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http://www.peek-a-booty.org/

Peek-a-booty is also aimed at helping those in speech-embattled nations avoid censoring firewalls.

So whatever happened to Peek-A-Booty? Great idea, but talk about vaporware!

Isn't that what the Peekabooty project was supposed to fix?

They thought it would be cool to design a censorproof network. They weren't interested in supporting what was already in development, namely Freenet, after all - where is the publicity in being part of someone else's project?

The only problem was that they dramatically underestimated the difficulty of pulling it off - the result? Peekabooty was, is, and probably always will be, vaporware. The design they do have is a primitive HTTP proxy network last time I looked, and it doesn't solve any of the difficult problems of circumventing censorship (just ask them how the poor little Chinese dissidents are supposed to find their HTTP proxies).

Amuzing, after draining the concept of a censor-proof network for all it was worth (without actually building one) - they then did their best to drain publicity from their failure to build it!

Freenet answers those questions, and has done so since its original design in 1999.

has anyone ever tried peekabooty, esp. under wine? The reflections on open source development the developer(s) feature on their website sound kinda depressed..but then again, the honesty factor speaks for them. Are there any deep flaws in the idea? I personally like the simplicity of their design, but since I'm not a design guru, I may be utterly wrong.

has anyone ever tried peekabooty, esp. under wine? The reflections on open source development the developer(s) feature on their website sound kinda depressed..but then again, the honesty factor speaks for them. Are there any deep flaws in the idea? I personally like the simplicity of their design, but since I'm not a design guru, I may be utterly wrong.

-I dont agree with his language critique. I think the advantages of static typing far outweigh any time it takes to (as he describes) figure what type to declare a variable. Have you ever tried to debug a large project written in a dynamically typed language? It can be a fucking bitch.

-He also says it is really, really hard to learn C, C++, and Java. He says this cuts down on your developer base. Any developer who doesn't have the capacity to pick up those three languages, I just do not want on my project.

OK, fine. But what is? It does no good to make a statement like that unless you back it up with an alternative.

Well, not only this, but also he says in the FAQ for the project:

* I would like to help develop Peekabooty.

You should be good with C++ which includes having a knowledge of pthreads, the Standard Template Library (STL), and templates. A heathly knowledge of design patterns is also helpful. To download the source code click here.

Contradictory ? Yes. To make it even funnier, his project is only made by him and two contributors (what a big project), and to tap it all he recommends you being wealthy.

I would rather read what other people have to say on OSS management (say Linus, RMS, folks from OpenOffice, Mozilla, JBoss, etc.)

According to his FAQ he's using Microsoft Visual C++ for the Windows port. Perhaps that's the problem. :)

Be careful when naming your project. It's difficult for IT managers to convice PHB's that this project is useful for their enterprise class systems with a name like "peakabooty." This sort of nomenclature is detrimental to the future of GPL/Linux

So, it would seem that we need a peer-to-peer service that is built with the following attributes:

-completely anonymous users, file transfers, hosts, etc.
-reliable and stable structure
-decentralized topology
-efficient data management
-and complete deniability (I didn't host that file, or I didn't download that file, as member's cant control content on the network)

We do. We have several.
- FreeNet, and similar projects (Publius, FreeHaven) for distributing anonymous files
- The Invisible IRC Project for anonymous, deniable instant messaging
- InvisiBlog for blogging
- MixMaster and Hushmail for email
- Anonymizer and Peek-a-booty for browsing

Anyone care to add to this list? I've only put the ones that immediately spring to mind, but I know there are more distributed anonymous deniable chaffed encrypted file-share programs that I've not tried.

Better yet, is there an encrypted, routed "internet" I can plug into at will when I'm online, just to obfuscate my traffic a bit? Or is that what Freenet is about?

Freenet itself can't obfuscate your normal traffic. Freenet is more about uncensorable anonymous publishing and smart caching.

Peek-a-Booty is supposed to be an anonymizing proxy network for Web traffic. Peek-a-Booty uses SSL to communicate between nodes, so it shouldn't stand out from normal traffic too much. Unfortunately, there hasn't been any new releases lately. The latest version is dated June 14th 2002. It's one of those great ideas that nobody bothered to implement properly..

What I'd prefer to see is the US Gov donate money to the Peek-A-Booty project, which is open and written by some fine hackers (in the positive sense of the word) instead of building it from scratch.

I trust things when I can get source. NSA Linux (now SELinux) was denounced originally because it was done partly by the NSA, but it included full source and now is an accepted valid way to secure a linux box. The article doesn't seem to indicate that their peek-a-booty-like software will be open, so how can you trust it as much? Are you sure you're getting the actual Internet content, or just a US-propagandized version

Hate to tell you this....
brace yourself...

We are about a year+ past needing something like this ourselves.
Unfortunately, this won't work for us, because NO PLACE would be safe for the central database server.
Our only options are freenet & things of a like nature, which are decentralized.

On the other hand, you've got nothing to hide, aren't a terrorist, so you've nothing to fear, right?

right?

RIGHT, Citizen?

in times like these it's a good thing the founding fathers realized that future governments wouldn't play by the rules.

That's why we will have peek-a-booty.

Did anybody ever really think applications like Peek-A-Booty would have to be used in "Free" nations? Perhaps we're not paranoid enough.

Can somebody with a clue about Australian law an politics explain what recource the Australian citizens have against this measure?

I who thought that FreeNet was meant as a tool to disclose information about those governaments

Um, yes, well. Check out Saving the Whales Using Freenet from last March. Despite the fact that Ian and many other Freenetistas regularly read my site, I have yet to receive any pointers to info about actual instances of Freenet being used in such ways. For that, you might try Peekabooty instead.

Someone already mentioned multiproxy. Also check out Java Anonymous Proxy and Peekabooty. You seem kind of new to the game of paranoia. Why not just start here and do some reading.

It's important to understand exactly what these anonymous services get you and who and what they are protecting against so take some time and realistically educate yourself to the risks and threats.

Oh, and don't forget to check out Freenet

a fully distributed content-addressible web
infrastructure is the best way to resolve this
problem once and for all. linked with a
good distributed proxy infrastructure, or better yet, a fully anonymized transport it will take herculean efforts
to do this kind of information-suppression.

It is opensource, easy to use, and available here.

The "stuff" is called Peek-A-Booty.

Peek-A-Booty. Announced as a project by cDc (the Cult of the Dead Cow), later open sourced.

And to think, Peek-A-Booty was developed for people who live under oppressive governments censoring the web. If things go the RIAA's way, and I think they can pay enough judges to make it happen, we'll be needing it ourselves. How ironic. Land of the free and home of the brave, eh? Or, should that be land of the pretend-to-be-free and home of corporate interests?

I believe the Cult of the Dead Cow's program "Peek-a-Booty" does just that...kind of an encrypted peer-to-peer internet proxy. Check out their website

I think software like This would complete prevent this kinda crap from happening.

Both Peekabooty and Triangle Boy promised a distributed solution to this kind of Net censorship, but Peekabooty doesn't look like it's ready for prime time and Safeweb appear to have shut down the project (dead link to "project with Voice of America"). Is there a viable project that I can install that will do the same anti-censorship job?

People keep saying "How can they get Peek-A-Booty if the firewall is already inplace?"

Users in countries where the Internet is censored do not necessarily need to install any software. They merely need to make a simple change to their Internet settings so that their access to the World Wide Web is mediated by the Peekabooty network.

About Peekabooty

People are posting nodes at the discussion site. Peekabooty apparantly needs some kind of gnutella style peer discovery or peer reflectors. Of course, those would then become blocked...

I'm figuring that not only will this kind of software allow people to get around censorship, but wouldn't it also create a P2P-style anonymizer? This would pretty much make logging of user activity useless for criminal investigations. Would the "host" of a benevolent node on this network be liable for illegal activity that was routed through hir machine?

It was originally designed to help Chinese Internet users get around the Great Firewall Of China.

Looks like the US and EU will be needing it too...[sigh]

Of course it will slip even more when peekabooty gets finished and individual sites can't be blocked from a savay user.

Easy... Try the project (named peek a booty) website.
You can also go visit the Hacktivismo one, or the cDc one...
Enjoy!

Our definition of hacktivism is, "using technology to advance human rights through electronic media."

You might not know it from reading the manifesto, but cDc and Hactivismo have actually been working on a product called Peekabooty that allows users to sneak through the firewalls that oppressive regimes set up to restrict access to the Internet.

Hacktivism chooses open code, mostly.

Peekabooty is open source under the GPL but the FAQ advises people who would like to do testing: "You should have enough equipment to run at least three nodes, which means three MS Windows machines (we are in the process of porting it to Linux). You should also be skilled with tracing through code using Visual C++ or your own favorite debugger."

the main challenge for hackers is to keep focused on the goal of liberating the Internet.

There seems to have been some kind of falling out between cDc and Hactivismo over Peekabooty. The lead developer Paul Baranowski (aka Drunken Master) said he has "decided to sever ties with the Hacktivismo group but he will continue to develop the Peekabooty app. Occasionally developers can't find the environment they need to do their best work and now is one such time."

Our definition of hacktivism is, "using technology to advance human rights through electronic media."

You might not know it from reading the manifesto, but cDc and Hactivismo have actually been working on a product called Peekabooty that allows users to sneak through the firewalls that oppressive regimes set up to restrict access to the Internet.

Hacktivism chooses open code, mostly.

Peekabooty is open source under the GPL but the FAQ advises people who would like to do testing: "You should have enough equipment to run at least three nodes, which means three MS Windows machines (we are in the process of porting it to Linux). You should also be skilled with tracing through code using Visual C++ or your own favorite debugger."

the main challenge for hackers is to keep focused on the goal of liberating the Internet.

There seems to have been some kind of falling out between cDc and Hactivismo over Peekabooty. The lead developer Paul Baranowski (aka Drunken Master) said he has "decided to sever ties with the Hacktivismo group but he will continue to develop the Peekabooty app. Occasionally developers can't find the environment they need to do their best work and now is one such time."

When they attempt to shut it down, will anything like Peek-a-booty be able to come to the rescue?