[Freedombox-discuss] off: Dumb idea: Alternative to Tor that promotes good behavior

Thu Oct 31 19:33:34 UTC 2013

Hi flawer.

The fact of the matter is that you simply can not make such a decision
without identifying information.

You can chose to trust a friend or a service provider but wether they
chose to misuse that trust is extremely difficult for you to discover
when it comes to information streams.

As I understand your question you suggest that the trust between people
and/or service providers will somehow be more trustworthy if it has been
automated. 

I simply disagree on this point and would most of the time regard the
automation of trust with a high degree of scepticism.

In my view this discussion is just a variation of the infamous "evil
bit" [1] that needs to be set.

ps. I hope you approve of me sending the reply to the mailing list.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_bit

Regards
Jesper

On Tue, 2013-10-29 at 11:52 +0100, flawer wrote:
> ei jesp, interesting post, i'd like asking (maybe dumbing):
> 
> if i am fully authenticated through an org that asks (censors) for some 
> 'forever activist standards and trust me accordingly' and by doing so 
> the org will give me some access to this 'moderated tor' and destroy all 
> my records there at the org. that org could later allow me to add other 
> people myself to the service (but this is accesorily too risky maybe and 
> perhaps not needed) (what i mean it is that there will be not 
> traceability after my presential authentication. but there could be a 
> middle way of tracing by bitmessage id invitings chain for example. in 
> this case i'll be findable but my invitees won't).
> 
> i see there could be gaps (i could later not use it as initially 
> presentially estated) but it could also be 'sustainable moderation'. if 
> someone shits it also the org could also cancel the service for everyone 
> and start authenticating again, right?
> 
> 
> 
> On 2013-10-28 22:07, Jesper Tholstrup Pedersen wrote:
> > Hi.
> >
> > What you are suggesting is that it is possible to hold an anonymous
> > person accountable to previous behaviour without identifying that
> > person. This is simply not possible. When you embed identifying
> > information into the stream of information you also expose the sender
> > and/or receiver making them indentifiable.
> >
> > You simply can not have anonymity [1], surveillance [2] and 
> > censorship
> > [3] in the same solution!
> >
> > Throughout human history every means of censorship has been misused 
> > in
> > order to enforce the power structures of the day.
> > That goes for today too; in several countries where child pornography
> > filters have been established the same solutions are now used to 
> > block
> > sites that promote file sharing and bittorrent tracker sites. All 
> > over
> > the world ISPs are slowly being tasked to police their trafic through 
> > so
> > called trade agreements.
> >
> > I belive that this kind of policing of the trafic will be legally
> > enforced for private subscribers as well within the next decade!
> >
> > As long as the solutions that are being built enable surveillance and
> > censorship in any way it will be used against the very people that 
> > were
> > meant to be anonymous.
> >
> > I know that most people think that censorship can be rationalized in
> > certain circumstances and I agree that some topics/behaviour are 
> > simply
> > despicable but the solution is not to incorporate surveillance and
> > censorship into the very software that is supposed to give freedom to
> > the people since that would ensure that they will never achive 
> > freedom
> > from those in power.
> >
> > And that is my goal; to support and promote software, hardware and
> > infrastructure that enables the users to achive freedom.
> >
> > Regards
> > Jesper
> >
> > [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymity
> > [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance
> > [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
> >
> >
> > On Sun, 2013-10-27 at 13:26 -0400, Bill Cox wrote:
> >> I would love feedback on an idea for promoting more internet 
> >> freedom.
> >>
> >> Here's the problem: Tor has little public support, because most Tor
> >> traffic is wasted on supporting bad behavior.  When I ran a Tor 
> >> node, it
> >> became clear that most of my bandwidth was being wasted on video
> >> downloads.  People want to promote free speech, not child 
> >> pornography.
> >>
> >> Here's my solution: Build a Tor-like network for routing anonymous 
> >> data,
> >> but track behavior of all users' secret identities, and make their
> >> Internet history public.  Allow node operators to choose categories 
> >> of
> >> public identities they which to support.
> >>
> >> For example, I would choose to promote all forms of non-violent free
> >> speech.  I should be able to contribute my bandwidth to this 
> >> purpose.
> >> If a dissident in China goes by the public ID of ChinaCat, and has a
> >> high reputation for promoting freedom, they are welcome to use my
> >> bandwidth.  If someone just wants access to redtube.com, they can 
> >> get
> >> that access from someone else.
> >>
> >> There are various technical aspects to this idea.  For example, 
> >> would
> >> prefer that the social graph between secret identities be public so 
> >> I
> >> can use a simple network flow algorithm over trust edges between
> >> identities to determine how much I trust someone.  The entire social
> >> network should be P2P, like Tor, and it should route a lot of dummy
> >> traffic to help hide the real traffic.  With the considerably lower
> >> bandwidth that is needed to promote freedom rather than free porn, 
> >> this
> >> should be no problem.
> >>
> >> What do you guys think?
> >> Bill
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> Freedombox-discuss at lists.alioth.debian.org
> >> 
> >> http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
> >
> >
> >
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