-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
> Firstly, as it is already awares, criminals and abusers are liable to
> use the system for trafficking and/or depositing illegal material,
If you use such terms to describe the people many will be unwilling to talk to
you, i suggest better terms would be "those i disagree with" or something
similar. Of course actual criminals and abusers can also run a Freenet node, but
there is no way to stop NSA and other such organisations from doing this.
> Now in a system like Freenet the encryption key
> would not be known to any individual user, but without any legal
> precedent as yet (nothing like Freenet has been in operation before) it
> would be over-optimistic to assume that just because that user puts his
> case for not being in possession of the key that he would be immune from
> charges.
With the logic like this you will be unable to use any new technology "because
there is no legal precedent". In fact there is a concept (i'm not sure what the
latin term is) which states that "Everything which is not specifically
disallowed is in fact allowed", but you are correct at pointing out that
criminals (NSA, FBI, etc) do use Freenet and attempt to stop the rest of the
people.
> In either case (USA or UK) the question remains if there would be any
> reason why any individual users would a priori be targeted for
> investigation simply for having encrypted content and/or for operating a
> Freenet server.
Which is why Freenet 0.7's "Secure mode" exists. In this mode only your
immediate friends trully know that you are running Freenet. Developers who are
aware of such things say that packets themselves are not identifiable as
belonging to Freenet.
If you are afraid of being targeted just for running the node, i strongly
suggest that you *do not* turn promiscuous/insecure mode on, but connect only to
people you know in real life.
> It is also important to point out that at least in the USA the NSA
> avails itself to the use of advanced programs that can carry out
> advanced 'dictionary analysis' to permute nearly every possible
*snip*
This has nothing to do with Freenet, but rather an attempt at criticising the
concept of encryption. If you believe that encryption cannot work in theory or
in practice, then you will be unable to achieve any sort of private
communication on the Internet.
> Secondly, there are government installations in the UK (for instance a
> new MI6 building on the London enbankment, which has the national
> internet traffic channeled through it) which carry out surveillance of
> communications including internet communications.
This is criticism of "private Internet communication", once again, if you
believe that encrypting your communication, and hiding within the crowd doesn't
privide you with enough protection, then you will be unable to communicate
privately on the Internet.
The reason why 0.7's data packets are encrypted and not immediately recognised
as Freenet's is exactly for the reasons you've described. Reasons for the
"Secure mode" are also the same.
I hope i didn't come through as being harsh, but you are criticising government
policies and saying that this is the fault of Freenet developers.
- Volodya
- --
http://freedom.libsyn.com/ Voice of Freedom, Radical Podcast
http://eng.anarchopedia.org/ Anarchopedia, A Free Knowledge Portal
"None of us are free until all of us are free." ~ Mihail Bakunin
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
iD8DBQFHlHwfuWy2EFICg+0RAkXPAKC5rUy5cW1kSbGFo/p9lKkhoFrPdACfWF3R
6mSe3ngLN8Is0LWzBXw347U=
=Qjqo
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
