[freenet-chat] Swedish Pirate Party Launches a Commerical Darknet

[Magnus Eriksson]

On Wed, 16 Aug 2006 remailer at invalid.com wrote:

> if they are going to charge for their service (and their page says they do),
> and if they are going to deal with abuse complaints (no choice if they want to
> stay in business for very long) then they MUST do a certain level of logging to
> keep track of users. this means that LEAs can come in and demand those logs,
> with hell to pay if they don't cough them up fast.

   No, they do not have to do that.  The service is entirely prepaid and 
non-metered.  The only thing they *have* to keep track of is for what 
period of time username <foo> is allowed to use their services.  They 
state themselves that all credit card information, etc, is discarded as 
long as it's no longer needed -- i.e. immediately.

   The only information that is supposedly stored is usernames and the 
email addresses they correspond to.  Abuse?  Fine, just disable the 
account and notify via the email address the user gave.

   As for IP addresses, I'm not very clear on whether they log them or not. 
Falkvinge says they "do not retain logs over who was connected to them", 
but it's not apparent from Relakks' own website.

   Either way, the police can not demand any logs unless they want to catch 
someone who is suspected of a crime that would lead to at least two years 
in prison.  That's the law.  All cases of copyright violations that have 
been in Swedish courts so far have lead to nothing more than fines. 
Which means that the service is very attractive for file sharers that do 
not trust their ISPs.

   Which means that if you are not suspected of a more serious crime, 
you're in the clear.  If you are, the situation is not clear.



   Of course, that's only good enough if you trust them to not lie. 
However, the Pirate Party's leader endorses them, and stands to lose a lot 
if what they say is not true.  (And personally, I've met him and trust 
that he, at least, is not lying.)


> NO paid for anonymity service can work, ever.  The fact that it must be paid for
> makes the full anonymity impossible.

> The best they can hope to do is add another step between the user and snoops.
> privacy they can provide, NOT anonymity.


   That depends on the method of payment, wouldn't you say?  If I pay cash 
and only tell them my username ("Here's 50E for the rest of the year.  My 
username is <foo>.") I don't see how my privacy or anonymity would be 
compromised.  Especially if I have someone else go pay them.  That is if 
you disregard traceability via IP addresses, which may or may not be 
relevant for Relakks.  But since you mentioned payment, that's what I'm 
commenting.


   It is true, of course, that what they offer is pseudonymity, not true 
anonymity.  That doesn't mean the service can not be used to have some 
reasonable amount of anonymity.


MAgnus