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

[null at system-e.dk]

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In <Pine.NEB.4.62.0608172017210.13967 at simak> Magnus Eriksson <magetoo at fastmail.fm> wrote:
>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.

They state themselves.. yeah, I'll put confidence in un-corroborated statements
of strangers speaking in their own profit margin... NOT.

>   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.

Any trust in this business is invalidated by the use of the word "Supposedly".  The fact that even you use that word underlines the fact that they cannot be trusted.

>   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. 

Being a suspicious, somewhat paranoid person myself I choose to believe that they would lie without hesitation simply because if I stood to make money, I would lie just as fast.

>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.)

Great for you that you have at least one person connected to this that you can personally trust.  This gives no reason for anyone else to believe any of these people.

>
>> 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.

Perhaps.  And very likely it would serve for the average kid d/ling porn, music or movies.  But there ARE people who will actually believe that this service and others like it truely make them bulletproof and the dramatic claims of the companies encourage this naive belief when in fact none of them are anything more than one additional layer of mild security.

I object to companies making claims like this because they lead people to believe that they are more than they are.  These people may be 100% honest, but they CANNOT stand up to a government or large corporation and most of their customers think they can.

This goes triple if the govt or corp is willing to do some wet work along the way.


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