On Fri, Dec 29, 2000 at 11:22:23AM -0800, Mr.Bad wrote:
> I think that I don't feel comfortable extending even that *level* of
> trust to every Tom Dick and Harriet on the Innurnet. I'd prefer to
> choose who I let do that -- expecially when I know that there are
> people out there who will abuse that privilege in order to shut down
> my Net connection.
Well, it is a trade-off between paranoia and the system actually
working. You have every right to be that paranoid, but should be aware
that you won't be of much use to Freenet (or any derivitive there-of
that I can think of) if you assume that everybody is corrupt. Even PGP
can be circumvented using Tempest technology. Unless you build a
computer from the ground up, personally checking everything from the
chip design, the bios, the O.S, up to the application software you use,
you must trust those that built your machine, ordinarily a big evil
corporation (intended with a hint of irony). In short, if you trust
nobody, you had better just kill yourself now and get it over with. A
more effective strategy is to accept that if someone really wants to
monitor you, then they can, but they sure as hell can't monitor
everybody, and so there is strength in numbers.
My personal assumption is that a small minority of nodes will be
corrupt, but most won't. I don't think that there is any system that
could facilitate scalable information request/retrieval which doesn't at
least place some trust somewhere.
Ian.
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