    There's no policy against child porn sites at the directory level or at any Tor level. There was a talk at CCC some days ago that claimed 80%+ of hidden service traffic is to child abuse sites. So I'm not sure it's so different to Freenet, actually.
    - api 12y ago
      Hrm. Maybe more hidden then. Honestly this doesn't bode well for darknets. The problem is that even if darknets have a legitimate reason to exist, non-creeps will avoid them if they see much of this kind of thing. I've also heard stories of very realistic looking rape porn -- maybe a bit too realistic -- in places like this. It's gross.
      - ixwt 12y ago
        > Honestly this doesn't bode well for darknets. The problem is that even if darknets have a legitimate reason to exist, non-creeps will avoid them if they see much of this kind of thing. Non-creeps shouldn't use cash to purchase anything. People will almost always use money to purchase drugs, because it's extremely difficult to trace. Just because people use something for something illegal, doesn't mean that it shouldn't be used at all. In fact, if more people use darknets for legitimate activities, then there is less illegal activity going on overall (looking at it percentage wise, there would still be arguably the same amount going on). I don't like the fact that these things occur on darknets. But these places are perfect for them, and I highly doubt these darknets would be created solely for the purpose of illegal activities.
- detaro 12y ago
  In Germany, a retroshare user was found guilty of distributing copyrighted material when encrypted traffic went through their node. Lots of things can go wrong in such cases, but in both directions.
alex_duf 12y ago
I tried it as well, had the exact same reaction. And I'm a privacy advocate as well...
shittyanalogy 12y ago
I'm not sure this is a legitimate concern and you're kind of just spreading FUD with posts like this.
higherpurpose 12y ago
This is why technologies such as these need to become widespread quickly, otherwise you get tools such as these where "50 percent of their users are pedophiles" or whatever. Even though the technology itself has no fault of its own (the technology is neutral, I'd say even more so than say guns, which are meant to kill people, one way or the other), the government/public will say it's "evil technology" helping bad guys. I mean they even try to do that with HTTPS now. Imagine if HTTPS only came out now, and it could somehow be implemented in people's computers/browsers by individuals. Who would use it first? Probably the criminals, mostly. It would be too geeky for "regular people" to even want to do such a technical task. And they'd see no need for it. After all "who's going to read their email? Emails are private, right?" In such a case, law enforcement could quickly ramp up lobbying in Congress to warn about the "dangers of HTTPS encryption", which is used by mostly criminals. And it would probably get banned, before anyone at Google, Microsoft or Apple even gets a chance to look at it, and before it's used as a technology for e-commerce. It would get a "bad reputation" just like torrents and other stuff, before it gets a chance to develop a good one. This is also why I'm hoping Firefox adopts a "private mode" to replace its incognito mode, that's powered by Tor. When tens of millions of people use Tor for everyday stuff, I doubt it will be "just pedophiles" using it. Pedophiles exist whether there is technology to protect their (watching?) activities or not, and it's something they do because that's how their mind works. So I doubt we'll all turn into pedophiles once we all get Tor.
- innguest 12y ago
  You make an excellent point. I also want to mention that while it's awful that there are victims of pedophilia, there are hundreds of thousands of times more victims of spanking, which is child abuse just the same, but not a peep about it ever do I hear. So this pedophilia scare is blown out of proportion just so that abusive parents can think "hey at least I'm not abusing my kids". Like people say "I was spanked and turned out fine!". I'm sure between the mindset change from "f%ck anyone" to "only f%ck 18+" there were lots of people saying "I was abused when I was 14 and I turned out fine!". In other words, forget the 10 pedophiles in your area and focus on the 90% of families in your area that treat kids worse than animals. Most families are violently abusing children (making the criminals of tomorrow) and we need to deal with this now. It's easy to be against pedophilia but we must be against all child abuse.

upofadown 12y ago

The "illegal bits" thing always seems to come up whenever anyone mentions Freenet. Has anyone ever actually got in trouble for possession of encrypted illegal stuff on their disk that they don't have the key for? It sounds like a legal case where lots of things could go wrong.

jayess 12y ago
Do you want to be the first guy to find out?
- mentat 12y ago
  Chilling effects
  - mentat 12y ago
    It is a chilling effect, if they've intimidated you into not wanting to find out. Down vote all you want, doesn't change it.
alyandon 12y ago
When it comes to child pornography, even the mere accusation makes you automatically guilty in the eyes of the public which can destroy your professional and personal life. So, what happens if your IP address somehow become associated with trafficking child pornography? You run the risk of getting raided by a decidedly non-technical police force, having every electronic device you own confiscated for an indeterminate amount of time and being charged with a felony by a non-technical district attorney's office. Even in the case where they eventually realize you didn't have anything to do with it and drop the charges your life has been turned upside down in the process. In the worst case, a district attorney could choose to try and take the case to trial regardless and then your fate is in the hands of a non-technical jury. I just can't personally accept a risk like that in order to contribute hard drive space and computing power to a darknet project like freenet.
- htns 12y ago
  If you are hysteric about things like these then just don't use your own IP. Supposedly it's not difficult to buy a VPS with bitcoin. And really, pumping money into such businesses is a greater contribution to enduring internet anonymity than running Freenet.
- cheako 12y ago
  What happens when random ppl are accused of having child pornography? I'd be Salem all over again, all it takes is one watery tart to convince an entire society that they need to stone the ppl she doesn't like to death. Simply because it's a witch hunt is the problem, not the hunt it's self but the ppl who are to afraid to be called pedophiles to stand up against the hunt. It's not find and good to sit there and watch someone being persecuted unjustly, you've got to keep in mind that it could just as easily happen to you. I like the "this is normal, everybody does it" defense. If everyone were to run Freenet and store child pornography on their computer, then the which hunt ends at that. I've not seen the new MLK movie, but something along those lines where ppl are willing to die so that others may run Freenet without issue. One should not fear the life of a Marter, one should fear living in a world where there are not any. -- Michael Mestnik.
MrZongle2 12y ago
Well, that's certainly part of the issue. But even if Freenet users were immune from prosecution for what's in the data store on their hard drives, does that make the possibility of aiding the distribution of child pornography any less repugnant? What about other material that goes far beyond simply being offensive?
- icebraining 12y ago
  Every ISP is also aiding this distribution. Does that make running an ISP a repugnant activity? I don't think so.
- upofadown 12y ago
  It would not bother me at all. The stuff in the Freenet distributed store is all hard encrypted in a way I have no access to. I literally believe that the content ceases to exist while it is encrypted. To think any other way would allow me to believe that the file was also haunted by evil spirits and the like. As I am a rationalist I would prefer to avoid that sort of thought.
  - x1798DE 12y ago
    That doesn't make any sense at all. The fact that you can't access it doesn't mean you're not aiding in the distribution of it. If someone puts a ham sandwich in a locked box to which you do not have the key, and you bring the box to someone else who has the key, does that mean you didn't deliver the ham sandwich? I'm not saying I agree with the parent comment, but your reasoning is bizarre.
    - upofadown 12y ago
      There are no physical objects involved here. It is entirely data. The only thing that can possibly happen is that you could gain knowledge of the data. Someone could claim that there was some child porn embedded in the centre of a mountain but it would be just a claim. There would fundamentally be no way to prove that it was any particular thing unless someone admits to putting it there. The people that invented the cryptography very much intended to create this philosophical situation. We can't pretend otherwise without breaking the cryptography.
api 12y ago
I've never personally tried Freenet, and there's a reason for that. Everyone I've spoken with who has has told me that it's basically a kidporn network -- absolutely riddled with the stuff. If you dedicate storage to Freenet chances are more than half of the data you store will be child pornography. No thanks. It's a problem you run into with any darknet, but Freenet seems to have it a lot worse than Tor .onions. I have trawled around onionland a few times and saw only a few links that seemed like they might point in that direction, and didn't follow them. Most of Tor seemed pretty free of the stuff, and most of the directories seemed to have a policy against it. I think this is a special case of a more general problem with libertarianism. There are in general two kinds of libertarians: those who want to maximize freedom for humanistic reasons, and those who want to maximize freedom because they want to be free to bully and exploit people without supervision or interference. Child pornographers fit into the latter, a category they share with people who want financial deregulation so they can fleece investors with pump and dump scams or KKK types who want the Federal government out of our lives so they can establish local tyrannies and oppress minorities.
- mike_hearn 12y ago
  There's no policy against child porn sites at the directory level or at any Tor level. There was a talk at CCC some days ago that claimed 80%+ of hidden service traffic is to child abuse sites. So I'm not sure it's so different to Freenet, actually.
  - api 12y ago
    Hrm. Maybe more hidden then. Honestly this doesn't bode well for darknets. The problem is that even if darknets have a legitimate reason to exist, non-creeps will avoid them if they see much of this kind of thing. I've also heard stories of very realistic looking rape porn -- maybe a bit too realistic -- in places like this. It's gross.
    - ixwt 12y ago
      > Honestly this doesn't bode well for darknets. The problem is that even if darknets have a legitimate reason to exist, non-creeps will avoid them if they see much of this kind of thing. Non-creeps shouldn't use cash to purchase anything. People will almost always use money to purchase drugs, because it's extremely difficult to trace. Just because people use something for something illegal, doesn't mean that it shouldn't be used at all. In fact, if more people use darknets for legitimate activities, then there is less illegal activity going on overall (looking at it percentage wise, there would still be arguably the same amount going on). I don't like the fact that these things occur on darknets. But these places are perfect for them, and I highly doubt these darknets would be created solely for the purpose of illegal activities.
detaro 12y ago
In Germany, a retroshare user was found guilty of distributing copyrighted material when encrypted traffic went through their node. Lots of things can go wrong in such cases, but in both directions.

alex_duf 12y ago

I tried it as well, had the exact same reaction. And I'm a privacy advocate as well...

shittyanalogy 12y ago

I'm not sure this is a legitimate concern and you're kind of just spreading FUD with posts like this.

higherpurpose 12y ago

This is why technologies such as these need to become widespread quickly, otherwise you get tools such as these where "50 percent of their users are pedophiles" or whatever. Even though the technology itself has no fault of its own (the technology is neutral, I'd say even more so than say guns, which are meant to kill people, one way or the other), the government/public will say it's "evil technology" helping bad guys. I mean they even try to do that with HTTPS now. Imagine if HTTPS only came out now, and it could somehow be implemented in people's computers/browsers by individuals. Who would use it first? Probably the criminals, mostly. It would be too geeky for "regular people" to even want to do such a technical task. And they'd see no need for it. After all "who's going to read their email? Emails are private, right?" In such a case, law enforcement could quickly ramp up lobbying in Congress to warn about the "dangers of HTTPS encryption", which is used by mostly criminals. And it would probably get banned, before anyone at Google, Microsoft or Apple even gets a chance to look at it, and before it's used as a technology for e-commerce. It would get a "bad reputation" just like torrents and other stuff, before it gets a chance to develop a good one. This is also why I'm hoping Firefox adopts a "private mode" to replace its incognito mode, that's powered by Tor. When tens of millions of people use Tor for everyday stuff, I doubt it will be "just pedophiles" using it. Pedophiles exist whether there is technology to protect their (watching?) activities or not, and it's something they do because that's how their mind works. So I doubt we'll all turn into pedophiles once we all get Tor.

innguest 12y ago
You make an excellent point. I also want to mention that while it's awful that there are victims of pedophilia, there are hundreds of thousands of times more victims of spanking, which is child abuse just the same, but not a peep about it ever do I hear. So this pedophilia scare is blown out of proportion just so that abusive parents can think "hey at least I'm not abusing my kids". Like people say "I was spanked and turned out fine!". I'm sure between the mindset change from "f%ck anyone" to "only f%ck 18+" there were lots of people saying "I was abused when I was 14 and I turned out fine!". In other words, forget the 10 pedophiles in your area and focus on the 90% of families in your area that treat kids worse than animals. Most families are violently abusing children (making the criminals of tomorrow) and we need to deal with this now. It's easy to be against pedophilia but we must be against all child abuse.