Slashdot Mirror
Infranet: Circumventing Web Censorship
edsonw writes "In this paper presented at the 11th USENIX Security
Symposium, Feamster et alii presented a method that provide access to censored sites while continuing to host normal uncensored content, using covert communication and steganographic techniques." The Infranet webpage has some more information. No public code yet, though.
Here I am writing To fill the twenty second gap of the posting
Post
Did I get it?
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
FP claimed for the CLIT.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Let's clone a steganosaurus and attack the RIAA!!
siri
Yay! Porn at work for everyone! Umm...I mean, yeah, I hate censorship. And stuff. *g*
Note to moderators : Do not moderate this post down, if you do then you support the editors stance on censorship and you support the end of free speech and support evil organisations like Microsoft, RIAA, MPAA and laws like the CBTBA and DMCA. Moderating this post will only waste mod points, and will not work!
Sign this petition, let your voice be heard!
Slashdot is using censorship! It is trying to eridicate free and open discussion like we know slashdot to be, it has the following RESTRICTIONS in place to Censor you
They claim they don't, but they do, wonder why their are so many trolls, crapflooders and lamers on slashdot, because they are fighting for their rights! Slashdot is trying to silence the trolls. Remove the filters, the trolls get bored, and slashdot will be troll free!
The "troll" moderation reason is fragmented and broken, why? Because they are trying to use an obsolete usenet term on a realtime discussion, "trolls" can cover a huge blanket of ideas.
Subnet banning, this bans a user unless they email jamie macarthy with their mp5ed ipids. This is unfair, and banning a subnet BLOCKS A WHOLE ISP SOMETIMES, and not that individual user! This can cause chaos! But real trolls use annoymous proxys to get around this so THIS JUST BANS LEGITMATE USERS! Also, they are trying to censor some anoymous proxies, mainly from countrys like africa, so this yet more DISCRIMINATION!
Pink page of Death, This censors people who use legitmate proxys or firewalls.
The Bitchslap! An unethical punishment which is applied to moderators who fight censorship against this site! In addition the Editors use their un-limited mod points to create a communist style censored discussion on slashdot!
But, the issue that concerens us the most, is the COMMENT QUOTA. A discrimatory system that stiffles discussion, cripples the community and will ultimateley destroy slashdot unless it is removed! Annoymous cowards are allowed only 10 posts a day! This is unethical! Users with negative karma only get two! That is DISCRIMINATION! How would you like to only be able to speak once a day, just because of the color of your skin. That would be racism, and slashdot is discrimitating on people just because of a negative number in a database! BOYCOTT SLASHDOT! LET THEM DIE!
We wan't these stupid useless restrictions REMOVED! This comment will be posted again and again until it does!
Inportant imformation for users
Boycott slashdot, they are pissing over their community, they are becoming like the RIAA and MICROSOFT! Do NOT TOLERATE THIS SHIT! Here are some real news for nerds sites. We don't need slashdot, slashdot deserves to die!
MSNBC
BBC NEWS
News.com
<
Linux daily news network
Weird news from dailyrotten.com
Trollaxor, news for trolls, they are real people too!
CNN.com
New york times (free registration required)
LINUX.com
News forge
K5
Mandrake forum
Toms hardware
The register
Kde dot news
The linux kernel Archives
Adequecy
Xfree86.org
T here are hundreds more, But this is where slashdot STEALS THE MAJORITY OF its "news" from.
Punish them, here are their emails, spam them, flame them goatse them!
Rob malda
Jamie Macarthy
ChrisD
Hemos
Micheal
Pudge
The others ones apperantly dont have an e-mail, probably because ROB MALDA IS PRETENDING HE IS JOHN KATZ.
Thank you for reading this, please feel free to repost this information, please reply to add your comments, fight slashdot and its CENSORSHIP
Don't forget to sign the petition!
censorship is bad
it makes baby jesus cry
this haiku misplaced
the blood has stopped pumping, and he's left to decay
the me that you know is now made up of wires
In order to enjoy the once free ("not as in beer but as in freedom) Internet, the average user has to sneak around like a criminal.
Information doesn't want to be free
Information just wants to be
hmm, a proxy server in hiding, eh? What will they think of next?
Seriously though, could the technology used to view the content, not be used by the very entity trying to prevent it's use to detect and block sites using the technology?
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
In today's world censorship is very important.
Why, just yesterday I started a new conspiracy theory based on information that should have been censored. But, it wasn't! Now my head is full of ideas that will just add to my slow slide into complete madness.
Thanks censors, you are too late to help me.
So which is it /. users? Are you in favor of free unrestricted speech on the internet or not? Here I see lots of support of censoring RIAA, but now you want freedom of access.
eTrade SUCKS
Interesting idea. It seems to be a standard proxy that attempts to make the encryption seem to be unencrypted data. The trick will be making it transparent to the user, but still having it protect the data (if everyone in China starts requesting just .png files, from just a few servers, it would be awfully suspicious).
I'd also imagine that the http requests could get awfully cluttered if they are encrypted into patterns. How will they avoid having the patterns be recognizable to interceptors?
It will be interesting to see what the system ends up looking like.
Concerning the slow death of the internet I am suprised that no major effort has been made to create a new layer and method of communication over the Internet that, through the use of a well written EULA and some pre-emptive patenting create a new tunneled Internet piggy-backing on the old Internet. THrough the use of a distributed network similar to Gnutella one could have, say unlimited space to create a site. Then clients on the network replicate through a protocol (EULA'ed and Patented with Encryption) the site to neighbors based on demand and requirments. I shouldb't be that hard for some of those closet geniuses out there. Then in the EULA prohibit commerical use of the protocol that way we can get back to what the Internet is for, free information exchange. I can even think of an efficent way to replicate the site. Every client on the network (say A---B---C----D) can access the page at it's home address. Then I maintains a cached copy in a PGP'esque format. (Lets say B makes a call to D) B Now contains an encrypted cache of B (Scripts and all, the new format lets assume compiles in scripts). A requests D but B has a copy so A only goes out and gets a key from D to decrypt B's contents. Then A and B could hash their data and split it. (I am using a linear diagram but in a star map you could see the advantage of the hashing). I mean come on it's fool-proof way to eliminate commericals on the net. Create the protocol and throw encryption into it (Gaining the DMCA as a layer of defense) and then patent it BEFORE the public launch) and write a solid EULA to prevent commerical use (unless they pay a 99.9999% royalty rate on the gross revenues!). Do it! you know you want to!
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
you could take this a step further and change not only the transmission system but also the user! :)
what if you trained yourself to read numbers?
no more slashdot at work, oh no just a spreadsheet
a lot of work? perhaps, but who would catch you?
here's a solution, parse censored websites as haikus!
how come when chinese
build wall damn mongolians
try to knock it down
Having mixed feelings? Everyone hates censoring, unless it suits us, right?
Or is it that we completely support censoring? Or completely against it?
Can there be a middle ground??
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Does this sort of use of circumvention measures constitute breaking the DMCA?
--
What short sigs we have -
One hundred and twenty chars!
Too short for haiku.
Tonight on CNN/Fox/ABC/The Muppet Show we investigate how Terrorists can send messages disguised as normal images that CANNOT BE TRACKED or DECODED by US Law Enforcement Officials. "This THREAT to our national security cannot be underestimates" Said DoD Spokesman Hugh Budget "We must develop a new stealth plan to combat this threat".
TERRORISTS, HIJACKERS, PEDATRICIANS and even normal school kids (cut to picture of 8 year old playing in a park) can access this information, but only the sick and depraved (4 months ago this would be a picture of bin Laden, now it will be Sadam) can decode its true meaning.
Noted Terrorist Sympathiser Prof D Encrypt said "Eh ? Its standard stuff thats been around for years, what the hell are you mumbling about" Professor "Death" as he is know to the low end students who got into Uni thanks to Daddies contacts, is noted for his outspoken views supporting terrorists. It was he who first said "Anthrax that'll probably be a US Citizen doing that" rather than pointing the finger at Iraq.
To be continued.....
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I have been looking for a way around the censorship on slashdot. Will it allow me to post more than twice a day here?
"using covert communication and steganographic techniques"
/. hof...
Good idea, but IMHO it will be expensive to implement, and then the question is who would really want it. Of course dont expect your office people to install it. Maybe certain organizations want it... and then also what garuntee is that it wont be made illegal under some god awful bill.
Till now it has been true that technology has always been a step ahead of censorship, but with the current state of laws, this wont be true for long.
I am positive that by the time a proper implemention comes out somebody will table the bill to ban it, then we will all cry hoarse in slashdot. The story will make to
Paranoia? Not exactly.. censorship is here to stay... and it is getting bigger.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
If I understand this correctly a public server (probably a public web site) needs to host the Infranet server bit to fetch the actual site the user wants.
What's stopping the 'censor' blocking access to servers that are known to run Infranet? If the user / client software can find out which servers support it, the censor can.
Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems pretty flawed to me.
I have quite a bit of experience with a few of the "censor" systems that exist due to my work in Infosec at the corporate level. I have to say that, based on my reading of the whitepaper, I'm uncertain that this will be a sufficient way to bypass most of the censorware that is widely deployed on (at least) corporate network gateways.
The problem here is that the "Infranet" software must talk to the responder directly in order for its steganographic stream to be understood. In the parlance of at least one censorware product, this type of thing would be classified as a "Proxy Avoidance System" and be blocked accordingly. This might be effective against keyword blocking due to the nature of the information being transmitted, but if used as a straight proxy bypass, most censorware products would only need to know where the responders are.
This method would be more difficult to detect than a straight proxy-through, but it still doesn't account for the fact that the "responders" must be known in some way to the transmitter. If a series of public responders is set up, it would only be a matter of time before those sites would be sewed up tighter than a drum by most "reputable" censorware companies' research teams.
As it is, it's not terribly difficult to bypass censorware if you have the ability to put something up on the outside to bounce off of. Nearly all of the production censorware that I see does absolutely nothing with HTTPS -- and the lax security of most firewall policies doesn't restrict the destination port of a standard HTTP/1.1 CONNECT request. With that available, give me any SSH server on the outside and I can get an encrypted session running to a proxy in a matter of minutes.
Come to think of it, I've never heard the people complaining about censorware's _limitations_, only about the limits that it places on them. The truth is that every one of them is imminently bypassable already. Why bother with steganographic communications unless you live in a place where even initiating encrypted communications would put you in the pokey?
READ AT YOUR OWN RISK:
Open Letter to America from a Canadian
Never mind that earth-friendly technology already exists to once and for all end dependence on oil, coal and nuclear energy from huge, out-of-control utilities and corporations. You would rather pay through the nose for your insecure comforts, wouldn't you America, and make others pay with their blood.
by W.R. McDougall
Go get your ten-billionth burger, America. Fatten your already fat asses with bacteria-and-hormone-ridden meat and do nothing as you sit stupefied before your mind-numbing television sets awaiting the next episode of sad families being humiliated on "Cops."
Dear America:
And so it has come to this. Your once-great nation has fallen into madness, an affliction of mass denial that brings shivers up the spines of millions outside your borders. Yours is a sick nation. But most of you carry on as though nothing at all is the matter.
Dark, evil operations run rampant in the secret corners of your government institutions. A dubiously constituted government pursues war at will anywhere on earth, discussing nuclear options that become points for cheerful chatter over lunch. Your military and intelligence agencies employ terrorist tactics around the globe even as they insist that such tactics are necessary in the fight against terrorism.
You have become a nation of monsters, America. Hypocrites. Murderers. Fools.
Your constitution is a shambles thanks to "national security" measures resulting from what might well be U.S.-government-sanctioned terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington D.C., covert provocations designed to justify a malevolent, poisonous, oil-based military economy.
Never mind that earth-friendly technology already exists to once and for all end dependence on oil, coal and nuclear energy from huge, out-of-control utilities and corporations. You would rather pay through the nose for your insecure comforts, wouldn't you America, and make others pay with their blood.
At the same time, you stand by as the Israelis' secular Zionists--whom you support through the supply of arms and money--slaughter untold numbers of innocents in the West Bank, then blame the Palestinians for bringing the terror upon themselves. (True, there are abominable Arab suicide bombers in Israel's midst. But are they not driven to madness and desperation by your infernal support of international terrorist politics?)
As I write these words, you support a nation run by a convicted murderer by the name of Ariel Sharon who with impunity is carrying out war crimes as cruel and horrendous as those of other sadistic tyrants in history. And you say, in your utter cynicism, 'When will these Palestinians bring this war to an end?'
You recklessly wage combat on other fronts, too. At home, your War on Drugs is a disastrous 30-year folly--a gigantic con game designed to benefit lethal cartels, corrupt politicians and menacing intelligence agencies across the planet.....
With your government's support, crooked multinationals like Monsanto buy up the world's water supplies, and take possession of the world's vegetation through Frankenstein technology already known to cause illness.
Does the FDA care about any of this? It does not. It has long been on the bandwagon to foist genetically altered food on the Guinea Pigs of the country--including every man, woman and child on America's increasingly toxic soil.
You are a nation of suckers, America, to be bled dry of your hard-earned pay through outrageous bank schemes, Wall Street rip-offs and fake government budget grabs. Your Pentagon cannot account for trillions in lost dollars.
Does this bother you? Not in the least.
Your whole economy is controlled by what is for the most part ravenous, international private banking interests in the form of The Federal Reserve, which with your government's consent leads you down the garden path to certain financial ruin thanks to a national debt you will never be able to repay.
How is it that private banks are responsible for issuing your currency? How is it that they are allowed to charge ridiculous interest rates on what they issue? By decree, this was supposed to be the responsibility of your government, which could create its own currency without charging interest.
Do you realize your congress could dismiss these banks in an instant if it so wished? But don't ever count on it. More important matters are pressing. The upcoming election needs investment.
These very same money men are the ones who, through unmonitored and unrepresentative world committees, are driving countries like Argentina into hopeless debt and social upheaval. These greedy overlords are creating strife and suffering on a scale too tragic for words in nation after nation. Just look at Africa.
They've got their sights on America, now, too; disrupting economic stability through so-called free trade initiatives and provisions for special favors and the endless flow of cash to corporate monstrosities like Enron.
Amid all this, where are those who are supposed to represent your interests, America? For the most part, your congressional representatives are nothing but swine gathering at the corporate troughs. Your president is a white-collar thug, a hypocrite who through his actions celebrates war, repression and greed even as he gives lip service to peace, freedom and justice.
George W. Bush deceives you daily, the war monger hiding behind a phony patriotism. He is an Enron buddy boy, a spoiled child lying in his teeth about his past and current dirty deeds.
Does he care about you America? Hardly. This is altogether obvious to those outside your borders who are politically aware and awake to the world around them.
You were never concerned about the disgraceful practices of George's ruthless father, either, a Bin-Laden cohort and friend to criminals and killers in global drug, oil and terrorist enterprises. Iran. Vietnam. El Salvador. Chile. Guatemala. Iraq. And on and on. The never-ending bully-boy story of blood, guns, drugs and money.
Does any of this matter? No, it's simply time to eat.
Go get your ten-billionth burger, America. Fatten your already fat asses with bacteria-and-hormone-ridden meat and do nothing as you sit stupefied before your mind-numbing television sets awaiting the next episode of sad families being humiliated on "Cops."
Few among you are the least bit concerned that no real investigation of 911 has taken place, that no serious investigation of the anthrax attacks is moving forward, that no authentic investigation of Enron, or the murder of one of its top executives, is underway.
How many of you give the slightest damn about the totalitarian measures your government is taking to keep its secret meetings, grubby files and treasonous activities from your eyes?....
When did you stop caring, America? Was it after your own FBI and intelligence agencies plotted the murder of President John F. Kennedy? Or is this just the raving lunacy of the conspiracy nut? What does your gut tell you, America? Is something a little amiss here?
Forget about it. Have some Pepto-Bismol.
Today, in futility, your own government goes to court against itself for information you are entitled to by law. But this is hardly deemed vital news in the community. It is a fleeting reference in an electronic sea of meaningless banter. For proof, just look to all the spineless wimps who constitute your mainstream news media.
Today, you excoriate, ridicule and ostracize the brave and true among you. Your best investigative journalists are fired from their jobs and ignored. Congress's few courageous souls are laughed at and dismissed out of hand as crackpots. The most honest and conscientious political leader in the country, Ralph Nader, is a powerless, near-invisible curiosity easily side-lined by hired goons.
America, you are a goddamn shame.
What law matters now in your despicable state? What justice? What truth?
When will you wake up?
If you had your druthers, you would right now gather your courage, take to the streets and march on Washington D.C in the millions. But I know you will do no such thing. The vast majority of you are spiritually, emotionally and intellectually dead.
As I write these words, I can only imagine what additional horrors your shadow government might be planning in what will surely be an attempt to justify militarism and totalitarianism on a universal scale. A nuclear explosion in one of your cities, perhaps? A massive bio-chemical attack?
Or perhaps it will be some Arab terrorist who finally commits the terrible deed, his last thought before death being the promises you made to him before you killed his family.
Mr. McDougall originally wrote this letter to the Washington Post, but that paper has not yet printed it.
Isn't there already something from a recent "Hacker Convention" (or something sounding more omninous) that can aid the user to circumvate state censorships ?
Sorry I don't remember exactly which "convention" is it, nor the name of the "stuff" (mebbe a program, mebbe a suggestion or an on-going project).
If anyone has more info, please post it here. Thanks !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
No public code yet, though
Oh, there IS software, you just can't see it...
Sure looks like UNISEX
1. Freenet (progressing at glacial speed) at www.freenetproject.org but very active with anonymous IRC, Frost (like Usenet), Freesites, etc.
2. Gnunet www.gnu.org
3. and finally cDc is coming out with an anonymous P2P network sometime this month. (at least they claim)
Are you ORAL?
First we just had the internet, then came intranets and extranets, now we have something called an infranet? Christ, what's next? endonet? perinet? epinet? ultranet? hypernet? Just not satisfied until we've used all the greek prefixes, are we?
Among those not mentioned (to my knowledge) are:
Peekabooty (http://sourceforge.net/projects/peekabooty/)
JAP - Just another proxy (web page is down, but you may be able to find the app out there)
Both of these apps create a local proxy which to my understanding fits the specs of the MIT project. My feeling is the more the merrier, as long as no spyware is added.
While it may be difficult to detect steganographic content in an image file, it is not that hard for a content filter to effectivly eliminate all steganographic content. In the case of China, all they need to do is apply their own steganographic data to each inbound image file.
Or, they could hold a copy of each image file the first time it is requested. Then, whenever the image is requested again they could compare the two. If the image files are not identical, then that is a clear sign of steganography, and they could then persue furthor investigation.
Come to think of it, the U.S. could do the same thing. I wonder if they are. It would certainly be an interesting way of feriting out potentuial terrists. Assuming that terrorists actualy use steganography.
There are some terms that need to be avoided and or discarded if we are to succeed at returning freedom to the Internet (and elsewhere).
First to go is the beloved and maligned 'hacker', we lost on that one, it's gone no matter what effort is used to returned the word to it's productive and wholesome origin. Using hacker is going to throw red flags in too many places to make it worth the risk of losing a fight that is about a lot more than words.
Lets substitute something harmless, instead of hack and hacker, make it repair and repairer.
other words some of the used in the infranet website are;
censor/ed, change to impair/ed
circumvention, to repair (don't used 'fix')
covert, to reliable.
Maybe some of you can see where I am headed.
The title for the Talks would change from:
Infranet:Circumventing Web Censorship and Surveillance to,
Infranet:Repairing Web Impairment and Data Leakage
For those who didn't get it yet, here is the point.
Our inside terms have spilled to the outside and been manipulated to the darkest of interpretations.
The inside terms have then been used to propagandise the public into accepting them, and then it gets codified into law.
Lets get out of our terms and sic the thought police on themselves by being more descriptive, and not letting them play us with our own words.
I believe what it lacks most is some kind of "FreeZilla" browser - an all-encompassing package with a friendly, known interface. The package should install Freenet infrastructure and all tools necessary for publication and browsing.
I believe that something like this is in place Freenet would be ready for a population explosion...
and finally cDc is coming out with an anonymous P2P network sometime this month. (at least they claim)
Yeah that's peekabooty at http://sourceforge.net/projects/peekabooty
IANAL - UORAL
Which are used to protect copyrighted content.
Generally, they have to be able to argue that you broke a copy protection system, even lame copy-protection systems (Adobe's ROT13 for EBooks), or copy-protection systems that do little to prevent copying (DVD-CSS), but rather limit playback and conversion to other formats.
I can understand why one would think the DMCA's anti-circumvention section applies too all forms of circumvention giving the way the law has been abused (Threatening Academics with Lawsuits), but it really only applies to copy protection systems.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
Can you imagine a #438 of Slashdot autoresponses?
The "stuff" is called Peek-A-Booty.
The key to success for a scheme like this would be for responder websites to be not just inocuous, but also very popular in their own right. Since by design you have to block ALL traffic from the responder to stop the Infranet traffic, you'd get a huge outcry from the user base. Plus these sites have very dynamic content, so seeing the same URL come across with different content would not in itself be suspicious.
In the case of corporate proxy filtering, news and financial sites like CNN and the Wall Street Journal would be useful. In the case of foreign country censorship, you'd have to use non-news sites because objective reporting is exactly what they're trying to block.
--I have just struggled through this intellectually masturbatory "paper" on how to "help" oppressed peoples. It's a complete load of crap. It's the usual drivel put forth by people who get most of their rent money from the public tit some how. In other words, a waste of electrons.
The following is an alternative academic exercise that addresses these problems, purely for speculative and amusement purposes.
None of this overly complex shaking scared geek in front of a terminal stuff is needed to have a free uncensored internet in china or saudi arabia, etc. Nope, not at all, the solution is easy, use "low tech" techniques against "high tech" oppression in a "denial of oppression attack", or DOOA..
I'll explain.
When people are overly oppressed, they do this thing called "a righteous revolution", or R2. When they see an oppressive fatcat, po-leece man, military rapist murdering goon, lying dictator politician, corrupt bureaucrat, state co-opted lying propoganda spewing "news" reporter etc, they off them. You use a shovel, a club, a molotov, a hammer, a brick, an old monitor or printer,etc,etc etc. All low tech devices that are readily at hand, available in any home, farm, road, alley, factory, office, etc and effective. When the closest member of the goon class has had his head bashed in, you then take his gun,radio, ID, money, etc, then go shoot and/or bash more goons, and so on, and so forth. There are thousands of variations to these DDOA techniques, but that is a good overview. As the successful low tech "justice serving" spreads, more oppressed people join into the DOOA.
This technique, using DDOA, once it is universal across an oppressed geographical area, is called WADJ or "wide area distributed justice". Everyone who is oppressed acts as as a "server" LAGB, ie, a "local area goon basher" who "serves" justice to the nearest "client" goon oppressor who receives what is now being served to him. There is no sneaking around required, other than the first wave of justice serving, nothing stealthy about it, you just "do it" if you are in an oppressed area. If you don't have the smarts or balls to do it, tuff titty, you will remain oppressed, forever and ever, no matter how many seekrit tunnelling steagonagraphical groovy linux apps you have.
Usually how this works is that most people fully know they are being oppressed, without finding out about it on the internet. Being "notified" you are being oppressed on the internet is at best a waste of bandwith, at worst, counts as "doing mostly nothing" about your problems in the local oppressed area. And the ones outside the oppressed area would be a lot more helpful, instead of sitting in front of terminals sending off cute pix embedded in other pics or whatnot, by smuggling arms into the oppressed people, or helping them out by actually joining into the DDOA's by bashing some of those folks goons when said are outside their own goon country and hob knobbing with other rich fatcat oppressive goons over in the so called "free" western nations. These goon dictators and their entourages rarely stay at home over in saudichinaoppressedistan, they usually travel to like NYC, London, LA, paris, etc, where they 'get away with" being rich oppressive goons as they go out to eat and visit their bankers, etc, hoist a few with western demi goons, and etc, etc.. They can be bashed outside of their own countries as well, theoretically speaking.
Oppressed people only have to bash one goon apiece, that's it, end of problems. There are usually a lot more oppressed people in any given area than oppressors. Goons get bashed, they are now dev/null, you go about your business on the internet at your leisure then.
This "code" is released under the GPGB license, the 'general purpose goon bashing" licence, and may be freely used, modified, re-released, etc as any oppressed person sees fit, subject to local laws and regulations, and sum totality of desire to not be an oppressed professional victim,and sum totality of desire to use real world techniques for real world problems, not use video games against reality. Hint-the latter is called "nuts" or "insane", and has never proven effective against heinous oppressors..
I'm always surprised that the freedom thing comes up in these discussions. Look at the web page that this thing links to. It starts out mentioning that many "countries and companies" [sic] "routinely apply blocking".
.mil and .k12.state.us have given up any expectation of effective censorship, for the good or for the bad. The amount of porn spams hitting my company from .mil or k12 institutions is just shocking, and maybe corporations should follow the lead of the government in just doing away with firewalls and let Al Qaida and the spammers sort it all out through economic darwinism.
Uh huh. And then, in the footnotes you'll find the literature references which almost exclusively point to repressive regimes.
It's pretty rare that you see privacy advocates point to blocking measures being used to increase privacy. In the case of corporations, that includes privacy w.r.t. corporate secrets, as well as privacy w.r.t. the internal infrastructure (think viruses, worms, JavaScript "window.open" bombs, etc).
For some reason, it never occurs to some privacy advocates that even at the individual level, blocking can be beneficial.
The most interesting discussion, on how democratic controls should be applied to the filtering, is rarely held.
I'm stuck in corporate hell. If dozens of users beat down my door with requests to block porn spam, then I'm not just legally justified in blocking the shit, but also morally.
It's rare that people are actually offended by it. More often than not, it's just because they lose work because they open an e-mail, and their system just locks up under the load caused by all the window.opens.
I'm fully aware that some corporate sysadmins are moralistic dorks. But I'm quite offended by the insinuation that by blocking certain web sites I'm somehow taking away my users $DEITY given rights to view certain information crucial to their civil rights.
Oh well. All evidence points to the conclusion that
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
What I was saying is that there should be one instaler, downloadable as freenet.zip, freenet.rpm and freenet.tgz that would install everything needed for Freenet access and configure the user browser to use it.
I think that to leave the development stage and enter the userbase sphere, Freenet will need to be not only stable, fast and secure, it will need to be easy to install and use too.
As far as I'm concerned censors need to be lined up and mass exacuted.. Damn it I going to get myself shot at again. Ok.. Forget what I just wrote!