Ian Clarke and Freenet in the Crosshairs

EMIce writes "John Markoff of the New York Times writes of Ian, "Though he says his aim is political - helping dissidents in countries where computer traffic is monitored by the government, for example - Mr. Clarke is open about his disdain for copyright laws, asserting that his technology would produce a world in which all information is freely shared. ... Now, however, Mr. Clarke is taking a fresh approach, stating that his goal is to protect political opponents of repressive regimes." Wasn't freenet originally about dissent? Mr. Markoff appears to be re-writing a history that he probably only knows through a handful of lexis-nexis searches." Update: 08/01 18:32 GMT by T : Ian Clarke wrote to point out his comment posted to the story which lays out the actual subject of his Defcon talk.

Comments

Re:The writeup for this article is confusing

[TripMaster Monkey]

The writeup isn't confusing...the article itself is, and purposefully so.

From TFA:

While Freenet attracted wide attention as a potentially disruptive force when he introduced it in 2000, it proved more difficult to use than file-sharing programs like Grokster and Napster, and did not achieve the impact that he envisioned.

Now, however, Mr. Clarke is taking a fresh approach, stating that his goal is to protect political opponents of repressive regimes.

In the second sentence, Mr. Markoff insinuated that the original purpose of Freenet wasn't to protect political opponents of repressive regimes, when in fact Freenet's stated purpose was always, and still is, to combat censorship.

In other words, Mr Markoff is intentionally distorting established history for his own ends, but given his history, that's not too surprising.

Just a few off the top of my head.

[Irvu]

At the DNC and RNC conventions protestors (even licenced ones) were either a) moved to fenced-in areas well away from the conventions or (in the case of the RNC conventions blocked off and arrested non-violent marchers (with permits) (see here). I'd consider these pretty unambiguous attacks on "the rights of people to peacably assemble and petition their government for a redress of greivances." !st Amendement to the Constitution of the United States.

In other notes we have violations of due process in the case of Jose Padilla and other U.S. Citizens. For example Article III Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution states: "The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury; and such trial shall be held in the state where the said crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any state, the trial shall be at such place or places as the Congress may by law have directed." Which requires jury trials for those accused not secret military tribunals. Amendments V and VI also speak to this subject:

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

And before you jump on the point I would point out that the Military Tiribunals are not being convened against members of the U.S. Military ('
In service in war or in time of public danger') so that clause of Amendment V doesn't give carte Blanche for them.

On another note both the USAPATRIOT act and various federal laws dealing with drugs routinely allow for the unwarranted search and seizure of private property in some cases such property is not returned even when no conviction takes place. This would be (IMHO) a violation of Amendment IV of the constitution which states:

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

While we're on the topic of drugs. Excessive punishments and jail times have routinely been employed in this area noteably including California's 3-strikes policy which leads to life in prison even for 3 minor crimes (any 3 frauds including possession). Agasin in my opinion this would be a severe issue with Amendment VIII:

Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

As a key point I would also mention this amendment:

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage other

What the talk was actually about

[Sanity]

The article doesn't really discuss it, but the core innovation being presented in the Defcon talk was a design for a scalable darknet. This is interesting and new because current darknets, such as Waste, don't scale. They typically consist of small isolated groups of small numbers of people.

This new design for Freenet is different, it is a globally scalable invite-only Darknet. Oskar Sandberg and Ian Clarke have developed a method to route messages through a "fixed links" P2P network in a scalable way. This is non-trivial as most scalable P2P search algorithms (such as that previously employed in Freenet, and other Distributed HashTable algorithms) rely on being able to choose which peers are connected to each-other. Its like trying to create signposts for a gigantic maze in an entirely decentralised way.

We hope to make a paper describing this available through the Freenet website in the next few days.

-Ian