[freenet-chat] Arguments against the Darknet

[Roger Hayter]

In message <20060626194624.GB8623 at amphibian.dyndns.org>, Matthew 
Toseland <toad at amphibian.dyndns.org> writes
>On Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 05:50:34PM +0100, Roger Hayter wrote:
>>
>> FWIW, I agree with all your points. And I would add that no-one is more
>> than 2 steps away from a police spy - I find random connection *adds*
>> plausible deniability:  although not (and this is a valid point that has
>> been made by the developers) if running Freenet is itself a crime.  But
>> if every friend has at least one friend who is a police spy, they are
>> going to know you are running Freenet anyway.  The only defence is to
>> have so many people running Freenet that they don't bother to prosecute
>> unless they already suspect you of something, in which case they will
>> always find something to prosecute you for if they want to anyway.
>
>Having a network of informers is several orders of magnitude more
>expensive than harvesting, or than compromizing the network with cancer
>nodes, which would pretend to be thousands of nodes, and get connected
>to everyone without having to lay out for a network of informants. This
>is how security works: you make it expensive, not impossible, to get in.
>The more expensive it is the less likely it is that they will try or
>succeed.


I suppose that I am assuming that anyone who *needs* to use Freenet is 
subject to investigation for more important (to the authorities) reasons 
than their use of Freenet.  I am assuming the spying is for other 
purposes and Freenet just incidental.  Having read your other comments, 
it is clearly important that people join Freenet for a range of 
different reasons, so sharing a connection with someone does not 
automatically label you as a co-conspirator:  so we need to sell the 
darknet idea very strongly for this to come about. This in itself, as 
you say, is a reason not to let people use an opennet, which is so much 
easier to join.  You have convinced me (FWIW!).
-- 
Roger Hayter