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ZeroKnowledge to Discontinue Anonymity Service
VulgarBoatman writes: "ZeroKnowledge, providers of Freedom.net and Freedom privacy software, have abruptly decided to stop providing anonymous web browsing and private, encrypted, untraceable email for its customers. They give users 7 days before the system is shut down and all untraceable email addresses are disabled. They also say that your "secret" identity may not remain a secret for long." Well, note that that last link is a warning about using the service during the shutdown period, not a warning that they plan to compromise nyms in general. At least they're offering a refund. Update: 10/04 19:00 GMT by M : ZKS has a statement in the comments below.
in this case, bait & bail
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I bet it was a free service. Or a very low cost one.
Do the paying customers get their money back?
Beta sux! Join the Slashcott! http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4760465&cid=46173047
this was the best anonymizer that existed. I used it personally as a great tool for testing our site from inside the firewall (while appearing to the site like I was outside).
:(
Not a good day
Did the NSA threaten them too?
Another idiot giving up when they shouldn't.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
.. but doesn't it seem a little strange that this comes in the wake of september 11th? Who's pressuring them to discontinue annonymity?
It's a shame sure, but like the article says- it's all down to people finding other ways to do it themselves rather than rely on somebody else. It would be nice if they gave advice to their existing nyms on how they might be able to maintain their privact though
J-aims
--
Yo, whatever happened to peas? Join T( H)GS
My question is, how did billing for the service work in the first place?
Umm, account #12344234 owes us $300... but we don't know who it is, or where he lives...
I think their business model didn't work... the collections department had nothing to do...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
I'm curious as to whether the motivation is financial or some other reason... Maybe in the wake of all this terrorist bru-ha-ha about encryption and anonymity, someone (or more likely, some government entity) approached them and they, ahem, decided to stop.
I truly hope that's not the reason...
My money says it's all because of the September 11 attacks. From being a "cool" thing, companies offering anonymity services seem to be less cool in the eyes of the unwashed masses.
Trolling is a art,
http://www.safeweb.com/ is still there.
...but I see that hushmail is still in operation.
They give users 7 days
According to the notice it links to, service will dicontinue on Oct 22. That's 18 days, not 7.
...
whoever would think now that they stop it because of what happened in NYC or the slight possibility that someone actually might have used to plan this has nothing to do with it.
Sorry for the sarcasm, let's see how long it'll take until safweb decideds to shut down as well.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Does anyone have a decent list of potential alternatives? The nym thing was too cool.
~~ What's stopping you?
Tom.
Oh arse
Remember anon.penet.fi?
This is even more depressing, because this time the company running the service has pre-empted the government pressure to shut down, and gone ahead and done it before the lawyers arrive.
Eek. DOes anyone else get the feeling that the terrorists might actually be winning?
These sigs are more interesting tha
Their security warning is quite good, and explains the problem clearly. I'll give them a point for that at least. (They could have just kept mum about it, since there's only a few weeks to go.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
First off, when ZeroKnowledge closes, all of its customers will be forced to find another provider. That will make the other providers 1) more profitable (assuming they aren't taking a loss but making it up in volume, like Amazon); and 2) more effective. As mentioned in the warning to their customers, low volume makes it easier to correlate traffic entering their system with traffic leaving their system. When such a system gets sufficiently large, it will be very difficult to correlate input streams and output streams, because of the sheer number of possible matches.
Secondly, the closing of another anonymity service will make it harder for terrorists to operate on the internet. They will have one less place to hide. And that has a positive effect on law-abiding netizens - because when communications are more traceable and less anonymous, the government will have fewer excuses to pass legislation that gives law enforcement more snooping powers. And that benefits us all.
-sting3r
SafeWeb offers annonymous browsing too...
Didn't Mike Shaver, who took over JWZ's sopt after he left, leave mozilla to work for these people?
Wonder what he thinks about this...
"Zero-Knowledge is introducing Freedom Privacy & Security Tools 3.0, the next generation of its online security software for consumers. This new software includes a personal firewall, form filler/password manager, ad manager, cookie manager and keyword alert. As a result, we have decided to focus our main development efforts on this product as well as other software solutions providing online security.
As such, I regret to inform you that Freedom Premium Services - Anonymous Web Browsing and Private Encrypted Email - will be discontinued as of October 22nd, 2001. Please refer to the detailed Freedom Network shutdown timetable below"
So basically they are winding down their subscription based business model, leasing nyms (4 minimum as far as I recall) on an annual basis and going with a shrink wrap product.
I'm holding my breath to see what the reviewers have to say about this Tool kit v3.0 - it may provide what most users are looking for.
I hope they plan to open source the anonymity product and that folks start to run free servers of their own accord...
There are always ways to be anonymous on the internet. I can go to the public library, open a hotmail account, and e-mail and browse anonymously.
It's too bad that this business is closing down shop in what appears to be a misguided reaction to the september 11th attacks.
I know a little sig that's just ten words long
holy smokes, when i read that a zero knowledge system was discontinuing anonymity, I thought
that it meant that slashdot was going to stop
posting by AC's!
No collections department, you paid in advance for a year's service. If you wanted to ensure anonymity, you could sign up online, get an account number, and write that on an money order. You could also pay by credit card - they claimed to have an internal system to remove the linkage between the payment and the account.
I suspect that various governments are bringing pressure to bear. Hotmail et al are probably next. See this article at
Best Slashdot Co
it's a pity that they are doing this. As for a business model what is the business model now ?
A crappy firewall for wind0ze and a form filler that mozilla does by default ???
Looks like bin laden continues to affect our lives....
Given the current context, that's probably the best thing they could have done. The full anonymity multiple tunnels provided by the freedom servers had a huge cost of upkeep for ZKS, one which the revenues of the freedom product never could reach. Most users of Freedom were hardcore privacy advocates, but ZKS needed to tap into a larger market to make the Freedom net profitable. But in wake Sep11, the case for strong crypto anonymity is even harder to sell to the masses. So no user base = can the network.
I haven't read-up on Freedom 3.0 - yet, but I hope ZKS can still provide a simple http/https anonymous proxy gateway, it wouldn't be nearly as secure as onion-routing but would still provide minimal anonymity versus mundane threats like mass-marketers, identity theft, etc...
Cheers,
Mathieu Khor
Yesterday, I received the following message in response to questions about upcoming changes in services and offshore servers (emphasis mine):
:(
Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2001 09:56:46 -0400 (EDT)
From: InfoReplies@zeroknowledge.com
To: @freedom.net
Subject: Ref: "New anonymous browsing service"
Hello,
Thank you for your interest in Freedom. Currently, we are unable to release specific details about our upcoming privacy services; I wish I could provide you with more information.
As for the servers, the upgrades should be completed shortly, and more servers should appear on the network. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Regards,
Freedom Support Team
Have a question? Looking for answers? Visit our Knowledge Center for up-to-date solutions to common problems.
http://www.freedom.net/support/knowledge.html
Another proud carrier of the $rtbl flag
That should stop those pesky terrorists! They'll never think of getting a hotmail account from some public library system!
The really scary thing, for me anyways, is that ZeroKnowledge is located in Canada.
Which means - if the US has really pressured them to shut it down - that Canada's economic and social policies are even more influenced by the US than I ever believed them to be...
Right now, free speech is getting it's ass kicked around in the states, and it's starting to leach over into my little country!
I don't like this one bit.
On the other hand, ZeroKnowledge has been struggling financially for some time now, so maybe the events of Sept 11 just provided a good excuse for them to shut down their money-losing anonymizing service without raising too much of a furor.
--R
I don't think these services will be around for much longer. With the legislation going through congress at the moment as a startingpoint, I don't see how anonymizers in general are going to be able to survive. Anon.penet.fi crumbled under much less pressure than the current political climate provides.
I may just be paranoid, but I have a feeling that NSA spooks are knocking on a lot of anonymizer doors.
HowGoodInBed.com is anonymous and serves a purpose and has NO business model.
For those of you left out in the cold by this, Hushmail provides secure e-mail at a reasonable fee (I forget what I paid) or free accounts. Although if today's message is anything, supporting privacy services with money should be considered if you're going to use the service often!
Nick Lange nick.lange@SPAMTASTIC.hushmail.com
If I send one of you a signed blank check can you bail me out when they come for me?
-Im standing next to a mountain, Chop it down with the edge of my hand -Jimi
It seems to me the government should offer a free anonymizer service, with the proviso that detection of verifiable illegal activities transacted through same would lead to the immediate disclosure of the sender's identity (or at least location) to the appropriate legal agency. Private anonymizer services should not be allowed (at least within US borders).
This would then be a way for whistle blowers and others not engaged in illegal activities to easily, and with better legal shielding, submit their disclosures or air their personal political views. Mailing death threats, circulating child pornography, arranging for killings, or setting up drug drops shouldn't have any kind of guarantee of hiding the sender's identity.
I can already hear the big sucking sound from civil libertarians -- "HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY TRUST THE GOVERNMENT WITH THIS?"
It would seem trusting private individuals with this isn't much better (and the government gets what they want eventually anyway). Perhaps using a private anonymizing service shouldn't imply that someone has something to hide, but in the minds of many, it does.
Being intractable on this issue will hurt the IT community more in the long run, because it closely associates it with the ability to conduct illicit and untraceable activities. I am more worried about being being prevented from using cryptography, or being forced to register the keys with a government agencies. Here is where the battle should be fought, because it will lead to the real government oversight of the flow of sensitive information.
Yes this probably comes as result of 9-11-2001. Stop burying your heads in the sand and telling yourselves the world isn't any different now.
Letter To Iran
The open sourced client and routers are here.
Another proud carrier of the $rtbl flag
The majority of /. posters are "experts" at everything and are actually ignorant enough to believe the net will remain a lawless entity. Meanwhile they are over 30, jobless, and sitting at their parents house in their underwear.
Make sure that the users cannot change their registred e-mail adress, then sell their aliases to spammers.
Xoom pages still held hostage...
Cute. I strongly agree with what I presume was your point; that anonymity is in fact ubiquitous.
--MarkusQ
homes and our lives... but you'll never take our FREEDOM (networks).
what side you're on then eh? I'm not gonna provide any counterargument to yours, as I've watched you trolling this line for weeks already, and you've heard it all already. You make me laugh though. Btw, I'm about to be deployed (some of us put our money where our loud anonymous online chicken shit mouths should be putting it...that means you coward).
It takes considerably less time to click on the link and read for yourself that there is a refund than it does to type the question.
Sneakemail is an email anonymizing and anti spam service that is determined to outlive the competition.
So far so good.
Sneakemail.com
Anyone else have the idea that anonymizers are just fronts for whatever agency is interested in your surfing habits?
Think about it, what better way is there to keep track of people than to have everybody surf through one specific bottleneck where their activities can be easily monitored.
The traffic might be anonymous to the website you are going to, but it sure ain't anonymous to the anonymizer itself.
Just a thought.
I am an ex-ZKS employee, and you - are a troll.
.GIF's and JPEG's on the web?
Do you really think you can stop people from developping or using encryption or anonymity? There a rumours Ben Laden uses steganography - should we ban all
Most employeess at ZKS believe in protecting our rights, and in preserving privacy versus what is perceived by many as intrusions of a police state future into what was otherwise a "free" internet. As Phil Zimmerman said:, "if you ban strong crypto only the terrorists and criminals will have access to it."
These guys had a pretty cool product running there for a little while, but since they dropped Linux support I didn't really feel like sticking with them any more anyway. Of course now Metallica will be able to ban me from concerts or something when I download their damn MP3s.
le sigh
That certainly sucks ass, but I can't say I didn't see this coming.
They've been showing signs of titsup.com-ness for months now...discontinuning free services, raising prices, etc.
Wonder if FuckedCompany has gotten word of this yet...
C-X C-S
I have been a customer for over two years, starting when it was beta and real slow. I happen to actually like the ability to be able to send anonymous e-mail once in a while and enjoyed the warm and fuzzy feeling I got while visiting questionable sites. In fact it was one of the few reasons I still keep a Windows box around, since Freedom dropped support for Linux 6-8 months ago.
Now what have they got? A $50 Ad blocker and personal firewall? For Windows only?! I do not envision this company staying in business for much longer.
My REAL question is now: " What are the good alternatives for both Linux, OSX, and Windows?" Cost? How secure is it?" I know I can go to a web re-mailer and shoot out e-mail but that does not keep the website from logging my address. Tacking me etc...
Anyone?
If you outlaw anonymity, only outlaws will be anonymous...
The liberals in Congress think they're sounding like civil
libertarians with their new, modified stand on Internet
surveillance. They say that the authorities should be allowed
warrantless taps to find out where you surfed, but not what you did
once you got there. The FBI has a right to know that you went to
Amazon, for example, but without a warrant they don't have a right
to know what books you bought. The legal distinction here is from
the old days: a "pen register" would record the number you dialed,
but not the conversation itself, and therefore qualified for a
looser legal standard.
But pundits don't realize that 99 percent of your Web activity can
be reconstructed from the Web's equivalent of "pen register"
information. The search terms you enter into search engines are
attached to the address itself. Do you believe that the FBI will
want this portion of the URL excluded simply because they don't
have probable cause? If and when the NSA is authorized to monitor
the backbone, do you expect that they will chop off the URL at the
question mark, so that this information is kept out of their
keyword-analysis supercomputers? Not likely.
My reading of the provisions of the new Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001
suggests that a single, one-time certification by a federal
law-enforcement official that such information is needed in a
criminal investigation, without any showing of probable cause, is
enough to require a court to issue an order allowing a pen-register
tap on any Internet service provider presented with the order,
throughout the entire U.S. The definition of this "pen-register or
trap and trace device" information has been expanded for the
Internet. It now includes "other dialing, routing, addressing, and
signaling information reasonably likely to identify the source of a
wire or electronic communication (but not including the contents of
such communication)."
For example, some federal official could conceivably serve Google,
or any other search engine, with a court order demanding log
information for all those who searched for particular persons or
particular combinations of search terms. The "query strings"
consisting of the users' search terms are, in all standard HTTP
server logs, included along with the user's domain or IP number.
One hopes that search engines would be inclined to challenge such
an order. But we may never know, because if they decide to
cooperate with the new law, their public relations office won't be
announcing this. The bottom line is that the phrase, "but not
including the contents of such communication," might be useful for
excluding the body of e-mail messages, but is mostly irrelevant for
Web surfing. This poor wording in the new law may mean that search
engines can no longer claim privacy at any level.
If someone wanted to redesign the entire Web for the express
purpose of surveillance, they couldn't do a better job than what we
already have. The profile that could be compiled if one had a list
of all the Web sites you visited, or all the search terms you've
used on Google, would be very revealing. The latter scenario is
more worrisome, because the former scenario, short of a
comprehensive backbone tap, would imply an order served locally at
your own ISP. You'd almost have to be pre-targeted by the
authorities. But a tap on a general search engine would amount to a
global sweep for information. Google currently gets about 110
million searches every day, most of which are from outside the U.S.
It would be tempting for the feds to monitor this traffic.
I beta tested the first version of this system and it is legit. The crew at zeroknowledge have very serious privacy concerns, and if they have pulled the plug they are probably being leaned on...
If by "operation" you mean "runs slow as molasses and only on Internet Exploder" then yeah, I guess it's in operation.
Hush 2.0 is total crap. It no longer runs under any browser I've tried under Linux (even with the SUN JDK plugin), and it -barely- runs with IE under windows--and very slowly, at that. The new login procedure is heavily laden with Javascript (why?!) that only seems to work properly on IE.
I no longer recommend Hushmail to anyone. It's pretty much unusable, even under Windows.
The passing of this terrific service
;_(
makes me sick. It was such a wonderful
service! Are people too stooopid to pay
a bit for their privacy?!
The first couple versions had some annoying bugs
but they debugged them - and now its dying
Maybe there is a market for a very-premium
service for movie stars and CEOs at $100 a month.
I hope a rich person (Angel) steps in and saves
this services!!!
very sad.
The technical problem is that their service uses Javascript, and doesn't work if you're not running Javascript. That means that any time you're using the system, you're vulnerable to any other JS problems on any other web page your browser encounters, until you turn JS back off. IIRC, Safeweb does attempt to clean up JS and other dangerous stuff from pages it displays to you, but it's still a risk. Also, I'm not that impressed with their Javascript, though I'm not an expert on the stuff - my problem was that under Mozilla ~0.91, they pop up windows to do the secure browsing in, and they're not really quite the shape of my screen, though that could have been Mozilla's fault. I sent email to the Safeweb folks about the fundamental "You're using Javascript" problem, and got a really prompt reply from their technical management, which was good, but they fundamentally didn't get it, which bothered me.
The other problem is trust - in general, you always need to be concerned about whether a service like this is trustable, both because of the intent of the people running it (are they ratting you out to somebody) and the security of their systems (if their server is 0wned by CrackerZ, you're not secure.) As I mentioned, Triangle Boy is really cool - it's a sort of distributed set of volunteer-run anonymizing servers, which keep moving around to prevent blocking services from blocking them, and Safeweb announced that they were going to be using this to provide censorship-free web access for people in China, the Middle East, and other places with censorship problems. The catch - they've got funding from In-Q-Tel, the CIA venture fund. It's probably entirely legit, and certainly good enough for most purposes - but how paranoid you need to be depends on who's really out to get you. ZeroKnowledge was very upfront about what their trustability levels were (plus I knew the folks there, and they were well-connected to the cypherpunks community.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
As I recall, premium service came with the ability to generate either 4 or 5 nyms, each good for a year. If someone has used only 1 of those nyms, I figure they're due at least an 80% refund. Instead, ZKS has calculated pro-rata amounts that take into consideration only the amount of time elapsed since the original purchase date, and even then they're only going back as far as January 1, 2001--completely screwing any early adopters.
As for the offer of a free "Freedom Privacy & Security Tools 3.0", if someone has seen or used this product could you post your impressions of it? Would you ever pay the $ they're asking for it?
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=22261&cid=2388 370 is another thread of this same discussion - see comments there.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
By "pillow", do you mean that colossal wad of fat that hangs off your gut? If so, way to improvise!
Secondly, just go to their site. You won't get very far unless you have javascript turned on. Javascript is such an insecure technology, it makes MS Windows look secure.
Anybody trusting Safeweb is just itching to get burned. All IMHO of course.
The only thing that scares me about this is that the the top names in crypo work at Zero Knowledge.
How could such advocates of privacy let this happen?
Ever since the web began, there have been marketing people trying to find out information on us and our surfing habits. The only way to remain anonymous on the web is to not give your real name out.
--Lionel Hutz no longer exists, say hello to Miguel Sanchez
How much does Microsoft pay you to post this idiotic drivel?
They've been making the transition from subscription-based services to packaged software for a while, if I remember correctly. I'm not sure of the date on the messages, but when they announced Freedom 3.0, the writing was on the wall for Premium Services, just based on the fact that Premium Services wouldn't work with 3.0.
I don't think this has to do with 9/11, although it might have nade the decision easier.
Make me aerodynamic in the evening air
Because if you want a refund, you gotta give them a return address - even if you paid anonymously up front (with a money order).
Of course, anyone who REALLY wants to remain anonymous will just give up on any refund for unused time... This may be a good way to spot possible illicit activity, after which the FBI may request their records. Seems like a good ploy to me. But then IANAFBISpy.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
fu*k off you brainwashed flag waving moron.
So I started beta-testing Freedom a while back... probably August or Sept. of 1999. I purchased the product in Dec. of 99 as soon as it was available. Hell, I was one of the first 100 to buy it since I got my free stinking t-shirt. The way they described licensing back then was "you can either use five nyms for one year, one nym for five years, or any combination in between." At this point, I have not yet used all of my nyms, meaning I have not fully used the product, meaning I should get a refund. Especially because I helped beta test and submitted bug reports left and right. But no! I don't fall within the "on or before Jan. 1, 2001" time frame, so I'm SOL. Perfect example of a good company gone bad. I wonder if Ian Goldberg is going to jump ship now that their product does Zer0 Cryptography.
Oh well. Another fantastic product down the drain. Nice job, upper management! That's what happens when you let guys from the stone age manage a cool new company with something real to offer.
If you're really despirate for free anon web browsing and are not offended by endless references to Clam Lapping...
Moderating Pornolized Slashdot comments is always fun too...
Slashdot: News for charvers, stuff that titty fucks
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
Closing an anon remailer or anon web proxy is not going to stop terrorism. Neither is putting backdoors into encryption schemes, or making National ID cards that people will be required to carry. They are great deterrents tho.
Before the internet there was terrorism... and unfortunately terrorism will continue.
A step in the right direction would be tighter immigration laws. Better security on flights, and letting the millitary do their job (no more bullshit police actions).
But closing down a remailer or web proxy won't stop anything. It's paranoia. Why can't the terrorists set up their OWN anon remailers or proxies. Hell they could revert to using RFC1149 technology with a Honeycomb Cereal invisible ink pen....
Paranoia does not solve problems...
[Connection closed by foreign host]
There was once a time when anonymous remailers served a purpose on the net, and where the people using them were as or more likely to contribute something to the online community as any others.
Sadly, I think that time has now passed.
On most of the Usenet groups I frequent (which, of course, is merely the tiniest fraction of those available), the people using anonymous remailers seem to be overwhelmingly: A.) Spammers, B.) Jerks who contribute nothing to the group and who cower behind anonymity for the sole purpose of flaming others free of consequences, and C.) People who not not only pirate intellectual property, but who spam newsgroups with it to show everyone how big their virtual Warezzz penis is. For example, a couple of months ago, someone spammed rec.arts.sf.written with hundreds of badly OCRed SF novels and stories, including some by people who are by no means rich.
Frankly, the people with the most urgent need for legitimate use of anonymous remailers (i.e., those in communist or otherwise oppressive countries where there is no freedom of the press) are the ones who either can't get to them anyway, or whose governments have so much of the system tapped that it would be easy to track them down.
While there are still some legitimate uses for anonymous remailers (Scientology whistle-blowers, for example), the jerks and spammers seem to outweigh legitimate uses about 100 to 1. Thus I see no real cause to mourn their passing. I wish that it were otherwise, but we must deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it were.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Sounds like they couldn't make enough $ to make it work. Too bad.
sulli
RTFJ.
I listened to the speach the one guy gave at DefCon, and it was a real interesting lecture. One of the more enlightening, thought provoking discussions, and a real treat.
I got the feeling it (anonymity) was real important to him. I suppose something like this is a real blow to his ideals and work.
Straight from Three Dead Trolls In A Baggie.
It was reported here a while back that the internet, particularly chat rooms were possibly used to coordinate terrorist activity.
...when you've got wireless?
Just find your local wide-open corporate or university wireless network, and hack away! Maybe even buy yourself a nice directional antenna... w00t!
ZKS's business model was always a gamble, but it was the critical thing they had to offer. There are a number of people in the cypherpunks community who've developed remailers, but the critical problem was how to keep enough of them running to provide security, diversity, and reliability. (The typical problem remailers have is keeping their ISPs from getting upset by complaints from recipients of unwanted anonymous mail, and running a faster-response-time system like ZKS requires comsuming more upstream bandwidth as well.) What their business model had to offer, besides a good enough friendly user interface to make it easy for the general public to use, was a financial incentive for ISPs to want to run remailers, because they're paying customers rather than problem users. We were never sure whether they'd succeed, but it would be a great thing if they did. Oh, well....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Since their server software is linux and GNU, this opens the door for others to rebuild the freedom network, yes?
If someone started to do this, i would donate bandwidth off my dsl. maybe we could make a freedom co-op?
You ever see someone with a four-cup/day habit go cold turkey? Sure, it's not heroin, but you can bet that if caffeine were made illegal tomorrow, there would be people begging and stealing to get their next fix of Folger's Crystals, at $5/gram.
Causation can cause correlation
according to a Washington Post article
"In Hollywood, Fla., the FBI last weekend quizzed Paul Dragomir, manager at the Longshore Motel, about a visit in late August from two men he believes were hijackers Atta and Ziad Samir Jarrah, who demanded 24-hour Internet access.
Loaded down with baggage and laptops, the men signed in at the small pink beachfront motel using apparent aliases. They claimed to be computer engineers from Iran, Dragomir said, and said they were down from Canada to find jobs.
They booted up a laptop, showing Dragomir that they had NetZero Internet accounts. For the next few hours, Dragomir unsuccessfully tried to accommodate the men."
Makes one wonder just what or who 'motivated' NetZero to pull the plug on this product.
I hate to play devil's advocate here, but addiction and dependence are not the same thing. Caffeine dependence is pretty common, but true caffeine addiction (where the user keeps increasing the dose until death or illness stops them) is fairly rare. Most of the so-called 'hard' drugs are the ones that cause high rates of addiction; they may not even produce that strong of a dependence, but the craving and build-up of tolerance are always there. This is part of the reason for the confusion between different definitions of 'addictive' substances.
I'll agree that THC products shouldn't be classified in the way as narcotics, but some drugs really are dangerous.
I've quit a two or three *pot* a day habit cold turkey. Of course, the fact that I didn't know just *how far* past two a day I was was part of the reason.
Then again, caffeeine doesn't faze me. It doesn't keep me awake or alert, or make me jittery (OK, a grand total of twice I got jittery, but that's from the multiple pots in a sitting thing
When I dumped the multi-pot a day habit in grad school, I wnet over to decaff without a problem. OK, a little problem; I had to change to flavored beans to mask the funny taste from the lack of caffination.
Add a few more years, and there's some difficulty. I make decaff in my office, but my wife makes the regular stuff at home. So with decaff all week and then real stuff on the weekends, I did start getting mild headaches on monday or tuesday (this didn't used to happen), so now I have a cup of my wife's at home before I leave.
hawk
Or exactly what right NetZero had to shutdown ZeroKnowledge... If you'll pardon the pun, "zero".
how to invest, a novice's guide
since ZKS is located in Canada, where the government has traditionally had a more lenient view towards crypto.
As a business, we are focusing on the product that customers and partners want. Here's an official Zero-Knowledge Systems statement on the matter:
Your Servant, B. Baggins
I don't know how much pressure there is from the gov't on businesses in Canada regarding crypto. I doubt they are responsible for this service being shut down, though.
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
Most of the so-called 'hard' drugs are the ones that cause high rates of addiction; they may not even produce that strong of a dependence, but the craving and build-up of tolerance are always there. This is part of the reason for the confusion between different definitions of 'addictive' substances.
Also definitions get corrupted by politics. Leading to nicotine products being called "soft drugs" when calling them "legal hard drugs" actually makes more sense.
I'll agree that THC products shouldn't be classified in the way as narcotics, but some drugs really are dangerous.
Except that banning drugs has nothing to do with danger. One of the most dangerous drugs is paracetamol, but you can buy this easily.
Most of the danger from illegal drugs actually comes from their being outside of the kind of standards which would otherwise apply to them. i.e. known dosage free from contamination.
After that I started to use anonomizers whenever I posted or at least a throw away email address
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
Logons from libraries, cafe's, etc.
Best Slashdot Co
I wonder if the families of the WTC victims can sue them if it is found they helped the terrorists plan the attack?
www.tinysoftware.com It's not got the whistles that ZA has but it's a pretty darned nice personal firewall and it's free too.
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
I followed these guys for a while and all I can say is that they went too big too fast. Not that they are alone or anything. Their service was robust and cool, but a bit too confusing for non-techies to grab a hold of. They ran through their $100 million or so quite fast. I remember seeing these guys running around in their self printed tshirts at RSA 2000 in San Jose - then when they got their funds, that all changed and it seems they played the .com spending game.
Another privacy service down the tubes! This one even had a sound amount of research and testing behind it and a well thought out protocol. I think the ZKS team was a good team with a good concept and a nobel cause.
The Internet is no better for this loss!
I was testing it in the early stages, and found it worked well, even through NATed firewalls (with a few tweaks to allowed ports). I was going to subscribe, but I didn't get to it yet. Just as well. We need more privacy tools, not less. Freedom wasn't helping terrorists -- it was helping each and every one of us who are law abidding and value our privacy!
It was a solution to us who have to go over a less than trusted backbone and we didn't have to worry about the costs of tunelling to an expensive co-located server. It was much better than that, as it provided a somewhat effective level of anonymity. It was good in situations where you are posting something that someone could use against you, like controversial views for example. It allowed you to keep a seperation from your personal life, and what your employer could link to you for instance.
The only comperable service that I see coming even close is anonymizer. Freedom was way better than anonymizer in some ways as far as the level of anonymity it would provide. But also anonymizer has some advantages that Freedom didn't.
--- Delta0.. makes no difference.
The whole cryptographic anonymity area was likely to take a massive hit in the wake of the WTC attack.
Even if ZeroKnowledge had kept going the increased scrutiny and surveillance would render the scheme pointless. Having a FreedomNet account or connecting to the server would get you put on a watch list the minute the NSA found out - and find out they would.
I suspect that the number of hosting facilities willing to run the service servers declined substantially after the WTC attack.
I would not give the Sealand folk much chance of lasting very much longer. For all the riddiculous libberprattle the platform is now inside UK territorial waters and the UK government does not recognise sealand as a state. Since the sealand employees are mainly from the US that would make them illegal workers subject to arrest when they set foot on the mainland.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Sysadmins and governments have wisened up and have started to block triangleboy, as well.
So in that case, try these sites to get into
a Triangle boy:
https://www.unsucky.org
http://www.sigpipe.com
sigpipe.com updates its links every so often everytime a site goes down, or finds a new triangleboy site.
IIRC, Safeweb does attempt to clean up JS and other dangerous stuff from pages it displays to you, but it's still a risk.
They do a pretty good job of sanitizing JS, but not perfect. In about an hour, I found a couple ways for a malicious server to compromise anonymity through SafeWeb, using JS. I'll grant that it's a tough job to sanitize all JS, but SafeWeb should provide a way for users to browse without JS. In my opinion, this is the single biggest problem with using SafeWeb.
I sent email to the Safeweb folks about the fundamental "You're using Javascript" problem, and got a really prompt reply from their technical management, which was good, but they fundamentally didn't get it, which bothered me.
Their FAQ indicates they don't get it-- they dismiss the notion that JS is a privacy concern, and discredit those who say it is. However, I think they realize it internally. I know someone who used to work there. He says they get emails complaining about JS every day, but they don't want to do away with their current UI.
As I mentioned, Triangle Boy is really cool - it's a sort of distributed set of volunteer-run anonymizing servers, which keep moving around to prevent blocking services from blocking them...
The concept is old... some people (*cough*) have been doing this since at least 1996. All it takes is an anonymizing proxy script that is released for distribution. I wrote one called CGIProxy, and there are others out there. Triangle Boy has pros and cons compared to these-- it puts the bandwidth load on SafeWeb's machines rather than the volunteer Triangle Boy servers, but then it won't work at all if the SafeWeb server ever has a problem (the other scripts run independently).
Feel free to ask more questions; this particular topic is a specialty of mine.
a) Have sufficient bandwidth to make such a service usable.
or
b) are prepared to go to prison when someone we can't identify grabs $ILLEGAL_MATERIAL from somewhere with our own machine as the exit server.
I admire the spirit, nonetheless.
Another proud carrier of the $rtbl flag
One thing that slowed me down to subscribing was the large price tag (in the big bucks). Another issue was that Freedom didn't integrate well with my BSD machines or provide a single point of network integration. It was client software by nature.
I think people didn't ever give Freedom enough credit for what it could do. I remember talking to some people on various unamed IRC channels and they basically didn't buy the concept and discounted it's level of anonymity equating it with digital certificates and their problems. But I am sure half of them didn't even read what it was all about. Most people in the know, could have attested that the concept was fairly sound for what it was meant to do. It wasn't for secret government communication.
This sucks... but then again there were some features that would have made it easier to use. Such as a model to make it more of a network service, than simply a client software package. The client end could have communicated back to a site server (not to be confused with a freedom AIP servers.) Something like that. Maybe we can make the non-client side Open Source and setup some servers to create the infrastructure?
--- Delta0.. makes no difference.
It is not unusual for well financed startup companies to crash and burn despite top people. There have been several that have crashed and burned because they had too many. Its the same in crypto, DigiCash and Cybercash both went under, PGP burned through cash so fast it had to be rescued even before the dotcom bubble burst. Baltimore and Entrust are both looking wobbly.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
What is the standard period of time that services
such as google or yahoo keep logs? 1 day? 1 week?
Archived to tape forever?
seems to me its time to purge the logs as quickly
as feasible - make sure you clip the info for
anybody hacking your site, and burn the rest. They
can't actually *force* you to keep logs can they?
I think it's safe to say that we are all saddened by the recently announced shutdown of the Freedom Network.
I signed up for Zero Knowledge Systems' premium services not too long ago, that is, when I was moving into a university where I am connected on a non-switched network that is extremely easy to sniff traffic off of. I found freedom to be very useful.
I was about to set up another node on the Freedom Network as well. At this very moment I have a server setting in a data center, idling. Now I am hit with this news.
I will be brief. I am interested in setting up a secure SOCKS proxy server, and want to know how many people would pay for this kind of a service. It would be different than the Freedom Network, in that its main focus would be on privacy instead of anonymity. Of course your connection would be pseudo-anonymous, but not subpoena resistant like freedom was. However it would support any program which supports SOCKS proxies, for example AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, file sharing programs, etc, in addition to regular web browsing. It would use either IPSec or some other strong cryptography to secure all traffic between the client and the proxy.
There would have to be some kind of bandwidth based billing system, however, for example either a bandwidth cap or a cost based on the amount of bandwidth used. I am not in this to make tons of money, but then again I couldn't afford the bandwidth if users paying $10/month are downloading numerous movies and MP3s through the proxy.
Please email me at feedback@senseofsecurity.com to express any interest or provide any ideas or suggestions.
Thank you,Adam Smith
Alternatives to Zero Knowledge include
Anonymizer,
Rewebber,
Siegesoft, and
Orangatango.
Just my $0.04 (adjusted for inflation)
+2 Informative for this? Get a brain, moderators. NetZero is just a cheesy little ISP with a "free" option option. It has nothing to do with ZeroKnowlege.
I think the market didn't share their (our) enthusiasm for that level of service, perhaps unfortunately. It's quite possible that for 99% of internet users privacy is really *not* a prime concern. Most people have mundane lives and therefore mundane communications, making privacy totally pointless. Privacy is only a concern for those who are under the illusion that anyone else would care to know what they write in their emails.
By forcing bcakdoors on systems, you're only affecting (persecuting, in fact) the law-abiding citizens who will use them
That's just "When guns will have been outlawed, only outlaws will own guns" paraphrased yet again.
The difference here is that when the govt wants to read an email and sees that the official backdoors aren't working this will be a reasonable indication that the contents of the email are illegal.
If you think this is an unacceptable assumption by any govt in the "western" world, rest assured that there are plenty of govts in the world which need less to persecute people. Consider this : one of the claimed reasons encryption was brought to the masses was that it would protect the freedom of opinion of people living under totalitarian regimes. Nice idea but an idea that would only make sense to a western scholar. Under a totalitarian regime, the mere fact that an intercepted email is encrypted is in itself a banner that says "I AM A DISSIDENT !!!". The govt's heavies then go and blow the guy's door in and drag him off for "interviewing" then "reeducation" if not worse.
So what exactly has encryption done for the repressed voice of liberty in the world ? I'm still waiting to see statistics on the amount of freedom gained by the use of encrypted communication.
I knew that wouldn't last.. Most people are just too dumb to use FN anyhow... Now Zero Knowledge is going to make the newest version of Cyber-Patrol, LOL... I see right through that.... The feds just hired them to establish a goverment VPN and they will be so busy with that that they are dropping FN. Plus if they are going to develop a classified VPN then you can't have the general public using the product too...
That's what I see...
You can "choose to believe" anything you wish, but reality is not obligated to agree with you. While it is certainly true that the US government has substantially improved its stance (from a libertarian point of view) on domestic human rights for women, racial minorities, and laborers in the workplace over the past 200 years, you seem to be unware of the fact that these gains were the result (at least in part) of persistent struggle by those who faced oppression. It is simply not the case that things just "got better" on their own, as anyone who participated in the fight for civil rights would tell you. Furthermore, the US has continued to commit acts of political repression right up to the present day; I've cited it here before, but It Did Happen Here: Recollections of Political Repression in America by Bud and Ruth Schultz is an excellent (and chilling) reference on the subject. I would suggest doing some reading from this or other relevant history texts before holding forth on the US human rights record.
In any event, if the present trend towards the expansion of government surveillance, unaccountability in law enforcement (e.g., secret evidence, detention without charge or trial, etc.), and military/law enforcement collaboration continues, the historical record strongly suggests that we will see substantial abuse of this power by government officials (corrupt or otherwise). I am aware of no evidence whatsoever to support the assertion that things will be different this time around.
In the past, it has been precisely this sort of "rights complaining" which has kept authoritarian interests in check. Perhaps, when you or a loved one is hauled off due to having spoken out against state policy, having angered an official, having been the victim of a beauracratic mistake, or simply having been in the wrong place at the wrong time, you will reconsider your assessment of us. It has happened before, and -- if you have your way -- it will happen again.
Of course, by then it will be too late. Let's just hope that there are enough "spoiled brats" out there to keep this from happening.
-Carter
This is really sad to hear. We have seen to many good, anonymous services go down. It all started with DigiCash and Chaum, a payment system utilizing blind signatures. True(!) anonymous payments. And ZKS also had the right tools at hand to create anonymity. Maybe you will move ahead and do something in the private credential arena. Brands' patents should work fine for that ... Readers interested in some level of anonymity for the masses should check out Hushmail and Zendit for anonymous, encrypted email services. And the other usual suspects like Anonymizer.com (BAH!). Good luck to Zeroknowledge!
Ian speaks the truth. As much as we would like there to be a market for services like FN, there isn't one. People won't go out of their way to protect their privacy in the face of vague threats or unease. They need a specific threat before they will spend real money on protecting their privacy.
Which is, of course, what the people who invade privacy want.
I'm not surprised FN died, I'm surprised it lasted this long. ZKS got funded for Freedom Network in the heady days of the dotcom boom, when you could find a few VCs who had read Crytonomicon and get them to fork over money on faith. Their new plan, HIPPA compliance software, is a much sounder business proposition.
To get privacy into the network, you have to get it in with literally zero effort. It needs to be built in to the other tools, and considered a checklist feature. Unfortunately, for now, privacy protection is a feature, not a product
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Did it not occur to anybody else that using a
service like this is just screaming, "I am a [participle] criminal in the sense of child molester or murderer?"
Trying to make yourself anonymous and untraceable is nothing remotely like civil disobedience. It's criminal, plain and simple, and it's long past time we stopped pretending it was anything else.
What part of "A well regulated militia" do you not understand?
Played any I76 lately d00d?
Banned from moderation 01-27-2002. Fuck you too
Perhaps the failing aspect of ZKS business model is the lack of privacy regarding forking over a credit card to pay for the premium service.
Some people won't even part with that information to guard their privacy. For this, they go to hushmail.com.
My dick stays up longer than this site. It's gotten to where I don't bother writing informative, interesting, or funny comments because I don't have time before the whole thing shits itself sideways and stays down for one, two, four, six hours. By the time I get back to it a whole day has passed and the comment I spent all that time writing is not going to get read by anyone. So who gives a fuck? I'm reduced to posting tactless, abrasive one-line insults anonymously because that's all I have time for. And even when I do post under my own name there's some cock out here who has apparently infinite mod points and mods anything he doesn't agree with as Offtopic. Either that or it's "Give mod points to hemrrhoidal assholes" week.
I could not recommend the Freedom application to any of my friends because it wasn't good software. Freedom attempted to intercept every outbound connection, which meant that it would also have to know about more protocols - and do all the right stuff with them - than it would ever be able to. They got mired in the expensive development of an overly complex networking application for Windows sockets, which can be expensive indeed. That was too bad, because their business model didn't actually require it.
What people want is anonymized HTTP, SMTP, and POP. What they got with Freedom included an attempt to anonymize things like SSH, but broke it. They also got periodic notices that their current version was inoperable and that they had to download a new one. Their downloads were not authenticated. Overall, I just wasn't that impressed with their product, and went on to buy anonymity elsewhere.
... that has the same level of functionality as Freedom? I know I would still use something like this.
how fitting. but why isn't every post in this thread from interested people by acs...
We can DEFINITELY trust the US govt with our info (insert heavy sarcasm here)! And the world is the same as Sept 1st for that matter. The US just finally had to admit vulnerability. This is a normal fact of life in foreign countries. The US was very quickly forced to open its eyes to this unfortunately. But bombing the hell out of everyone and treating everyone who wants privacy like a criminal won't solve a damned thing.
(though I have exaggerated some responses to further a lively debate)
That is called a lie.
My last visit to http://www.havenco.com (today) reveals nothing new -- except that they're now hosting a remailer.
The assertion that the UK doesn't recognize Sealand as a state is unfounded. The UK has, de facto, done so by refusing to intervene during the period when Sealand held a German national prisoner after an attempted takeover of the platform. The German government was obliged to negotiate directly with Sealand when the UK informed them that Sealand was (then) in international waters and hence beyond their jurisdiction.
That the UK does not currently recognize Sealand is irrelevant under international law. That Sealand is now inside UK territorial waters is likewise irrelevant under international law. Failure of one state to recognize another (such as the US refusing to recognize mainland China before Nixon) is an obvious example of the former principle.
Once a state exercises sovereign power (such as by taking a prisoner and negotiating for release with another sovereign power as above) a claim for recognition under international law has been made. That the UK subseqently extended territorial waters to include Sealand is not a claim on Sealand as a territory, just as a US claim to extend territorial waters to include Cuba does not make Cuba a US territory.
These are well-established legal precepts. I find it curious that the UK says it exercises jurisdicion over Sealand, but makes no effort to shut them down or even attempt to confiscate the small cache of firearms held (in violation of UK law)on the platform.
I submit that the UK legal system realizes they have a very weak claim on Sealand and does not wish to engage in a legal battle they can easily lose (with attendant international embarassment.) For now and the foreseeable future, they will continue to tolerate Sealand and the operations of Havenco. If Havenco or Sealand ever posed a credible threat to the UK, the issue would be settled in an instant with whatever force might be necessary. The operation of a data haven, remailers or even a FN-like system on Havenco does not meet this criterion.
As to the NSA watching those who obtain Freedom accounts -- who cares? Given an agency with those kinds of resources, does anyone seriously suppose that Freedom or any other service could be truly anonymous? If "they" want you badly enough, "they" will find you. If you don't generate that sort of attention, no one will care. Using Freedom for illegal purposes is beyond stupid, since traffic analysis will likely give you away and subject you to "real" surveillance, like "black bag" entry, password grabbers or even just a simple review of your bank accounts and purchases.
Freedom died because the "privacy nuts" like me didn't spend enough to keep it alive, pure and simple. That being said, Freedom (or something like it) will rise again. My guess is that it will be located on Sealand with the security afforded by that facility. Even if Sealand is assailed successfully, the data on the servers will be gone before a single bit is recovered. While I'm as upset as anyone about the death of Freedom (from which I'm posting this message) it may pave the way for an even better system with both cryptographic and physical data security.
I maintain that the events of September 11 are not going to cripple the use of cryptography or anonymity. Terrorists are smart enough to realize that the veil can be pierced with enough resources, and hence avoid using them for critical communications. (bin-Laden's congratulatory cell phone conversations nonwithstanding.) Over 70% of the American public feels that crypto restrictions would have been helpful, but I doubt that they would withstand a 1st or 4th Amendment challenge, and Sealand is not subject to US law.
The demand is there, the technology is there and the location is for rent. What remains is for an affordable system to be built.
BTW, I have no financial interest in Freedom or Sealand.
Since ZKS will no longer be in the business, several existing Freedom users have asked ZKS if they would make their old server code available to the open-source community. If that happens, I'll be happy to start up the Tweakdom project again. Here's hopin'...
If you're interested, check the web page for updates, or join the mailing list. Here's the URL's:
The Tweakdom web page: http://tweakdom.sourceforge.net
The Tweakdom mailing list: http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=23929
--willdye
Don't editorialize out our paranoia, it has served well so far.
The only real difference is that some of you (mostly in the US) have pulled your heads _out_ of the sand and started to realise what's going on in the world.
Oh so TRUE!!!!
I wish I had mod points for you.
Me too!
Finally some in the US have stopped patting themselves on the back and taking a good look at the actions of their government.
In a country where around a third of the people choose who governs, it's not surprising that bad choices are made from time to time.
Being a citizen has responsibilities as well as rights, so start voting, start paying attention to world affairs, don't just read US news... open your eyes, they filter your news because they think you're stupid.
The US press isn't as free as you might think.
What makes people question whether the Freedom Network's shutdown is collateral damage from Sept. 11 is not just the uncanny timing, but the exceedingly short notice and the fact that just recently ZKS was promising the rollout of more servers.
The exceedingly short notice is perhaps the most troubling. I'm sorry, but no matter how much you protest that it's unrelated to Sept. 11, most people are not going to believe you. You couldn't reasonably admit folding the network due to Sept. 11, because that would garner a huge backlash from the sort of customers you want to buy your future "privacy" products. That creates a very real motive for denying that the network's shutdown has something to do with Sept. 11.
As it is, you cannibalized your own market by offering the cheap Freedom product without nyms and access to the Freedom Network, anyway. You started trying to target a more mainstream audience--an audience which doesn't know the difference between Freedom the run-of-the-mill "privacy" utility and Freedom with access to the anonymizing network. You should not have given them a choice in the matter, and doing so naturally cannibalized the market for the Premium product--which was the only unique thing your company offered in the first place. There are so many other packages that do the same thing, some by big-name vendors like Norton and McAfee, that you can't reasonably survive very long selling a virtually identical product with the same features but without the name recognition and without the added distribution these products get through inclusion in general-purpose utility syuites such as those offered by both Symantec and McAfee.
I know I'll likely get flamed and modded down for second-guessing this and playing armchair CEO, but the fact is you never should have offered people a cheaper product which the mainstream audience couldn't be expected to reasonably distinguish from your network anonymity enabled product. Your webpages didn't even give a good explanation that "normal" people would understand about why they should buy your more expensive product. Your less expensive option was more appealing to people merely because of the cost difference and the lack of knowledge of the "average" guy.
When it became apparent that you couldn't keep doing things the way you were doing them, what you should have done is drop the cheap option and support only those people also willing to support the Freedom Network-enabled version of the software. To do otherwise is removing the only thing which made you unique, the only thing which distinguished you from Symantec and McAffee and countless smaller companies and freeware offerings. You cannot and will not survive in such an environment with so many competitors, not to mention the people who are pissed at you for dropping the Freedom network to concentrate on Just Another Cookie Management/Firewall/Etc. Suite and who consequently would never buy your "Freedom 3.0" product even though they used to be supporters. I know I don't need Just Another Firewall/Cookie Suite--too many to choose from already, and if Freedom 3.0 is anything like your current "lite" suite lacking the Freedom Network, it's just too "heavy" and resource-intensive an app. I could tolerate that when I got to access the snonymity of the Freedom Network, but without it I'd rather just run ZoneAlarm's free firewall and get my cookie management free with Mozilla.
Good luck. You're going to need it. And I still don't believe this timing has nothing to do with Sept. 11--and if it doesn't, you had a responsibility to give your users more notice, and shame shame shame on you for not doing so.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
There are no side-effects of the electronic age except one: that the government finds it easier and easier to invade our rights as new technologies are developed, since people keep "interpreting" how our Constitutional rights should apply in a new medium instead of just doing what the Framers intended--reading our rights as literally as possible and applying them everywhere, without regard to medium, without regard to the changing temper of the times.
... If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom--go from us in peace. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you."
"The mushrooming of surveillance has been explained by the sense of panic
and crisis felt throughout the government during this period of extremely
vocal dissent, large demonstrations, political and campus violence, and
what at the time seemed the inauguration of a period of wide- spread
anarchy. While officials... suggested that these crises justified the
surveillance, they failed to recognize that the rights guaranteed by the
constitution are constant and unbending to the temper of the times..."
--Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, 1973
Terrorist attacks do not justify concurrent attacks by government on our freedoms--not even if the "tyranny of the majority," the large part of the populace that's most easily mislead by Ashcroft's smooth-talk and the like instead of thinking for themselves and reflecting on the future impact decisions we make now will have on us and our children and our childrens' children, is willing to go along out of Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, and Ignorance.
If we have no freedoms, there's nothing to fight the terrorists for.
"Implicit in the term 'national defense' is the notion of defending those
values and ideals which set this Nation apart... It would indeed be
ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the
subversion of one of those liberties... which makes the defense of the
Nation worthwhile."
--Chief Justice Earl Warren, U.S. Supreme Court, US v Robel
"Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor
to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better
secured."
--Thomas Paine, 1791
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty
when the government's purposes are beneficient... the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
--Justice Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court
"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, What should be the reward of such sacrifices?
--Samuel Adams
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the
argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
--William Pitt to the House of Commons, November 18, 1783
Anyone who has an historical awareness realizes that we have lost, rather than gained, rights over the last two centuries. We give rights to more people, such as women and blacks, and that's great. But we give fewer rights than our ancestors had. When Ben Franklin was postmaster-general, he wasn't going to let anyone touch your mail without a warrant. Many decades later the Court ruled that you don't have to have a warrant to get the data on the outside of the envelope--reasonable. E-mail and Web traffic is substantially the same thing and should be protected as much as regular mail--yet it isn't. There is no legislation to give your e-mail and packets the same legal protection your snail mail has. Even worse, Sept. 11 is being used as an excuse to pass legislation that would consider ALL fields in packets except for the actual data being shuffled, as ftree for the government to examine without warrant. Disastrous because where e-mail and Web traffic diverges from snail mail is that the FBI can't scan all envelopes and record who's sending what to whom, but they CAN do so with e-mail and Web traffic if only thay can get backbones or local ISPs to install a little equipment. Is that what the Founders would have wanted to happen to mail? For all the information on the envelope to recorded for posterity so that they can know exactly whom you're corresponding with, and monitor you if they don't like who you write to? No? Then we shouldn't allow it.
It's as simple as that.
I can go down a whole list of such rights that our forefathers instituted that we have lost. Most of them are rights people don't even realize used to exist, because they weren't codified into the Bill of Rights so clearly. In fact, the principal objection that many of the Founders, including Jefferson, had to creating the Bill of Rights is that it may create the misconception that those are the only absolute rights--which is what it's done. That's why a clause was inserted to reinforce the fact that the listing of rights does not disparage or deny all other rights held by the people, and that it is not a complete list of our inalienable rights. In fact, at the time, our rights were more defined by the Common Law than by the Constitution. Yet today's legal system treats the Common Law and all the rights it gives us as a doormat. The most famous example is probably the elimination, without any legislation to support the move, of the right of juries to nullify the application of a law in given circumstances, so that all common sense and fairness are lost at trial today.
Wake up yourself. Our rights are a tiny shadow of what Jefferson and Washington and Madison and Franklin and the Adams' and all the citizens of their age had. I'm beginning to think that Jefferson was right, and that each generation should have a revolution against the last, to ensure its rights. One thing's for sure: none of the principal Founders would like the government we live under today. Thay'd recognize it as oppressing us and denying our natural rights and our rights under Common Law.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
(plus I knew the folks there, and they were well-connected to the cypherpunks community.)
Not to argue with the other points in your (well-written) post... but surely a certain percentage of the 'cypherpunk' community is going to be undercover stooges for the FBI/CIA/NSA? Sort of like COINTELPRO in the Nixon years -- strong encryption is perceived as a strong enough threat to warrant this sort of spying on your citizens, according to that mindset.
I'm not saying this is fact, but merely that it's probably a factor that should be considered... the easiest way to break this sort of encryption is to already have someone on the inside, or to get someone to talk.
deus does not exist but if he does
Personally- I have no need for anonymity when emailing. I mean what possible use would it have but spam? and I relaly hate spam. Spam blocking services shoudl be stepped up BIG TIME. Now as for censorship, and the likes of the chinese government problems, I could possibly see the use of it- but lets be honest- anonymous, and port 25 hacked email is 99.9999% used for sending "Filthy Sluts take it from behind" emails...
And personally- I say close em down....
The timing of this shutdown is very suspicious.
Although they won`t admit it, I`m willing to bet
the REAL reason they shut down was due to pressure
from the US gov`t on the gov`t of Canada. Just as
with drug policy, when America says "Jump!", Canada jumps. When the US gov`t says "Sit!", Canada sits. Canada may as well be simply another
crown colony of US Empire. If it really WAS due
to economic pressure that ZKS shut the Freedom
network, they should have sought funding and let
it be known they were seeking investors. Freedom
net was a vert worthy and useful service of great
benefit to people the world over. Just because a
few terrorists MAY have also used it, doesn`t mean
that the entire system should now be made unavailable to the vast majority of law-abiding
people that had good, legitimate reasons for need-
ing to remain anonymous. Surely George Soros, EFF
and others concerned with privacy and freedom of speech could have drafted a plan to save the net
work IF that was the REAL reason for the sudden shutdown. I doubt that it is. Sad. Looks like the
terrorists have won another victory.
> Believe me, no one is more disappointed about > this than I am, but right now there simply isn't > enough market buy-in on the premium services to > justify the network's operating costs. :-(
If you are sooo much disappointed, why don't
you provide it for free although the networks
operating costs aren't justified?
http://@nonymouse.com/ provides Anonymity for
free since 1997!
Regards,
Alex
I loved this product, especially when it got stable in 2.2 It was only just starting to mature, and now they will focus on YET ANOTHER LOUSY firewall!
There are TONS of MUCH BETTER products out there.
I suggest to ZKS: Release the server software for free, like safeweb does with triangle boy.
Opensource the client, and let the net take care of it.
Maybe then it will be supported. I'm sure tons of Linux servers would love to help the web privacy world by running the daemon.