News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resista... by Yuioup on Sunday September 19, 2021 @04:20PM (#28587557)
I stay away from it because chunks of the data is hosted on your local machine, and it could potentially contain very unsavory data. Sure it's encrypted but try to explain that to your local law enforcement.
Re:Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resista... by cgtzczykldpq on Sunday September 19, 2021 @09:21PM (#28589516)
Freenet does not give you the decryption keys to the data you host, you don't know what you're hosting, hence you're not responsible for what it could be decrypted to.

And even if law enforcement could successfully convince a court that you're doing something illegal by hosting data which you cannot look into:

They couldn't first acquire the necessary search warrant because they couldn't prove that you are the one who is hosting the particular piece of illegal data: Freenet's routing algorithm is anonymized, both the people who retrieve data and the people who store it are anonymous. (Disclaimer: The security of the anonymization depends on how you've configured Freenet. In the less secure modes a well-funded attacker can de-anonymize you.)

So if law enforcement knows a certain file is evil then they cannot easily find out the IP addresses of the people who store it, and the people who store it don't know that they are doing so.

Hence it is censorship-resistant :)

Re:Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resista... by lr4444lr on Monday September 20, 2021 @06:36AM (#28592221)
...hence you're not responsible for what it could be decrypted to.

You do NOT want your defense in court to rest on convincing a judge or jury of this.

Re:Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resista... by cgtzczykldpq on Monday September 20, 2021 @06:40AM (#28592246)
So we must shut down all hotels because they all unknowingly hosted some illegal activities in their rooms, e.g. if someone met a prostitute there?

In fact we cannot have people rent out condos or houses anymore either because illegal stuff will happen there and the owner is responsible even if they don't know!

Also we need to shut down all ISPs because at some point in time illegal data was cached on their machines during transit!?

Re:Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resista... by lr4444lr on Monday September 20, 2021 @01:43PM (#28596486)
I don't think this deserves downvoting, because it gives an opportunity to point out 2 things I didn't.

1) The crime in question is not just that you acquired the content, but that you disseminated it. This is in sharp distinction from a hotel, in which the person renting the room is the perpetrator. It's not like there is some RICO statute that hotel owners routinely get pinned with when renting rooms out to shady people unless they are literally involved in RICO.

2) CASM is unique among crimes (in the USA) in that knowing of it and NOT reporting it is itself a crime. You cannot claim that you were frightened. So you now have to prove that you never decrypted it yourself, on top of evidence that you disseminated it.

This is not a position you want to be in legally.

Re:Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resista... by JohnWhigham on Monday September 20, 2021 @08:33AM (#28593111)
That's just the reality of the world today. Anything regarding crimes on the Internet, it's almost always the defendant being guilty until proven innocent, especially against cops/DAs with a dearth of technical knowledge.

You may be innocent, but you'll be spending tens of thousands of dollars and a chunk of your life agonizing over it before "justice" is realized.

Re:Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resista... by gilrain on Monday September 20, 2021 @09:09AM (#28593391)
> So we must shut down all hotels because they all unknowingly hosted some illegal activities in their rooms, e.g. if someone met a prostitute there?

No. What they said is that you don’t want to have to convince a jury that you aren’t responsible for stuff that is on your computer

I’m so tired of people arguing in bad faith. Debate what people believe, not a stupid version you made up to score points.

Re:Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resista... by notanzaiiswear on Monday September 20, 2021 @05:08AM (#28591678)
But if somebody downloads the data, and they can track the source to your computer, do they even have to decrypt it on your computer? (I mean does law enforcement have to decrypt it on your computer, or could they just indirectly prove you hosted the data).
Re:Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resista... by cgtzczykldpq on Monday September 20, 2021 @06:32AM (#28592208)
The anonymized routing prevents them from tracking the source to your computer.

If someone downloads something on Freenet they don't know where it is coming from.

Re:Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resista... by fsflover on Sunday September 19, 2021 @04:38PM (#28587716)
> Sure it's encrypted but try to explain that to your local law enforcement.

But how will they read it if even you can't?

Re:Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resista... by __MatrixMan__ on Sunday September 19, 2021 @05:57PM (#28588321)
They might've purchased a decryption key from some dark corner of the internet and after failing to trace the money to the bad-guy they're now hoping to track him down by IP address. Probably it would surface in court that you're not the bad guy they're after, but who knows what kind of bad things they'll do to you in the meantime.
Re:Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resista... by snvzz on Sunday September 19, 2021 @09:24PM (#28589533)
They might own the legendary key that turns your seemingly random data into very illegal data.

plot twist: It's an one-time pad to xor your data against.

(and of course, they wouldn't generate it from XORing your data against illegal data...)

Re:Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resista... by Infernal on Sunday September 19, 2021 @10:07PM (#28589748)
Well this is a terrifying idea. Is this a hypothetical or do we know of an instance where such a “key” was invented?
Re:Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resista... by aaa_____ on Sunday September 19, 2021 @10:47PM (#28589934)
Most cop-tech is just plausible-deniability for jury who are not tech-aware. Dogs, polygraphs, informational pre-crime tools.
Re:Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resista... by hda2 on Sunday September 19, 2021 @10:31PM (#28589871)
In around 1900 i think.

It's simple for anyone to create an xor "key" for anything.

Re:Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resista... by Infernal on Monday September 20, 2021 @12:32AM (#28590407)
I phrased my comment poorly. Do we know of a case where cops or prosecutors have actually faked such a “key”? If so, it’s terrifying that you could have any encrypted data, with cops and their invented xor “keys” claiming your data is whatever they want it to be.
Re:Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resista... by ArneBab on Monday September 20, 2021 @04:37AM (#28591496)
Or that you could have unencrypted data, that cops could xor into illegal data.

I bet you’re just using those unencrypted images to hide evil stuff with steganography! We found illegal content by xoring our totally not invented xor "keys" with the noise in your JPEGs!

Re:Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resista... by swebs on Monday September 20, 2021 @05:03AM (#28591640)
I don't know of any widespread consumer encryption tools that use a one time pad. For comparison, a standard RSA key is 4kb.
Re:Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resista... by giyokun on Monday September 20, 2021 @12:35AM (#28590417)
But how good is a phone call.... if you cannot speak.
Re:Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resista... by red-Freenet-I2P on Monday September 20, 2021 @09:02PM (#28600951)
Aaron Jones (a cop) literally gave an introduction to his local Linux Usergroup to Freenet explaining what it is and how much he loves it. You can find that on the Freenet Project's website.

You're only going to have a few encrypted chunks of a given file in your datastore, you don't know what the file chunks are when put together or the key used to decrypt it. Information is neutral on Freenet. You would NOT get in trouble just for running a Freenet node in any sane/ free country in the world. If you go out of your way to use Freenet for something illegal, that's another matter entirely.

If you're paranoid, just use a VPN or install it to a VPS and SSH into it.