Using P2P To Make Gov't Documents Easy To Find

Hrm... by canwaf · 2004-07-19 23:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

Wouldn't "exposing secretive inner workings" make the US government want to shut down p2p even more?

Re:Hrm... by Erpo · 2004-07-19 23:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

Wouldn't "exposing secretive inner workings" make the US government want to shut down p2p even more?

Of course, but it's a lot easier for your elected representative to read "We're legislating against p2p networks to stop criminals from stealing music," off of a 3x5 card given to them by the RIAA than it is to say, "Here in D.C. we're doing things we're afraid you might find out about."
Re:Hrm... by darkonc · 2004-07-20 00:24 · Score: 1

Hell, this site could possibly be the real reason why they're looking at putting this law in place! They might be tired of brown-noseing the music industry, but stopping something like this might be enough to get them going again.
Hopefully, we can get the courts to strike down this law as banning a type of speech.

--
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Re:Hrm... by Otter · 2004-07-20 00:40 · Score: 0

Wouldn't "exposing secretive inner workings" make the US government want to shut down p2p even more?
No, in the sense that nothing "secret" is actually being exposed here. Yes, in that in that tying yet another juvenile bit of Sticking It To The Man posturing to P2P certainly reinforces the stereotypes about the technology.
In fact, that seems to be exactly what's going on here, as FTP or HTTP would be a far more sensible way of doing this.

--
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Re:Hrm... by Evil+Adrian · 2004-07-20 01:01 · Score: 2, Interesting

Um, why can't you just post stuff to a web site? Why do you need p2p to post documents?

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evil adrian
Re:Hrm... by torpor · 2004-07-20 01:16 · Score: 5, Insightful

because that web site can be taken down.

because it can be altered.

we have seen many, many examples of the U.S. gov't altering published data to support political motivation.

using p2p, where there is -no one single point of control- would actually be a far more Democracy-supporting protocol than FTP or HTTP, both of which are like the "fascist dicatorships of transfer protocols"...

--
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Re:Hrm... by HaloZero · 2004-07-20 01:24 · Score: 1

You don't. It sounds like a horrible idea - multiple versions of multiple documents in the wild.

CVS sounds like a much better idea.

--
Informatus Technologicus
Re:Hrm... by Planesdragon · 2004-07-20 01:47 · Score: 1

we have seen many, many examples of the U.S. gov't altering published data to support political motivation.

Name one instance where a private party altered its website against its wishes due to the U.S. Gov't for political reasons.
Re:Hrm... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-20 02:12 · Score: 0

Isn't that like saying "Name one instance where an individual has been dissapeared?" It certainly happens, but by it's very nature it's pretty damn difficult to prove.
Re:Hrm... by IAR80 · 2004-07-20 03:07 · Score: 1

sharereactor.com

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http://ebgp.net/ccc/
Re:Hrm... by Planesdragon · 2004-07-20 03:45 · Score: 1

1: not the US.

2: Not political.

Try again.
Re:Hrm... by Deagol · 2004-07-20 05:10 · Score: 1

There was a show on NPR (maybe "Science Friday" or "Talk of the Nation") where there was a debate on sex-ed in public schools. There was some contention between 2 of the guests about the CDC changing the statistics about condom failure, allegedly to support a political agenda.
It's not a private site, but I believe the root of this thread had to do with the government altering its own public data on a whim.

--
Method of processing duck feet
Re:Hrm... by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2004-07-20 06:14 · Score: 1

Yep- but it came with a disclaimer "when used properly". Now if you can tell me how horny teenagers can use a condom more than 60% properly, you'll have the answer to why condoms are considered 98% effective but still fail to prevent pregnancy 40% of the time.

--
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Re:Hrm... by DahGhostfacedFiddlah · 2004-07-20 06:23 · Score: 5, Funny

FTP or HTTP, both of which are like the "fascist dicatorships of transfer protocols"...

What did you think FTP stood for?

--
Last post!
Re:Hrm... by sycotic · 2004-07-20 07:55 · Score: 1

rotfl, that made my day :)

--
-- If I were a fish, I'd be wet
Re:Hrm... by tropavantgarde · 2004-07-20 16:08 · Score: 1

>>because that web site can be taken down. >>because it can be altered. But chances are you can still access the unaltered/still existent document using Wayback, unless the gov actually took the trouble to use a Robots.txt exclusion file -- which so far only the FBI has (because you know how tough it is to upload that robots.txt exclusion file. You might need an IQ over 68).

--
--A witty sig proves nothing.--
Re:Hrm... by torpor · 2004-07-20 21:06 · Score: 1

But chances are you can still access the unaltered/still existent document using Wayback

*sigh* Orwell would be proud.

--
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --

Ok... by nuclear305 · 2004-07-19 23:42 · Score: 3, Interesting

"For once, we have a concrete example to point to when citing the merits of P2P."

Maybe, but this also gives the government one more reason as to why P2P is evil and should be banned, don't you think?

Re:Ok... by hookedup · 2004-07-19 23:57 · Score: 1

Exaclty what I thought, this gives the anti-p2p crowd some more ammo to use when trying to get legislation passed..
Re:Ok... by dave1791 · 2004-07-20 00:13 · Score: 1

It does not give ammo; quite the opposite, but it would still give politicos MORE reason to want to do away with p2p. They are not going to say, "we don't like you trading government documents that are supposed to be public domain anyway". That won't cut it, at least in public. But I think this could make it more fashonable to talk about the evils of downloading music and that those pirate netweoks should be closed.
Re:Ok... by fuzzix · 2004-07-20 00:14 · Score: 3, Insightful

I don't think "For once" is a fair phrase myself. I have been using peer-to-peer technology for a few years now legitimately.

I use bittorrent to download Linux ISOs. I use ED2K to get community films and videos (Like the Your Sinclair Rock'n'Roll Years for example.) Even my home network could be described as peer to peer as I have no server for 4 client machines.

All legitimate uses, no "For once" required.
Re:Ok... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-20 00:20 · Score: 0

thank you good sir! I'll have to check that account when I get home, no pop3 at work..
Re:Ok... by TyrranzzX · 2004-07-20 00:43 · Score: 2, Informative

Peer to peer networks often remind me of one of my favorite bible verses (hey, it may be corny but :P);

"Rev.6: 2 And I saw, and behold, a white horse; and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him and he went forth conquering and to conquer. "

That verse reminds me of peer to peer networks because the white horse represents truth and purity and that truth goes forth and conquers unstoppably; once a file hits a peer to peer network, and a few people find out and begin telling their friends, there's no stopping it. I put out an image file that was named to spread a year ago, and stopped sharing it about 4 or so months ago; it's still on gnutella on around 500 hosts last I checked. Just look at what happened to diebold's emails, heh. You can STILL find them on gnutella.

Once a government file hits the network, and it gets posted in a news story, you can kiss your control of that information goodbye. The entertaining part is that the governemnts can't stop it; isp's have tried, colleges have tried, I'v even seen powerpoints of companies that want to stop p2p traffic on their network but can't and try to talk it over with their people to find a way to do so.

--

Candy-Coated Knowledge
Re:Ok... by torpor · 2004-07-20 01:18 · Score: 2, Insightful

it also exposes their intentions... if p2p is proven to be an effective, democratic process for publishing government documents, and yet some right-wing republican fascist attack squad tries to pass a bill that outlaws all p2p use, forever (lest the terrorists attack), then it really truly exposes the intention of that party to confuscate and continue to keep government from answering for its responsibility to The People.

quick, everyone, get behind this effort to p2p'ize gov't documents and the public record. to fail to do so would be to let the Terrorist-Haters win...

--
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Re:Ok... by adam+mcmaster · 2004-07-20 01:43 · Score: 2, Insightful

Maybe, but this also gives the government one more reason as to why P2P is evil and should be banned, don't you think?

Exactly, how long do you think it'll be before we hear about 'terrorists' trading secret government documents over P2P?
Re:Ok... by Oddly_Drac · 2004-07-20 02:06 · Score: 2, Funny

"Maybe, but this also gives the government one more reason as to why P2P is evil and should be banned, don't you think?"

Yeah, time to finally close down that 'freedom of speech' loophole that the fags and pinkos have been hiding behind all these years.

--
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
Re:Ok... by doodlelogic · 2004-07-20 03:22 · Score: 1

"For once, we have a concrete example to point to when citing the merits of P2P."

Maybe, but this also gives the government one more reason as to why P2P is evil and should be banned, don't you think?
While P2P is clearly not "evil" as of itself, it is easy to see how such a network providing and disseminating information on governments and politicians could easily be abused. Because the decentralised structure of the network makes it nigh-on impossible to remove interesting reads (true or false) from the network, it could easily find itself being used for any of the following purposes:

1 Dissemination of information that could endanger the lives of individuals. Note this is not just a terrorist threat. If, say, details of suspected but not convicted criminals for the more emotionally sensitive crimes were released, vigilantes could pop up. Also say details such as the planned movements and security patrols for politicians or others at risk such as Salman Rushdie.

2 Blackmail. Which is more likely to be quickly disseminated a (false) story or its retraction?

3 Fraud. By doctoring official looking documents in favour of one or another commercial interests. Unrealistic? Think Enron.

I would treat such a network with great suspicion and would prefer simply to improve searching capabilities of existing websites.
Re:Ok... by thomas.galvin · 2004-07-20 07:42 · Score: 1

Peer to peer networks often remind me of one of my favorite bible verses (hey, it may be corny but :P);

"Rev.6: 2 And I saw, and behold, a white horse; and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him and he went forth conquering and to conquer. "

That verse reminds me of peer to peer networks because the white horse represents truth and purity and that truth goes forth and conquers unstoppably...

Not to be pendantic, but the "White Rider" is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and is at least a demon, and at worst, the Anti-Christ. Although he appears altruistic, he subjugates the world under a false religion and government. Not exactly the image we want to be portraying...

--
Thomas Galvin
Re:Ok... by TyrranzzX · 2004-07-20 23:54 · Score: 1

Actually, under my understanding of it, it represents the unstoppable telling of gods truth; of course the antichrist is going to get in on that and try to sell people on other lies. Just look at conspiracy theorist websites, I'v never seen a more paranoid croud of people in my life.

If the internet were truely a demon, then why can I get unedited versions of the bible off of it? Because the antichrist doesn't control it, people do.

--

Candy-Coated Knowledge
Re:Ok... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-21 05:53 · Score: 0

Actually, there are as many interpretations of the four horsemen as there are people. It is even possible that they are representations of Christ.

I'll bet Bush. by solarmist · 2004-07-19 23:43 · Score: 0, Flamebait

If Bush ever finds this website I'll bet he has the Department of Homeland Security shut it down on the grounds that terrorists could possibly thinking about consider using it for terrorism.

--
"Curiouser and Curiouser" - Alice

Bittorrent by kyhwana · 2004-07-19 23:46 · Score: 2, Interesting

Hmm, there's no bittorrent tracker/seed.
Does anyone have a tracker/.torrent of all the stuff? Or would be willing to host one..

--
My email addy? should be easy enough.

Re:Bittorrent by Beetle+B. · 2004-07-21 12:52 · Score: 1

The owner of the Web site posted in an earlier thread. He hopes to have Bittorrent files ready by the end of the week.

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Beetle B.

Not so much secret as hard to find by Mant · 2004-07-19 23:48 · Score: 5, Informative

The site doesn't actually link to anything secret, it is all available to the public. What it does do is make it very easy to find, particulalry compared to getting this stuff of government websites.

Re:Not so much secret as hard to find by Threni · 2004-07-20 00:14 · Score: 1

Isn't it easier to get stuff from, say, www.Cryptome.org?

What does it matter...? by Glock27 · 2004-07-19 23:49 · Score: 4, Informative

When the government can use reasons like this to avoid releasing the data in the first place.

The mind boggles...

By the way, isn't this type of thing the raison d'etre for Freenet - how many Freenet nodes are up these days? Any DHS visits to Freenet node operators/sites?

--
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait

Re:What does it matter...? by Bendy+Chief · 2004-07-20 00:31 · Score: 4, Funny

Sounds to me like the agency was doing its job admirably when it wrote that database:

"This database will self-destruct in five seconds..."

Mr. Phelps would be proud.

Typical US overly high-tech solution... by iapetus · 2004-07-19 23:49 · Score: 4, Funny

Over here in the UK, the government uses the more reliable low-tech approach of real paper documents available from laybys to spread information about its secret inner workings.

--
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.

National security vs. P2P. by Confused · 2004-07-19 23:49 · Score: 4, Interesting

I'm certain, that as soon as the first secret or confidential documents appear on the network, this will be used as pretext to apply all kind of national security and anti-terrorist laws to the network.

Then we'll see, how anonymous, secure and resilient the P2P-network really is.

As a whole, the concept is interesting, as much as watching mice baiting a cat.

Re:National security vs. P2P. by mwood · 2004-07-20 00:52 · Score: 2, Insightful

"Pretext?" As in, "I'm certain that as soon as someone drags a passerby into an alley and whacks him in the head with a brick, this will be used as a pretext to apply all kinds of anti-mugging laws to the city streets?"

As in, "as soon as somebody uses the network to commit a crime, the police will feel moved to enforce the laws they swore to uphold?"
Re:National security vs. P2P. by Steve+B · 2004-07-20 01:14 · Score: 2, Insightful

Er, no, more in the sense of "as soon as some criminal finds it easier to commit armed robbery with a gun rather than a knife, people will use it as a pretext for more gun control".
The basic issue is that laws directed at inanimate objects rather than at specific behavior are generally a bad idea.

--
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Re:National security vs. P2P. by mwood · 2004-07-20 01:51 · Score: 1

I see what you mean. Some of our hired help in D.C. are lazy and want to just ban the tools rather than train people to use them responsibly. Fortunately a number of contracts are expiring and there's a job fair coming up in November. :-]
Re:National security vs. P2P. by Atzanteol · 2004-07-20 02:00 · Score: 1

The basic issue is that laws directed at inanimate objects rather than at specific behavior are generally a bad idea.

Like the way you put that. Sums up many bad laws very nicely. "But *I* didn't kill anybody, the *gun* did!"

--
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"

- Charles Darwin
Re:National security vs. P2P. by StressedEd · 2004-07-20 02:35 · Score: 1

the *gun* did!

The bullet surely? Maybe that's it. Don't ban guns, ban bullets! Genius!!! :-/

--
Be nice to people on the way up. You will meet them again on your way down!
Re:National security vs. P2P. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-20 03:31 · Score: 0

Surely this would have already happened, unless you mean those Majestic 12 documents I got off p2p aren't real ????
Re:National security vs. P2P. by BlueStrat · 2004-07-20 06:26 · Score: 1

"Fortunately a number of contracts are expiring and there's a job fair coming up in November. :-]"

Unfortunately, the proposed replacements are enough alike that this (and most other things) won't change. (Meet the new boss, same as the old boss-The Who)

Strat

--
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Re:National security vs. P2P. by chrwei · 2004-07-20 06:52 · Score: 1

anonymous, secure and resilient the P2P-network really is.

anonymous? they send youy IP to everyone, not anonymous.

secure? no encryption, no auth, where's the secure?

resilient? any one person can screw up a p2p net by continuoisly introducing a bunch of falsely named douments.

I don't get it.

--
- Disclaimer: Information in this post deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
Re:National security vs. P2P. by commodoresloat · 2004-07-20 11:24 · Score: 1

And yet, p2p is also arguably a great benefit for national security, at least insofar as such security is improved by access to information.
(The real problem, of course, is those in charge of national security actually using the information they have access to, as is well established by examples in the excellent book Imperial Hubris with regard to US government actions in the war on terrorism.)
Re:National security vs. P2P. by tropavantgarde · 2004-07-20 16:21 · Score: 1

>As in, "as soon as somebody uses the network to
>commit a crime, the police will feel moved to
>enforce the laws they swore to uphold?"
Er...not quite. More like "as soon as the government can find some oddball teenage radical infatuated with anarchism checking out some documents on the P2P network that they'd rather he not see, they'll publish a few nice long articles in Time and Newsweek with a picture of a social-misfit-in-a-black-trenchcoat-sitting-at-his -computer under headlines like "Domestic Terrorism Hits Home: What Your Child *Really* Uses Kazaa For" and "America's Teens: The Unlikely Terrorists."

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--A witty sig proves nothing.--

um... by AmaDaden · 2004-07-19 23:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

" For once, we have a concrete example to point to when citing the merits of P2P."

Um...What about Bittorrent? Last time I checked it was the best way to download large files like Linux distros. Plus it makes it better to have more people downloading not worse, a big problem for huge servers with popular files. I can remember it taking FOREVER to get my first fresh Linux dostro downloaded

Re:um... by po_boy · 2004-07-20 01:43 · Score: 3, Funny

...my first fresh Linux dostro downloaded

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Another "i" in "distribution" finally succumbed to the temptation of becoming an "o". I knew that once "distri" became "distro" we were on a slippery slope to destruction. Pretty soon, all we'll have left are "dostrobutoons". Mark this day.
Re:um... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-20 06:09 · Score: 0

It's one of those laws of entropy... which is the same reason that 1's slowly become 0's over time (less energy required).

Attract the wrong kind of attention... by syrinje · 2004-07-19 23:53 · Score: 3, Funny

Having gone through a gifted infancy, a troubled toddlerdom and an uncertain childhood, p2p is now officially adolescent. The kind of testosterone-driven head-butting that this represents cannot be accounted for in any other way. This is a case of nose-thumbing while jumping up and down screaming "I dare ya, nyaah na na nyaah na" to a Confirmed Texan(TM) who roams a mean praire...

I am guessing this is one site that will have reason to be thankful for being ./ed.

--
See that long UID - that's what you get for lurking too long

Re:Attract the wrong kind of attention... by untaken_name · 2004-07-20 00:07 · Score: 1

It's amazing that all of you people think Bush is somehow sitting around in the White House in a ten-gallon hat and Deputy Dawg underoos scheming to take out your favorite thing. It's just not likely, people. I doubt President Bush thinks about or cares about P2P programs these days. You know, what with tiny things like war and re-election campaigns and stuff, I'm sure he has time to make it harder for you to get Brittney Aguilerra mp3s. (Don't bother correcting me on the name I used. That's my generic term for shitpop.)

--
http://xkcd.com/386/
Re:Attract the wrong kind of attention... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-20 07:53 · Score: 0

shitpop, LOL. I love that. Glad you didn't copyright it :)
Re:Attract the wrong kind of attention... by untaken_name · 2004-07-20 09:56 · Score: 1

Ehehehe. I bequeath the term 'shitpop' to the internet. Enjoy!

--
http://xkcd.com/386/

flaw by __aahlyu4518 · 2004-07-19 23:57 · Score: 4, Interesting

If people download these documents from kazaa or some other p2p network, who is to tell if the information in these documents hasn't been tampered with ? For fun or evil...

You can get weird stories into this world this way.

Re:flaw by alex_ware · 2004-07-20 00:06 · Score: 3, Informative

with bittorent an MD5 sum of the file is held on each peer and if one doesnt add up he is a bad peer stoping tampering

--
If you have nothing useful to say post as AC.
Re:flaw by Simon+(S2) · 2004-07-20 00:08 · Score: 1

If people download these documents from kazaa or some other p2p network, who is to tell if the information in these documents hasn't been tampered with ?

MD5 exists, and can easily be integrated in any p2p client.

--
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
Re:flaw by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-20 00:13 · Score: 2, Insightful

If people download these documents from kazaa or some other p2p network, who is to tell if the information in these documents hasn't been tampered with ? For fun or evil... ...which is why the outragedmoderates.org site gives explicit instructions to search for their username and download those files (in pdf form), and they only guarantee the accuracy of files hosted by them.

How can you judge if documents have been tampered with? Take a random sampling and find the originals (all are public documents) and compare.

Frankly, this is no more insecure than trusting everything Fox News has to say.
Re:flaw by __aahlyu4518 · 2004-07-20 00:14 · Score: 1

ok... so I take a document, modify it anyway I want, make an md5 for it.

There's a document that has the same name as the original, AND there exists a MD5sum for it to check against.

A better solution would be to have a PGP signed document. But then again... Almost no Joe Average uses PGP or GPG... so no one checks the source of the document.
Re:flaw by Threni · 2004-07-20 00:32 · Score: 1

Uh huh, and in the case of 'government secrets', where do you look for an accurate MD5 checksum? Also, are there actually any clients out there which use MD5 yet? It's a good idea, in principle, but it's certainly not present in either Soulseek or Kazaalite.
Re:flaw by __aahlyu4518 · 2004-07-20 00:35 · Score: 1

True... but to many people have the tendency to trust everything and everyone without checking what it is (examples? how many people you know open attachments from unknown sources on a windows machine?, how many people have spyware installed with some application because they never checked if the software is 'clean'?)

So even though it IS possible to deliver documents that are 'original' and check for it... that doesn't mean that people actually pay attention.
Re:flaw by Skavookie · 2004-07-20 01:35 · Score: 1

These people are not likely to be the ones who are interested in such documents in the first place :)
Re:flaw by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-20 01:52 · Score: 0

If people download these documents from kazaa or some other p2p network, who is to tell if the information in these documents hasn't been tampered with ? For fun or evil...

If a site you trust for whatever reason provides a link with a hash of the file you are downloading then your P2P client will tell you excactly that. This trick is avaiable in edonkey and gnutalla. Bittorent and freenet have it by design and even kazaa can be hacked to do it(sig2dat). It is great to think that software developers care so much for the integrity of our mp3, movie and porn files... and democratic process ofcourse ;-)

You can get weird stories into this world this way.

You don`t need P2P files for weird stories. I was taping my windows shut all day, turns out the UN didn`t receive an anonymous letter detailing plans for a terrorist attack. That was just the interior minister talking shit. (Hoe voorkom je nou zo`n aanslag? Goed flossen!) He had taken a question by a tv station about this letter so serious he ended up acknowledging the excistence of the letter... Probably in an attampt to show the goverment was taking serious all evidence that led to the terror warning.

Also, I was reading this paper by some student somewhere about saddam husein and his chemical and biological weapons. I didn`t trust the paper, I mean what does a student know about these things? Well he knew enough apprently, his paper got "integrated" into a british goverment file and rubber stamped with the joint intelligence commity sign of approval. It even came with extra nuclear weapons "evidence", cool satalite pictures of saddam`s palaces, a handy guide comparing said palaces to buckingham palice in size (which may be a hint what this war I have been hearing from is really about, size does apparantly matter ;-) and last but not least a 45 minute bonus analyses of saddam command control and comm`s capabilities for said weapons... boy was I thrilled. You can think of these stories what you want but they are without doubt, weird...
Re:flaw by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-20 03:32 · Score: 0

are there actually any clients out there which use MD5 yet ?

afaik edonkey and gnutella are both based on a MD5 hashing system

This Will Never Work by deutschemonte · 2004-07-19 23:59 · Score: 1

Lately the government has been reclassifying documents that have been previously declassified.

I don't think they would support this and may even attempt to quash it because it would remove the controls the government has over their own information.

Oh the times we live in.

--
The preceding message was based on actual events. Only the names, locations and events have been changed.

Re:This Will Never Work by Denyer · 2004-07-20 00:22 · Score: 1

The thing to remember is that it isn't their own information. Governments are transitory... and then there's that whole "elected by and responsible to the people" thing. In theory at least.

--
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
Re:This Will Never Work by mwood · 2004-07-20 01:02 · Score: 2, Insightful

Exactly. It's not "their own information" because there is no "they". It's *our* own information; we just hired some people to take care of it for us. (Yes, I do remember that there's a world outside of the U.S. borders, but this story ain't about you.)

If some of our hirelings sometimes act as if they don't see things that way, all the more reason for the rest of us to make sure that we act as though we do.
Re:This Will Never Work by Analogy+Man · 2004-07-20 01:50 · Score: 1

There are few things in this world that make LESS sense than classifying something after it has been released in the public domain.
Unless what you are trying to do is manipulate public opinion and spin the "liberal media".
Remember when Bush said Lay was a good man?...remember that he was one of the gang on Cheney's little energy task force?
In the short term this cynical manipulation of information may pay off in November, but in the long haul I do not think historians will paint a pretty picture of this administration 20...50...100 years down the road. Historian researchers have access to old Russian documents down to Stalin's love letters. Maybe this administration wants to out fascist him? Yikes!

--
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Re:This Will Never Work by pyrrhonist · 2004-07-20 07:25 · Score: 1

Historian researchers have access to old Russian documents down to Stalin's love letters. Maybe this administration wants to out fascist him? Yikes!
That would require killing more than 22 million citizens. I don't see that as a possibility.

--
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.

Concrete examples? by erroneus · 2004-07-19 23:59 · Score: 3, Informative

You're kidding right? How about software distribution? Even though there is lots of software being distributed that shouldn't be, there is a lot of free software out there that is perfectly okay to share that way. Many people get their latest [favorite_linux_distro] ISO images this way. It's very legitimate and has been going on long enough to show it's not an exception to the rule at all.

Maybe the poster didn't think it through when he made the assertion, "For once, we have a concrete example to point to..." P2P is quite legitimate.

Re:Concrete examples? by argent · 2004-07-20 00:06 · Score: 1

I wouldn't download software from a P2P network.

Too easy for some crackpot to put up a compromised copy, wait a while, then sell his new spamming network to Ralsky or someone like him.
Re:Concrete examples? by fuzzix · 2004-07-20 00:23 · Score: 1

Too easy for some crackpot to put up a compromised copy, wait a while, then sell his new spamming network to Ralsky or someone like him

Not easy at all. He'd have to sort out a tracker, have a decent amount of bandwidth to get seeds out there and get his md5 sums and torrents onto a trusted source. That's apart from creating a version of a Linux distro with a spyware/spamming component that nobody will notice. How many slackware users do you know who don't notice massive increases in processing or traffic?

If you don't go to official sources for your distro you take this very small risk, but then why would you be getting your distro from ED2K or suprnova? There are legitimate, free sources!
Re:Concrete examples? by Mongoose+Disciple · 2004-07-20 01:05 · Score: 1

Actually, I think the poster had it right.

Sure, Linux distros and similar large software downloads is something you can point out as a legitimate use of p2p to sell the idea... to geeks. You don't need to sell p2p's legitimacy to geeks, though. That's preaching to the choir. You need to sell it to legislators. For that purpose, saying "Here, it helps the government do something it needs to do cheaper, easier, and better!" might be effective in ways that the software distribution example never could be.
Re:Concrete examples? by argent · 2004-07-20 01:32 · Score: 1

For a Linux distro, it's not a large risk, I'll grant you. Slackware users can be expected to pay a little attention to what their computer's doing.

That doesn't generalise to more commonplace software, though.
Re:Concrete examples? by fuzzix · 2004-07-20 05:19 · Score: 1

Well, you'd want to be a right nut to trust software from most nets. BitTorrent tends to be used more legitimately than, say, Kazaa or ED2K.

You takes your chances, I suppose but I don't get my tarballs from p2p anyway :)
Re:Concrete examples? by BlueStrat · 2004-07-20 06:36 · Score: 2, Insightful

"Many people get their latest [favorite_linux_distro] ISO images this way. It's very legitimate and has been going on long enough to show it's not an exception to the rule at all."

Actually, it may be viewed by legislators brib^H^H^H^Hlobbied by certain competitors of linux to be another reason to try to outlaw P2P.

Strat

--
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Re:Concrete examples? by aardvarkjoe · 2004-07-29 07:33 · Score: 1

Sure, Linux distros and similar large software downloads is something you can point out as a legitimate use of p2p to sell the idea... to geeks.
On several occasions, I've seen game demos being distributed by BitTorrent -- that's definitely within the crowd of regular people. Although I haven't seen much in the way of legitimate music and video distributed via P2P, I'd bet that it's being used in those cases as well.

--

How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?

Peer to Peer is already banned by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-20 00:00 · Score: 0

...in Japan.

No files by kyhwana · 2004-07-20 00:01 · Score: 1

Hmm, there arn't even any of the files being shared, at least on fast track and gnutella (and openft)
At least if there was a BT tracker, you could tell if it was up or not..
I'd start a tracker, or seed the files somewhere, if I could just GET copies of them, but I can't..

Has anyone sucessfully downloaded/mirrored the site?

--
My email addy? should be easy enough.

Emule? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-20 00:04 · Score: 0

The man should try using a network that isnt broken by design. Like eMule. Then he could just post the hashes for the files.

Telling people to download kazaa and linking to kazaa.com is just criminal.

what about google by dncsky1530 · 2004-07-20 00:04 · Score: 5, Informative

we all love google, however their search technology allows any one to find out anything about the government. one of the special searchs primarily searches US government documents. Not to mention peoples personal information can be found just as easily.
Please don't get me wrong, I love google, and use it, and I especially enjoy these types of searches

Re:what about google by PhilHibbs · 2004-07-20 00:18 · Score: 4, Informative

Search Uncle Sam for "il duce" and you get this:
Mr. Waxman. I only have another paragraph. And as in 1982, the administration is once again taking its cues from industry. While industry lobbyists are asked what they would do if they were Il Duce, environmental groups, the States and the public are shut out of the process.
Re:what about google by josh+drvsh · 2004-07-20 07:01 · Score: 1

What about using most of googles services to actual push forward democracy in the U.S.? Well, let's see...

We've got blogger, so we'll need a map interface to pass around, say, how about this one?

http://www.pierogi2000.com/graphics/LombardiPatR ob ertson.jpg http://www.npr.org/display_pages/features/feature_ 1487185.html"

Mark Lombardi did his work with 3x5 index cards, so making software to publish a map shouldn't be so hard.
http://politicalfriendster.stanford.edu
ww w.theyrule.net

Now, let's see, we need information.

Oh, look:

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/news/archives/2004 /0 7/18/new_full_source_.php

They already have GPL'd working model in the U.K.!

So now everyone is making their maps and passing them around and like blogs, we're all vetting them for accuracy and lots of people are working with different estimates and niche information, alone or in groups, so we're all personally involved.

Hmm. Maybe a bunch of people would get together and pool micropayments to get a particularly hard question, Google Answered...<URL:

Well, that's a lot of people. So, we'd probably ask google to use their Google Compute to keep it up and running.

Heck, I can't think of a lab feature they have that wouldn't be useful to this.

Now, I wonder if google can figure out a marketing angle, say we all need better or specialised CPU's for this sort of thing, that would help..I guess bulk buying via orkut or blogger..
but I'm mixing democracy with capitalism here, so let's go back to the original point.

This would do it, I just want to add, let's stay away from Java and javascript based mapping software because it's intensive to run and fulla holes.

Perhaps this is one reason they don't like P2P... by carcosa30 · 2004-07-20 00:10 · Score: 4, Insightful

Some other comments are saying "But they will just want to ban it all the more!"

In fact, if we use P2P to broadcast all kinds of government dirty laundry, their attempts to ban p2p will look like an attempt to crack down on freedom of information.

It could very well be that free flow of information, anonymous and universally available, is a huge reason why world governments don't like p2p. Of course, the record industry's huge donations to Orrin Hatch don't hurt any either.

I say dump Cryptome onto p2p sites. Dump whatever you can. We have a loophole right now; better try and widen it while we can. We might even give pause to some of the criminals on capitol hill while we're at it.

--
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.

Alert! by c0ldfusi0n · 2004-07-20 00:20 · Score: 1

KaZaA users with government documents?
Someone should raise the DEFCON level up a notch.

--
A computer makes it possible to do, in half an hour, tasks which were completely unnecessary to do before.

Zer0 day by minus9 · 2004-07-20 00:21 · Score: 5, Funny

I'm downloading AGrikulturalPolicyNOCD+crakz.zip right now.

The point by laserbeak · 2004-07-20 00:21 · Score: 0, Troll

Micheal moore exposes government 'secrets' and the government will hate him even more, but the point is that although they will want to shut down his operatoion even more so, he got them where it hurts ;)

the government will want to shut down the P2P ever more, but they made a fool of the government and brought on some media attention which is a bad thing for them.

I guess there is more to it, such as a moral debate, but meh i just sctached the surface :)

Neat, but... by kleinux · 2004-07-20 00:24 · Score: 1

I fail to see how or why p2p is important here at all. If he put together a website with these documents on it they would be evan more accessable. Or better, perhaps torrents if he cannot host directly. Not having google to search for stuff usually doesn't speed finding documents. So neat, but I think his energies could have been better spent to get these documents out there in a more accesable way.

Re:Neat, but... by mwood · 2004-07-20 01:12 · Score: 1

Yeah, publish something only on P2P and I'll never see it, nor will anyone else who thinks it imprudent to trawl through a mountain of medical waste bare-handed in the hope of finding a nice gold ring.

Scofflaws have been far more effective in suppressing the potential of P2P than "the government" will ever be. I don't want that stuff anywhere near my computer.

Poisoning? by Smidge204 · 2004-07-20 00:24 · Score: 1

With the nature of P2P networks, what safeguards have been taken against "poisoning" the documents? Seems it would be too easy to take a document and modify/censor it then place it back into the network. Neither the article nor the website of the people doing this seem to address this possibility.

=Smidge=

Re:Poisoning? by ryanmfw · 2004-07-20 00:56 · Score: 1

Unfortunately, they can't do something like public key encryption. It would work, but it would make the person's identity known, which might not be desired ;-).

--
Hurricane Ivan: A 17th century prison collapsed. All of the inmates escaped.
Re:Poisoning? by ryanmfw · 2004-07-20 01:01 · Score: 1

Also, the original person could have modified it. What about making a website with some cgi on it, that you pass a website address to, and it checks to see if it's a .gov or .mil site, and if it is, appends the file with that file encrypted with that website's private key. Then gives the person a copy of that file. It keeps the original person anonymous, it allows for verification of accuracy, and, the website most likely can't be taken down for just making it easy to verify government documents.

--
Hurricane Ivan: A 17th century prison collapsed. All of the inmates escaped.
Re:Poisoning? by kpogoda · 2004-07-20 03:58 · Score: 1

I guess you are right, we should trust the government.
Re:Poisoning? by Smidge204 · 2004-07-20 05:22 · Score: 1

And who do you think would most likely be doing the poisoning?

I'm not opposed to making government docs more accessible. Far from it. But if you're going to do that you need to be careful against distributing someone's political agenda instead of factual information.
=Smidge=

Concrete example of P2P's merit? by Anita+Coney · 2004-07-20 00:25 · Score: 4, Interesting

Nearly all game demos and patches are made available through bittorrent. The game publisher saves some bandwidth and gamers don't have to sign their souls over to fileplanet.

Some may argue that Congress wouldn't consider gaming worth of protecting. But just remind Congress that gamers are a billion dollar business, and that'll pique their interest.

--
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.

Ironically by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-20 00:28 · Score: 0

Slashdot has/had a duplicate article in the 'Search' results.

When clicked, it said:

Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.

Controls over information? by Orne · 2004-07-20 00:35 · Score: 1

As opposed to officials of the previous administration, who just take the classified documents home with them and "lose" them.

What this tells me is that there aren't enough controls (chain of custody) over documents...

Ernest Miller wrote about this... by e6003 · 2004-07-20 00:36 · Score: 4, Insightful

...at The Importance Of... - basically he makes the very sound point that this obfuscated distribution system is entirely unnecessary. All US Government documents are public domain (non-copyrighted) so any web site could put them up for static download without fear of DMCA attacks. It would make them far easier to find just by using Google. Instead "I go to the outragedmoderates.org website, go to the "Government Document Library," look up the documents I want, ignore the fact that I could download them from the website, start a P2P program, enter a search for the document name and/or outragedmoderates.org user name, and then download the documents, remembering that if I don't download the documents from outragedmoderates.org I might be getting inauthentic files."

Re:Ernest Miller wrote about this... by number11 · 2004-07-20 01:58 · Score: 2, Insightful

All US Government documents are public domain (non-copyrighted) so any web site could put them up for static download without fear of DMCA attacks.

Are you under the illusion that the DMCA is the only possible way the government could attack a website?
Re:Ernest Miller wrote about this... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-20 02:06 · Score: 1, Interesting

That might be true, but I have yet to find a way to get the president's speeches burned to a CD so I can listen in my car. I tried Google. I tried P2P. I tried whitehouse.gov and they only provide streaming real media which is possible to "hack", but a requires running gray market software.
You would think the White House would want people to hear the state of the union, but not from Bush it seems.
Re:Ernest Miller wrote about this... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-20 09:25 · Score: 0

I tried whitehouse.gov and they only provide streaming real media which is possible to "hack", but a requires running gray market software.

You can always use the analog hole legally.

complete support from me by davek · 2004-07-20 00:44 · Score: 3, Insightful

This is exactly what so many people should be doing in the open-source and free-software communities. We need to prove that many of these tools are only considered "evil" because they take away money from corporations. They are not, by themselves, tools of the devil.

This type of idea can be applied to many more things which can encourage social reform. Not just spreading information and accessing it easily (P2P and the Internet are doing just fine), but with opening tools and software/hardware solutions into the public domain. We need to figure out a way to develop software without fear of piracy (by making it free), and which still compensates those who spend thousands of hours toiling over it.

We should apply this idea at all levels. Move out of the dark realms of piracy and software cracks, and prove that we really DO have better ideas than the current industry.

-Dave

--
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky

this guys got mad skillz by uniqueCondition · 2004-07-20 00:44 · Score: 2, Funny

"It took Anderson about four hours and 2,000 mouseclicks to download more than 13,000 documents related to Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force" 2,000 clicks for 13,000+ documents?? via an html interface.. now that impresses me.. i map ~ 1 click : 1 document "Pornography, for example, had a role in pushing broadband into more homes." just giving you guys a reason to rtfa

--
"The more you know, the less sure you are." - Voltaire

pre-flawed from the source by zogger · 2004-07-20 00:48 · Score: 4, Interesting

you can't tell, same as with the "original" document that the government produced. They could start out pre-tampered. all you can do is find enough of them and compare them to look for inconsistencies. Unless you wrote it and signed it and released, you have no idea that any random government document is accurate,or is in the same form it was originally written in,you have little to no idea if anything in it is accurrate or purposeful disinformation or just busywork or a CYA effort for some reason. None of the above. Look at the way the reasons to invade iraq were presented, as "fact", based on "intel" from "multiple credible sources". Remember the pictures of the "mobile bioweapons labs" the regime was waving around that eventually were proven to be helium weather balloon "mobile labs"? That's just one example, there are probably thousands if not millions more when you think of all the projects government has been into over all these years. Pick any subject, any topic, any government agency, any year, any regime, you can probably find a lot of screwy documents that wouldn't past the honesty criteria.

The system has been broken for a long time. I have yet to meet any civilian or military government employee, willing to talk about matters off the cuff and off the record, who isn't aware of illegal or questionable shenanigans going on, and the system never gets fixed, it just gets more complex and they get better at keeping the bad stuff hidden.

I'm a skeptic, and based on decades of looking and seeing that this vague thing called "government" is just as apt to obfuscate and lie as tell the truth and be open, I am forced to assume anything they say-or release in document form, even so called "leaked" documents-should be treated with a high degree of incredulity. So the best you can do is compare it with some known data, and check multiple and diverse sources.

Re:pre-flawed from the source by commodoresloat · 2004-07-20 11:50 · Score: 1

It's important to add that people researching such things are generally attuned to the issue of potential document tampering and are likely to be more wary when documents are gotten off p2p. Significant alterations are likely to be noticed by *someone*. I realize this is a risk, especially because lots of people will share the documents without ever looking at them, but when people do find bad data they will publicize it. md5 will be used, or other more simple ways of detecting changes in a document (change in file size).
Now what would be really cool would be funding for an employee in the FOIA Office whose job is to check p2p-shared documents for accuracy and post information about problems. But that is likely to have to wait for more enlightened times.
Re:pre-flawed from the source by commodoresloat · 2004-07-20 11:55 · Score: 1

By the way, it occurs to me that the Wikipedia is a good example of the success (so far) of this distributed method of maintaining accurate content. While the technology and interface are very different, the idea of a distributed network of fact-checkers can work. There are distortions, but they tend to get noticed and fixed pretty regularly. P2p makes that somewhat more difficult -- you can never trust the integrity of the whole database -- but there are plenty ways to publicize the problems that do occur. So the fake file will still be floating out there, but people will know it's fake.

Re:P2P and terror by Random_Goblin · 2004-07-20 00:53 · Score: 1, Flamebait

"free speach,"

"Your all"

"Busch"

Is it because you like Dubya's views on education?

the cloak of secrecy.... by zxflash · 2004-07-20 00:53 · Score: 0

the cloak of secrecy must now be refreshed with the blood of p2p users...

--

All the torrents you could want.

wow by ewe2 · 2004-07-20 00:57 · Score: 1

it's the perfect disinformation channel!

--
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer

Re:wow by TheDredd · 2004-07-20 01:15 · Score: 1

it's the perfect disinformation channel!

Sounds just like the American news channels

Re:P2P and terror by mwood · 2004-07-20 01:07 · Score: 2, Funny

"This is EXACTLY why I'm voting for Busch in the Fall."

Next /. poll:

Your pick for President of the United States:

o Busch
o Coors
o Blatz
o Guinness
o Cowboy Molson :-)

Secretive Workings? by StateOfTheUnion · 2004-07-20 01:20 · Score: 1

The documents are a matter of public record . . . . how does this shed light on "secretive workings" The only difference here is that this website does is try to shed a little light on the documents and reduce the "practical obscurity"* of them.

I'm not saying this isn't without value, but come on . . . I thought that responsible editors were supposed to make sure that such ridiculous exaggeration never make it to press.

* Practical obscurity . . . a term used by courts to indicate that documentation that is a matter of public record, but cumbersome to find (e.g. going to city hall and having to search records to find a specific document). The practical obscurity due to the the effort needed to find the documents affords some level of privacy in and of itself. Putting documents on internet reduces their "practical obscurity."

Re:Secretive Workings? by cluckshot · 2004-07-20 03:19 · Score: 2, Insightful

Some years ago, my father and I secured the public printed documents on the manageement of the State of Alabama Board of Education and the various schools in the state. We recompiled the data by hand typing into a database and extracted much valuable management information. When presented to Mary Jane Caylor (State Board of Ed.) she was dumbfounded. She said with much excitement, "Where did you get this data!" It seemed that she had requested from the Bureaucrats this data in this form and they had told her it was impossible to give it to her.

Making a long story short this data was used with the obvious suggestions to improve schools and their management nation wide. Schools are now evaluated by the development of their students. Unfortunately we have not extended this evaluation into the direct compensation and tenure of teachers.

The point here is that data available on paper may as well be locked in a safe regrards solving problems. This P2P use and posting of all public documents on the Internet is the key to management of governmnt. It is like taking the hot sun and shining it on the snow burrying our freedom. It melts it away!

--
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.

A proper sub-title for this story would have been by azaris · 2004-07-20 01:23 · Score: 2, Insightful

Using P2P To Make Gov't Documents Easy To Find,
Using Gov't To Make P2P Operators Hard To Find

there are plenty of legal P2P by asv108 · 2004-07-20 01:39 · Score: 3, Informative

Networks and research projects out there today. Bittorrent is probably one most widely use protocols for public domain content distribution. Furthur is a 100% legal P2P music sharing network for bands that allow taping.

In the academic community, there are quite a few interesting projects going on. I work on a project called LionShare, which is integrating services like authentication, authorization, and directory in to a federated P2P network.

For once?! by ajs · 2004-07-20 01:57 · Score: 2, Insightful

Ok, reasons to use P2P:

Software downloads - I get all of my Linux ISOs from Gnutella and BitTorrent
Photographs - Yes, 99% of what's shared on Gnuttella in the way of images is porn. That 1% can be DAMN interesting.
Video feeds - Back when the towers fell, the Internet was slow, but usable. Major news sites were effectively dead, though. Gnutella was klunky then compared to now, but was still your best bet for getting video of what was going on.
Rare music - bands that have yet to make a name. Rare recordings from over seas that have never been for sale in the US. There are just so many GOOD things to listen to after you wade through the mainstream garbage.

P2P is a healthy, vibrant community of free speach. That means that a lot of the speach is the sort of thing you'd hear out of the average high school student, true, but that doesn't make the rare, considered speech any less valuable!

Re:For once?! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-20 06:12 · Score: 0

P2P is a healthy, vibrant community of free speach. That means that a lot of the speach is the sort of thing you'd hear out of the average high school student, true, but that doesn't make the rare, considered speech any less valuable!

Looks like it's a paragon of free spelling too.

(Bravo, you got it right at the end.)
Re:For once?! by ajs · 2004-07-22 08:26 · Score: 1

I asked Taco for a comment spell checker several YEARS ago when I ran into him in Boston. He said it was an interesting idea (as soon as he realized I was asking for it for myself, and not complaining about his spelling), but nothing ever came of it.

When Slashdot has a spell checker, I'll us it. Until then, try contributing to the conversation at hand, rather than fixating on spelling mistakes that you obviously understood the correct meaning of anyway.

That's Why It Won't Work by Mad+Bad+Rabbit · 2004-07-20 02:03 · Score: 1

It sounds like a horrible idea - multiple versions of multiple documents in the wild.

--
>;k

Re:That's Why It Won't Work by Mad+Bad+Rabbit · 2004-07-20 02:11 · Score: 1

Sorry -- post seems to have submitted itself before I
wrote anything (bug in new slashcode?). Anyway:

Governments could trivially discredit such a channel,
by having a few Winston Smyths constantly generate fake
(and easily disproven) leaked documents. Articles found
on P2P nets would soon have about as much credibility as
random articles posted to "alt.kooks.tinfoil".

--
>;k
Re:That's Why It Won't Work by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2004-07-20 06:33 · Score: 4, Interesting

Governments could trivially discredit such a channel, by having a few Winston Smyths constantly generate fake (and easily disproven) leaked documents. Articles found on P2P nets would soon have about as much credibility as random articles posted to "alt.kooks.tinfoil".

I've never understood why the government just doesn't do this anyway instead of messing around with classification systems. A good example would he the current war- how could you possibly endanger troop movement information if the newspapers have 15 different locations for any given soldier at any given time? Information Overload works.

--
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Re:That's Why It Won't Work by DAldredge · 2004-07-20 17:36 · Score: 1

The have a large number of classification systems to segment the info INSIDE the goverment. It helps protect against moles.
Re:That's Why It Won't Work by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2004-07-26 10:55 · Score: 1

My point, however, is external- the classic case of why a democratic government should be allowed to keep secrets is the good old "If we broadcast our troop movements on CNN, the enemy will know where to find us." Information Overload with 90% false information completely solves that problem.

--
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.

Re:P2P and terror by Frequanaut · 2004-07-20 02:05 · Score: 3, Funny

Ah, I sea buy yur speling that you too ar a produkt of the know child left behind.

Other Examples by Bob9113 · 2004-07-20 02:11 · Score: 3, Informative

For once, we have a concrete example to point to when citing the merits of P2P.

Let me offer a few others that have been around for a while:
- Distributing FLOSS. For example, Linux.
- Distributing music with the copyright holder's permission. For example, eTree.
- Distributing internally developed software to employees in a large enterprise. For example, LANDesk and Marimba use peer to peer distribution.

--
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance

Re:Other Examples by colonslashslash · 2004-07-20 03:17 · Score: 1

Hey, I co-admin the The Linux Mirror Project which you mentioned in your post, and I just thought I would add my $0.02 to the topic.
It annoys the hell out of me when I read almost daily media articles about P2P networks being used only for sharing warez, and promoting illegal activities, myself and Matt have put a hell of alot of time, money and effort into our project and it feels like a kick in the teeth when these lobyists and "legislators" just immediately denounce P2P as illegal and immoral by default, and attempt to shut it all down.
I won't deny that alot of P2P users are simply warez leeches, but there are a hell of alot of legitimate uses (e.g. see Bob9113's examples), and these are becoming more and more widespread. Our trackers managed to see over 4TB's of transfer last month, and up until last week we were only based on a couple of 1Mb SDSL lines (which were also supporting FTPd's, HTTPd's, IRCd's etc), now think how much harder this would have been to accomplish using the FTP protocol. We would have had to increase our bandwidth by 10 fold. And this doesn't just apply to our project, this applies to alot of various content distribution, it really can work out well compared to the old FTP / HTTP standards in alot of scenarios.
I don't know how they can fail to see these new technologies as a real advancement in communications and data transfer, weilded correctly, they can be extremely powerful tools that could even save alot of companies and corporations time and money, and make content more accessable to the users. Sure there are problems, but maybe they should concentrate on putting out the fire rather than destroying the whole forest.

--
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....

Eclipse by mwvdlee · 2004-07-20 02:18 · Score: 1

Just yesterday I downloaded Eclipse3 with bittorrent, I just wish more companies/organisations would over their large downloadables over bittorrent; saves them bandwidth, saves us time.

--
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?

Website by malthusan · 2004-07-20 02:35 · Score: 1

For those who can't be bothered to read the article or click the link in the article, there is a website where these documents are collected. In addition to being available on the website, the documents are available via P2P.

http://www.outragedmoderates.org/

Drop me a postcard... by autophile · 2004-07-20 02:54 · Score: 3, Funny

Thad Anderson, a second-year student at St. John's School of Law in Queens, New York, said he was driven to launch the site by what he says is the current administration's disregard for fundamental democratic structures and its increasing practice of withholding information from the public.

Drop me a postcard from Guantanamo, "Thad"... :)

--Rob

--
Towards the Singularity.

Re:Drop me a postcard... by KD5YPT · 2004-07-20 03:15 · Score: 1

If anyone found out Thad got thrown into the Guantanamo, plz post.
We'll start bringing back the 60s.

--
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.

Coo coo president... by KD5YPT · 2004-07-20 02:59 · Score: 0, Troll

Holy crap, from what I'm reading from their website... I now have strong evidence that the president did not become coo coo, we elected an already coo coo president in.
Wait, I didn't vote, because I was too young...
Trust the old thinker to screw up.
"Hm... George Bush looks old... must make good president..."
Not if he's suffering from dementia.

P.S. Reading down the list, I don't quite mind the spoil of war, in fact, I say those money should go to the soldiers and their family. God knows what they been through over there (I don't know what, but I believe its tough, or worse). That and we won't have to foot the bill.

--
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.

OK, So... by burns210 · 2004-07-20 03:31 · Score: 1

Lets make this open source project, and make it great... Take an existing p2p project, and fork it... Change/break compatability with all other nodes(the gov wouldn't want 1,000 terabytes of songs to be among the search results), give it a clean interface, and let it use plugins...

Say, a .gov website could use a g2p:// (government-to-people) protocol, and have IE be able to handle the download as if it were a search result in the g2p software... There are atleast 1 p2p program that already does this...

I mean really, take the latest CVS snapshot of every major/minor p2p project(including MUTE and Freenet) copy and paste for X hours, to have every feature implemented(and the best code used for duplicate features) and then bugfix...

Want encrypted links? no problem.
Want cryptic(non-direct to peer) routing? Piece of cake.

Heck, lets try and migrate the Gutenberg project's archive to g2p, while we are at it!

Hardly a new idea by tiltowait · 2004-07-20 03:33 · Score: 2, Interesting

LOCKSS-DOCS and even the US GPO Access have already been doing this. But I suppose that given how online government information can go poof or be altered, this project sounds like a good idea, albeit a partisan one.

Bandwidth. by SatanicPuppy · 2004-07-20 03:36 · Score: 1

I post game patches, linux distros, and crap like that on p2p. Makes my ISP work for my money.

There are plenty of legitimate uses for p2p file sharing, even if you don't count music/movies/pirated code.

--
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.

Re:Bandwidth. by NuclearDog · 2004-07-20 15:21 · Score: 0

When you say that there are "plenty of legitimate uses for p2p file sharing, even if you don't count music/movies/pirated code", it seems to me that you are implying that music and such is a legitimate use?

Sorry, just in a nitpicking mood today. Feel free to ignore this comment.

ND

--
This statement is forty-five characters long.

Check your reasoning. by dhasenan · 2004-07-20 04:05 · Score: 1

This is supposed to make the politicians support P2P? We're letting people communicate quicker, more accurately, and using the cost of one FOIA request to get information to thousands or millions. It's in Washington's best interests to smash P2P, now. How about petitioning via P2P? Everyone who gets it will support it, and perhaps the thought of a million voters on P2P networks will turn the tide from banning to strict regulation.

Confusing stupidity with conspiracy by Mr+Guy · 2004-07-20 05:50 · Score: 1

After reading through that report I'm not entirely convinced it's as far fetched as it sounds. Yes, it's clearly a very poorly designed system, but the arguement they are making is that the system wasn't designed to be able to keep running as well as provide the overhead for copying. While they didn't give reasons for it, failed back ups could cause this sort of situation, as well as a system grossly over it's intended maximum capacity.

Think about it, Slashdot crashes systems regularly. Of COURSE they need to fix it, then readdress the requests they receive in the interim. I'll believe it's entirely conspiracy and not just stupidity when they come up with other excuses after the revamp is supposed to be in place.

--
Never confuse volume with power.

Re:Confusing stupidity with conspiracy by Danse · 2004-07-20 09:04 · Score: 1

Well first of all, all people are asking for is a backup of the database. They don't have backups that they can copy? That's far more incompetence than I would like to imagine in our government. Second, the revamp won't be done until December, conveniently after the election. Coincidence?

--
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Re:Confusing stupidity with conspiracy by Mr+Guy · 2004-07-21 00:06 · Score: 1

Well the system has been in place for a very long time. You could easily say if it weren't for the diligence of the current leadership (and I have no idea who's iniative the much needed repairs fall under) the system would have been left in the state it was in. Thank goodness that soon we'll be able to access the records which were decided to be so important in the 1930s.

--
Never confuse volume with power.
Re:Confusing stupidity with conspiracy by Danse · 2004-07-21 06:50 · Score: 1

If you can't furnish people with the data they request, then what good is your system in the first place? I don't buy their claim, as I've never heard of a database that couldn't be copied, no matter how old it happened to be. In fact, many older databases were actually easier to copy than newer ones.

--
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer

Concerns by Bruha · 2004-07-20 06:00 · Score: 1

It would be way easy for someone to modify a document and upload it back into the system and then you have two copies of the document. There needs to be some sort of repository of MD5sum's to check against what you download.

Unlike that method of keeping our government transparent the most successful method has been our constitution. The document resides in a meuseum and copies are published in nearly all US History textbooks in our schools. That is one document though and it's far more difficult to maintain say the library of congress and keep things from being edited. Better that the library is archived where people can download copies someday that they could browse through and if anyone was concerned a change was made could consult a network of copies that individuals have maintained.

OK, here's one by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-20 06:24 · Score: 0

Jose Padilla?

Hi, I'm the guy who made outragedmoderates.org by Thad+Anderson · 2004-07-20 06:54 · Score: 4, Interesting

I wanted to thank everyone for your comments, and address a couple issues.

1) BITTORRENT: Due to a number of emails regarding this, I'm dropping Kazaa and going with Bittorrent. I'll have this set up by the end of the week, possibly earlier.

2) RELIABILITY OF DOCUMENTS: Tonight I will finish synchronizing the names of documents offered via P2P with the names given on the Government Document Library page. Once that is done, if you've downloaded documents online, you'll be able to verify the documents by checking them against the PDF provided by the original source (say, the NRDC or the House Committee on Gov't Reform). The only surefire way I can confirm that you are downloading a reliable document is if you are downloading it directly from my usernames (provided on the Download For Democracy page). Also note that the filenames of all files will include the source. As I mentioned earlier, I'm working all the kinks out of this tonight.

3) ON THIS USE'S EFFECT ON P2P OVERALL: As some people here have pointed out, none of the documents on my site are truly "secret" - I'm not breaking new documents. I consider the site's job to be one of an aggregator (and yes, I use that term because of my obsession with Google News). Anyway, considering that these documents have been made available by other sources - sources that have a degree of credibility that I have not built yet - I don't anticipate that this usage could have a negative effect on P2P. I'm never going to post anything that is not from a major media outlet, a legal or academic source, or the government.

Thanks for your interest, comments, and advice, and keep checking back over the next couple of weeks - the P2P campaign will be improving in terms of the networks used, the number of documents, and the ability to verify documents.

Thad Anderson
outragedmoderates.org

p2p? by Syberghost · 2004-07-20 07:52 · Score: 1

Just give everybody access to Sandy Berger's pants.

socks&pocket document transfer by sybert · 2004-07-20 08:01 · Score: 1

Who needs peer2peer, when you have pocket2pocket document transfer.

Sandy Berger, Clinton's national security adviser and John Kerry advisor, illegally removed classified documents from the National Archives during the 9/11 commission investigation by stuffing them into his jacket, pants pockets, and his socks.

Maybe we need p2p to get this story out, since the mainstream media is doing a good job of burying the story.

p2p is a great technology by PacketScan · 2004-07-20 08:30 · Score: 0

I may not agree with how p2p is currently used by the masses but it's a great way to share / find files. If this were applied to the library or congress or even public records it would be a great education tool. That is exactly what government doesn't want.. They don't want the masses to be able to easily find public governemnt documents and educate themselves. Contray to popular belief they would rather have citizens that are as dumb as possible.

Re:P2P and terror by ErikTheRed · 2004-07-20 08:36 · Score: 1

Know child's left behind? Isn't that the program used in Catholic schools?

--

Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana

P2P Internet by bigdog1 · 2004-07-20 10:47 · Score: 1

This made me have an idea, that someone has probably already tried. Is it possible to link a p2p network directly to a website with something similar to a hypertext link?

This would require a plug-in version of bit-torrent or kazzaa or something that people could download if they wanted to view the content on my site (kinda like the real player, except for the p2p part). The actual link would probably have to have info on the checksum to verify document integrity. Doing this would make one's website scalable for demand. This would be a great way to prove how valuable P2P networks are. Imagine companies using one old slow computer to host their entire website instead of massive servers.

Has this already been implemented somewhere? Can I do it for my site? I am not the greatest programmer, but if anyone would want to try such a thing I would help as best I could.

John

P2P and govt documents by commodoresloat · 2004-07-20 11:08 · Score: 1

Name one instance where a private party altered its website against its wishes due to the U.S. Gov't for political reasons.

First, it's not just private parties -- the US govt owns websites too, and these are where many important documents lie. Ari Fleischer's transcript was altered to remove the embarrassing comment "Watch what you say." Documents on Iraq on whitehouse.gov were not altered but were intentionally obscured so that search engines couldn't find them easily. And the website of the National Cancer Institute was changed to suggest a connection between abortion and breast cancer, a link that the scientific community has consistently rejected. Worse, many documents are simply not being made available at all -- this has been increasing under the Bush Administration by deliberate design, but it has always been a significant problem. In other cases the documents are being made accessible only through publicly-owned databases that are not on the internet and often require a trip to DC.

Second, there have been instances of private parties doing this to appease government officials. Sometimes they are just ordered to take stuff down, as in the case of Sherman Austin's website. Other times the pressure is less obvious, but it is there, like in the case of the San Jose Mercury News website about drug trafficking started by the Gary Webb series in 1996. The website included photos, audio, video, and scanned court documents and it was really well organized (it was well ahead of it's time, and, if it were still around, I think it would still be ahead of it's time! hard to believe that was 8 years ago). The paper eventually published a rebuttal to its own series, which was also linked on the website (and every page on the website was given a link to the brief rebuttal and a note to the effect of "oops! we were wrong about all this! sorry!") Eventually the whole website was taken down. It reappeared briefly a few years later on a website funded by Webb personally and then disappeared again.

That's just the most compelling and extreme example I can think of; there have certainly been others. Another related problem is the increasing privatization of such information -- do you realize that there are whole segments of federal and state law that are not accessible at all without purchasing privately-held (yet nevertheless public) information from a single party? I'm required to obey the law, but if I want to find out what it actually says I have to pay a private party to use their database? Again, this is a trend that has accelerated dramatically over the last few years.

All of these are good reasons to consider p2p for government documents. Of course, there is risk of corruption of such documents, and such corruption might be harder to trace on p2p (especially since many people will be sharing documents they haven't read or even looked at very closely). But I think it is still a good solution to the problem of making the documents more easily accessible, and when alterations are discovered that can be publicized this way too. I'm not sure it would address the last problem I mentioned (privatization), since in those cases the private companies are legally entitled to control the flow of information (for reasons that make no sense to me). Then again, one might expect p2p to facilitate illegal distribution of such information (and the moral argument would be far more compelling than the one for infringing copyrights on music, movies, etc.)

not just the "dostros"... by commodoresloat · 2004-07-20 11:39 · Score: 1

Not just linux distros. I've been downloading government information like this from p2p for a long time now. When I heard about Abu Ghraib, p2p was the first place I looked for the photos, rather than the CBS website. I got the Diebold documents off p2p when that scandal first broke. At the beginning of the Iraq war, many documents were being shared that were useful to critics of the war rationale. Not just government documents either but interviews with people and snippets of news coverage, etc.

I think what makes this effort unique is not the sharing of government information but the fact that it's being done systematically with a real index of documents that are available so that you know what the hell you're getting. I've downloaded things that look like they will be interesting docs and turn out to be some photoshopped joke. And a lot of it is hit or miss; I type in "Iraq" and get hundreds of hits, very few of them all that significant. But having a list of what is likely to be available and what the file name would be is really useful. What would be really exciting is a tool to organize many lists of such material that could be easily searched.

mass checking by zogger · 2004-07-20 12:15 · Score: 1

I sincerely hope so. It sounds as good a plan as any I have heard. We have an incredible tool with the net for freedom loving honest people around the world to use, not only for mundane personal reasons and profit in all it's various forms, but for throwing off this yoke of dependence on various questionable governments. It might take 10 or more generations, but I am fairly confident one day all humans will be as "free" as they choose to be.

Unfortunately, in between now and then will probably be some serious ugliness, and hopefully, again, we will avoid physicist michio kaku's predictions,his basic one being that most civilisations in the universe (he thinks there are "some", that we aren't alone in the universe), never make it past the discovery of uranium for very long.

Author links Bush family to Nazis by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-20 12:20 · Score: 0

the real reason for the above.
http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/bus hnaziheraldtribunenewscoast.cfm.htm

"The president of the Florida Holocaust Museum said Saturday that George W. Bush's grandfather derived a portion of his personal fortune through his affiliation with a Nazi-controlled bank."

ie agent of a foreign gov.

see also "George Bush, the Unauthorized Biography" by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin chapter II

Client / Server is only defined at layer 4 by anti-NAT · 2004-07-20 15:26 · Score: 2, Interesting

Even my home network could be described as peer to peer as I have no server for 4 client machines.

Its interesting you say that. Client / Server is really only defined at the transport layer or layer 4, and here is why :

Ethernet is a peer-to-peer protocol - a device sending or receiving an ethernet frame is no different from any other, which makes it a peer
IP is (or was designed to be) a peer-to-peer protocol - a device sending or receiving an IP packet is no different from any other, which makes it a peer.

What makes a particular device a "client" or a "server" ? Only the applications running on it, and where it matters in the context of TCP/IP is either the UDP or TCP ports the applications are using.

However, even that doesn't really work. What if you are configuring a "web server". To test it out, you fire up a web browser on the same box. Now the box is running both the web server and web client, so is it stil a "server", or is a "client", or is it both a client and a server ?

A point about why I clarified IP as being designed, but not necessarily a peer to peer protocol - NAT. NAT breaks the "equally a sender or receiver" property of IP. This property is one of the ones that have made the Internet what it is today - if you had an IP connection, and an IP address, you used to be able run up a web server, irrespective of any up stream devices. In other words, you were in complete control of the decision to make available a service to the network.

With deployment of NAT, you don't have as much, and depending on your environment, a lot less flexibility in making that "service providing" decision. Groups like RIAA and MPAA are quite happy with this, as they want a "broadcast" only style network, where home users can't deploy their own, possibly competing, services. NAT is the technology that will facilitate that.

There are a lot of other technology limitations that NAT causes, which are fundamentally side effects of violating the "equally a sender or a receiver" property of IP. Here is Keith Moore's list - Things that NATs break

--
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf

Re:Client / Server is only defined at layer 4 by tricorn · 2004-07-22 06:57 · Score: 1

Of course, there are some easy ways to allow for servers, even when going through a NAT box. Getting away from "well known ports" and "well known IP addresses" (which is really what makes for a server), you could go to a pure "presence" solution. Add a well-defined and supported protocol (as opposed to UPnP) with some security (server program has to be authorized) to allow listening on a random port, add a service name lookup (along the lines of RPC), and advertise your service through a global hierarchical name service (along the lines of dynamic DNS updating). Each level of NAT can contact the next level up if necessary, until you get to a backbone level that either uses static addresses or a dynamically configured architecture (like Rendezvous/OpenTalk/Zeroconf) with a hierarchical public key authentication system for those servers.

See, I told you it would be easy!
Re:Client / Server is only defined at layer 4 by anti-NAT · 2004-07-23 03:34 · Score: 1

See, I told you it would be easy!

I hope your joking. In case you aren't.

Assigning each device a unique, public IP address would work even better, and would be far, far simpler, as that is the way things were originally designed in the first place.

I just can't understand how people seem to be fixated on comming up with a more and more complex solution to work around NAT's limitations, when removing the limitations that NAT imposes, by removing NAT itself, would achieve the same functionality without all the added complexity. As they say, "Complexity is the enermy."

Actually I can understand it, a lot of technical people love complex, technical solutions, irrespective of whether they are the best and simplest way to achieve the intended outcome.

I've come to the conclusion that most people who like NAT actually really just like the idea of regularly playing with the settings of their NAT device to just get simple things to work. They love to fiddle, rather than have a solution that just works, with the barest minimum of effort.

--
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
Re:Client / Server is only defined at layer 4 by tricorn · 2004-07-23 12:42 · Score: 1

Why does your thermostat need to talk to my refrigerator? Why do I (at the office) even need to talk directly to my refrigerator (or your thermostat)? I should connect to "the house server" (and let it authenticate me) and tell it to "check refrigerator" or "set thermostat", I don't need to know what IP address they are. Almost nothing needs a routable address, much less a static address that can be connected to.

Using a number that is used for routing traffic as an identifier is nuts. It isn't even secure.

Now, I'm not saying that people shouldn't have servers, but that anything that isn't a server doesn't need a routable address. For temporary connections (say, I want to transfer a file to you), an intermediary server solution would work fine. I've always wanted an addition to the TCP protocol for the process of two processes that want to talk to each other, without having to have either one choose a role. Call it "meet" (instead of "listen" or "connect"). Such a protocol could be built in to router/NAT box - all I do is ask it for an identifier, communicate that identifier to the other side (through the server), receive the other side's identifier, tell the router who I'm trying to connect with, and let them establish things. That identifier would presumably be something like an IP address and a port, but I don't care anymore, I just use the connection I established with the router.

Even a server really only needs one port (not address, port). Instead of the port # triggering a specific process/protocol, explicitly identify it, let the software route it after that. And no, HTTP is not the protocol I'd choose to do that (despite everything these days getting layered over HTTP).

That current protocols are based on the current infrastructure is understandable, but not a reason to avoid alternative solutions.
Re:Client / Server is only defined at layer 4 by anti-NAT · 2004-07-23 15:51 · Score: 1
I'm tempted to answer your points directly, however, I think it would be better to spend my time pointing you towards the following documents, which, firstly, describe the Internet architecture, and why it was designed the way it is, and secondly, describe how NAT / overlapping address spaces break the architecture. I don't think a debate on NAT can take place until both the design of the Internet and how NAT breaks that design are understood.
- RFC 1958 - Architectural Principles of the Internet - Section 2.3 "It is also generally felt that end-to-end functions can best be realised by end-to-end protocols." is the property that NAT breaks.
- RFC 1631 - The IP Network Address Translator (NAT) - even the original NAT RFC suggests limitations - from section 4. "Conclusions" - "NAT may be a good short term solution to the address depletion and scaling problems. This is because it requires very few changes and can be installed incrementally. NAT has several negative characteristics that make it inappropriate as a long term solution, and may make it inappropriate even as a short term solution. Only implementation and experimentation will determine its appropriateness."
- RFC 3022 - Traditional IP Network Address Translator (Traditional NAT) - the update to RFC1631 lists a number of limitations as well.
- RFC 2993 - Architectural Implications of NAT - a very good document, well worth reading.
- RFC 1627 - Network 10 Considered Harmful (Some Practices Shouldn't be Codified)
- Deprecating Site Local Addresses - an IPv6 oriented document, discussing "site local" addresses, and the problems they cause. They are the equivalent of IPv4 RFC1918 addresses eg. Network 10. The same problems it discusses also occur with RFC1918 addresses.
- Things that NATs break - listed just for completeness.
- The Middleware Dilemma - NAT is a form of middleware, as it does more than just forward IP packets - it maintains state within the network (see RFC1958 for why maintaining state in the network is a problem).
- The Digital Imprimatur : How big brother and big media can put the Internet genie back in the bottle. - The Firewalled Consumer section discusses what NAT is doing to the Internet at a higher level.
Once you've read through these documents, at least to the point of having a basic understanding of them, go through the comment I'm responding to, and look for ways as to how some of your solutions can be better and much more simply achieved via public addressing and the removal of NAT.
--
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf

Please won't somebody think of the children??? by Draknor · 2004-07-20 15:46 · Score: 1

"exposing secretive inner workings" [of the US government]

Please, please! Why won't someone think of the children?? Clearly, they should not be exposed to such naughty and immoral things!

Re:Perhaps this is one reason they don't like P2P. by tropavantgarde · 2004-07-20 16:30 · Score: 1

>In fact, if we use P2P to broadcast all kinds
>of government dirty laundry, their attempts to
>ban p2p will look like an attempt to crack down
>on freedom of information.

Granted, it will look like that -- to those watching. But how many people, outside of /., are really paying attention to this? I can guarantee if you went out and asked your average Joe about sharing government files/info via P2P networks he'd give you a "huh" look. And if you told him he couldn't trade government files via Kazaa, he'd just ask for a quick assurance that he'd still be able to get Eminem's latest music video on Kazaa and, upon receipt of aforesaid assurance, be quite content.

The sad and simple fact is that most people neither know nor care to know.

--

--A witty sig proves nothing.--

P2P VS. MSDN - WFW #What's the diff comp? by StuporNerd · 2004-07-22 14:28 · Score: 1

Color me stupid, but is Microsoft "Windows for Workgroups" not a Peer-To-Peer networking protocol from the "Way Back Machine"?IBM on you, you, you, and UUNET XXXX Me? How hard would you like to XXXX me? Like, duh, MSN Messenger Remote Host IP Address[whois.arin.net]Done#127.0.0.1 Ding! Local Host Direct Inbox#e Yahoo! Perfect SBCIS[0] - Computer Works, The [a definite article][1] WWW The Slashdot Table of Organizer.s? WWW OLE!EXCLAMATION POINT disabled on account of dim wit#us-ascii AOL ART KNOT!!00HTML+>

Re: Reliability of documents by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-23 14:19 · Score: 0

Regarding point 2, reliability of documents:

You could store MD5 checksums of the file, and also store this list on the web site. Post your PGP/GPG public key to keyservers and on your web site, and you can share a signed version of the MD5 checksums which can be verified by the downloader (the file need only be plain text, and you could even have a $FILENAME.MD5 file containing the MD5 sum of $FILENAME eliminating the need to update a master list which would cause versioning problems).

Summary:
For every shared file, $FILENAME
Create a ASCII text file containing the md5sum of $FILENAME. Call this $FILENAME.MD5
Sign $FILENAME.MD5.

Slashdot Mirror

Using P2P To Make Gov't Documents Easy To Find

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