[freenet-chat] Arguments against the Darknet

[colin at sq7.org]

> "in its current state"

Sure- I can only look at the present. I'm usre that hte project has plans
for fixing things, but I'm just trying to express the way I see it.

> What exactly were his reasons?

I talked to two physical friends of mine- I tried to outline their answers
below- One said that he didn't want to make manual connections, because he
didn't like the inconvienience, and the potential security risk of linking
with someone bad. The other said that he didn't want to use it because
even thought it was anonymous, he'd rather stick to faster connections.


> Best results come from many short links and the **occasional** long link.
> If it was all long links then it wouldn't work. We know this because it
> has been simulated, and mathematically modelled.

Sure- I'm not advocating all long links!
I think that's the difference in the way we're looking at this.

I think it's possible to create an opennet ON TOP of the darknet
infrastructure.
Essentially, have nodes connect to one another in small groups, with the
Occasional long link, rather than a .5 style free for all.


> Not necessarily; you have to make your own judgement, just as you would
> if you were offering to share your internet connection with him over
> wifi.

The problem is, There's a lot fewer people I'm willing to share my
internet connection with, than I'm willing to peer with. If everyone was
held to the share-the-internet connection standard, there would be very
few links.


> Well, what's the alternative? There isn't one in a hostile regime.
> Either you connect to people you trust, or you don't connect to anyone.
> Because an opennet is harvestable, and with a national firewall (coming
> soon to a seemingly democratic country near you), it is very easy to
> take sanctions against known opennet nodes - blocking foreign ones
> completely, and suspending the internet access of domestic ones (or
> worse).


I think a split model is the right way to go- We keep the existing
darknet, and we still use it as the basis for routing, but we set up ways
to create clustered groups without user interaction.
So a darknet group would still be able to talk to an opennet group-
They're still part of the same network, it's just a matter of establishing
relationships individually or automatically.

The beniefit of doing it this way, is that it adds some level of plausible
deniablity WRT establishing connections- If connections in the darknet can
be established automatically, then you can say "No, Mr. Evil bad guy, I
didn't connect to him intentionally, I turned Opennet=on, and so did he,
and we connected to eachother automatically."

In truth, you could have both connected manually, or connected manually
WHILE Opennet=on.

That's what I mean by looking at the opennet as a layer atop the Darknet-
Use functionality to automatically establish darknet-connections, giving
users an opennet.


> I don't see why a certain low level of organic growth cannot occur even
> with a small network. All that is required is good tools, and enough
> content to spark people's imaginations.

You need to hit a critical mass before this can happen. We may never reach
that critical mass.

The beniefit of the hybrid approach (above) (Opennet OVER darknet) is that
you can can still choose to only peer with your friends- It doesn't take
away anything. This helps us achieve a larger userbase, which makes
establishing REAL darknet connections more likely!



> Well, some people were invited. But there was no benefit to inviting
> your friends. On a darknet, there is every reason to invite your
> friends, because inviting random people is far more dangerous.

Users don't value anonymity very much, I tried to establish that above-
That means that this trust isn't a large value to them.

It would work better if you argued "Your friends are likely ot download
the same types of files as you- They'll be closer in the network, so thus
faster."

Argue it on Speed, not privacy.





> Maybe so. We can make it easy to connect to people on darknet through
> e.g. AIM plugins...
>
I think that's a great idea. There hasn't been much traffic on the tools
list, but I'm hopeful.

>
> IMHO even if we do have an opennet there should be material benefits to
> having darknet connections. Security is a significant advantage, but if
> opennet is many times faster than darknet then there will be very few
> people on the darknet.

The nice thing about the hybrid model I'm proposing is that there isn't a
real difference between opennet and darknet. Both use the same
connections.
Essentially, the more people who join the opennet, the STRONGER the
darknet is!





>
> "On top of it" ? In addition to it, surely?

Not at all. See above.


>
> Why do they have to be 100% trustworthy in every domain? You need to be
> able to trust them not to mount statistical attacks on your node or DoS
> the network, sure, but I don't see why you need to be able to trust them
> not to download illegal materials.

You need to trust them not to do Bad things, which will get "Bad Guys" to
look at their list of connections for other "co-conspirators". Don't look
at this from a Tech POV, look from a Social one.


>
>> 				II) Because of that, they are afraid to link
>> 				with people. they  don't want to be associated with a "Bad Guy"
>
> This may be true.

I've had one physical person, and several people on #freenet-refs say this
outright.


> Not if the opennet that we implement performs as poorly as 0.5 did, and
> plunges us into yet more years of wandering in the wilderness. Which it
> will if we rush into it.

There is no reason to think Opennet will perform worse than the current .7
architecture, if it's layered on top of the Darknet model. By trying to
automatically establish small groups, it's likely to work BETTER than the
current performance, which is essentially using randomized IRC connections
for most people, rather than true-small groups.