Pirate Party Launches Commercial Darknet

CrystalFalcon writes "The Swedish Pirate Party has launched a commercial, high-capacity darknet, on an unprecedented scale and bandwidth. This service lets anybody send and receive files anonymously without being tracked or traced. 'There are many legitimate reasons to want to be completely anonymous on the Internet,' says Rickard Falkvinge, chairman of the Pirate Party. 'If the government can check everything each citizen does, nobody can keep the government in check.'"

Comments

Re:Question?

[Alpha830RulZ]

Quite possibly, but the facts that its: 1) a different country, with a separate legal system that seems to deliver what the US constitution promises 2) A European Union country, which has demonstrated a much less media industry friendly policy and 3) a different judicial system, so that US laws don't apply, and US legal precedents won't have much weight suggest to me that it will offer quite a bit of protection. A terrorist might get caught up in the legal web, but the RIAA will have their costs raised by a couple of orders of magnitude, and Jesus, that's alright with me (cue guitars...)

Re:Darknet?

[man_ls]

I think the point is that it's (1) based in Sweeden, (2) encrypted end-to-end, (3) as anonymous as you want it to be based on the information you provide to them, and (4) fairly strongly protected legally in the jurisdiction it operates in.

1 and 4 being pretty big for USians who are using it...2 for people whose ISPs filter. 3, dubiously so, as at some point they have your credit card saying that you have an account although I suppose that, if they don't store your tunnel account with your CC number, they have no way of getting to you personally.

It doesn't matter if someone nefarious is on the same link-local segment sniffing all your traffic, if they can't identify through technological means who you are, and can't compel the provider through legal means either because they didn't keep that information or just won't give it over.

Re:Question?

[Jugalator]

Quick translation from their Security FAQ:

What do this law [of Swedish electronic communication; 2003:389] say when it comes what Swedish government agencies or others request access to the information protected by RELAKKS?

When it comes to Swedish law enforcement agencies, RELAKKS has the same rights and obligations as a regular ISP with two important differences.

1. RELAKKS uses advance payments, which implies RELAKKS does not need to follow a traditional subscriber register. This is of great importance due to what kinds of customer information RELAKKS can disclose.

If Swedish agencies can prove beyond reasonable doubt that they have legal support in requesting the user information from RELAKKS (the penalty has to in this case be greater than fines), RELAKKS need to disclose the subscriber details you as a user has submitted.

2. RELAKKS does not save customer details beyond those you have given yourself when signing up for the service (you can also change these details as long as you're a paying customer). If you don't proceed using the service, RELAKKS will delete your user account.

The details Swedish agencies can request beyond user account details (see above) are so called traffic information. These are protected by a much stronger legal protection. To disclose these, the crime needs to have a penalty of at least jailtime in two years.

I understand it that it's business and laws as usual here too, of course, but if they're enforced of leaving out user details, I wonder what exact differences their unconventional subscriber register has compared to a regular one. They don't seem to go into detail of that, and I'd guess that is the most interesting part here.

Re:Rock On Dude

[Fredrik Leijon]

They have a contract with Labs2 (run by the former ceo and founder of bredbandsbolaget) so bandwidth shouldn't be a problem.

Re:Right...

[Eivind]

There's many reasons, some noble, some less noble. Anyone that wants to can easily think of reasons one migth want to be anonymous on the internet.

For example;

• You may want to blow the whistle on some illegal or unethical behaviour where you work, but fear losing your job.
• You may want to critisize government, but fear negative consequences. (depending on where you live this may be from none up to and including imprisonment, torture or execution)
• You may want to lobby for an unpopular position.
• You may want to send email to your friends in the near east (I've got several friends in the UaE and Saudi-arabia) without ending up on the "no-fly" list.
• You may want to help the police figthing corruption or mafia without yourself or your family ending up dead.
• You may want to post anonymized nude photos online (for fun or profit) without exposing your identity.
• If you're a boss, you may want to pose as an "outsider" and f.ex. contact your own support-department to get a picture of how said department works, as seen from the outside.
• You may not *want* people to know you're collecting pictures of rhinos.
• You may want to be able to discuss personal problems online without those you discuss it with knowing who you are.
• You may want to look for love online without risking stalkers.

There's a zillion reasons really. But more importantly, you shouldn't need any reason at all. The simple fact is, there exist people who would prefer, atleast sometimes, being anonymous online.

Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga

[Troglodyt]

Piracy is not what the party is about, it's a name they picked to be noticable.
The consumer rights party would be a stupid name, as it would infer some capitalist values and the party does not take a stance in questions like that.
Everyone please read! http://www2.piratpartiet.se/international/english
The party is here to counter the police state we are turning into with Bodström giving the lobbying organisations whatever they want, and to put a stop to the silliness of patents and eternal copyright.

Re:Ahem

[paulmac84]

This is what they're saying on their website:

RELAKKS is a company incorporated in Sweden. The service is basically a Swedish broadband subscription offered over the Internet. This means that the legal framework mainly consists of the The Electronic Communications Act 2003 389. What will this mean if:

Swedish authorities or,
Other organization or individuals demands access to information protected by RELAKKS?

RELAKKS Safe Surf enjoys the strongest legal protection possible under Swedish Law because of the service type (pre-paid flat-rate service). This means that RELAKKS do not have to keep an ordinary customer database (to be able handle transactions etc.). This is of importance if forced to hand over information.

If Swedish authorities can prove beyond reasonable doubt that they have a case for demanding subscription information from RELAKKS (they have to be of the opinion that if convicted the user will be imprisoned fined not enough). .

RELAKKS then have to hand over the subscription information entered by you (but thats all). RELAKKS do not store any subscribtion information about you except what you entered yourself when signing up for the RELAKKS Safe Surf service.

For Swedish authorities to force RELAKKS to hand over traffic data including your RELAKKS IP at a specific point in time, they will have to prove a case with the minimum sentence of two years imprisonment.

Regarding inquires from other parties than Swedish authorities RELAKKS will never turn over any kind of information.

So as long as the Swedish government can prove beforehand that you will be convicted, then they'll hand over the data, otherwise it's no-go. And as for non-Swedish authorities, Relakks say they won't give them anything.

PPTP tunnel ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading FAQ on their site it appears they use PPTP tunnel. While it's quick and easy to setup for clients, looks like it has some security flaws, quoting Poptop page about PPTP security (http://poptop.sourceforge.net/dox/protocol-securi ty.phtml):

"PPTP is known to be a faulty protocol. The designers of the protocol, Microsoft, recommend not to use it due to the inherent risks. Lots of people use PPTP anyway due to ease of use, but that doesn't mean it is any less hazardous. The maintainers of PPTP Client and Poptop recommend using OpenVPN (SSL based) or IPSec instead."