If you go through 3 nodes, that means 4x as much traffic as if you just went straight peer to peer.
In general that's true, but in the situations OneSwarm is designed for it's less of a problem. The full details are in the OneSwarm research paper, but here's a summary:
Most P2P networks have enormous excess capacity - the problem is allocating it efficiently (avoiding bottlenecks etc)
The popularity distribution of files in P2P networks is highly skewed, so you can save a lot of bandwidth by replicating popular files and looking for nearby replicas (the replication happens for free in most P2P networks because people share what they download)
Friends tend to have similar taste, so even if you're looking for a not-so-popular object there's a better-than-average chance of finding a nearby replica if everyone connects to their friends
I'm a lead dev on a similar project called Anomos, which provides anonymous and encrypted BitTorrent without requiring the slow Friend To Friend system that this uses.
Um, really? Your website makes it sound like you're doing something very similar, but routing through strangers rather than friends:
After being sent, packets are routed through a number of intermediary nodes before reaching their final destination. These intermediary nodes can only confirm that their neighbors are participating in the network, they cannot confirm that their neighbors are sharing or merely relaying information, nor can they determine what is being shared.
Why is routing through strangers better than the "slow Friend to Friend system" used by OneSwarm?
Now, I bet if you got 200 sweet old ladies to drink three cups of coffee a day, there would be no phantoms or voices floating about in their heads.
Nah, old people get high like everyone else, they just have the sense not to talk about it. Did you ever wonder why your grandmother drinks nineteen cups of tea a day and always has that far-away look in her eyes? While she's patting your hand and saying "That's nice, dear" she's looking over your shoulder at a four-foot purple spider crawling up the wall behind the TV singing verses from the Koran in the voice of Bing Crosby and she's fucking LOVING IT!
Nah, you just present it with a situation where acting will harm one human and failing to act will harm another. Then it jams up and starts vibrating and sparks shoot out of its ears. (Or at least that's how it works for robots. To be honest I don't know where a routing algorithm's ears are, but this seems as good a way as any to find out.)
But you do stand outside (sometimes) and look at houses. The reason you don't see naked people when doing this is that most of them draw that privacy screen when they're naked, not when they think a camera might be coming, and thus are invisible from the street.
Yeah, of course - if people don't want to be seen they draw the curtains. But what if they don't mind being seen doing the dishes, but get kind of uncomfortable if someone stands there and watches them doing the dishes for half an hour? Who's being rude in that situation?
And this case is about photographers having to assume, groundlessly in 99.3% of cases, that they shouldn't take pictures of houses because the people in them may not know to close a curtain.
That doesn't sound like the situation we're discussing, which is one company creating a massive database of photos.
Think how rude you're being. Seriously. With the implication that it's your right to demand that your house, built right smack on a public street, not be photographed or even looked at too closely, because you don't feel like closing a curtain, and yet feel compelled to walk around nude but do not wish to be seen.
Like I said before, I don't object to being seen, I object to being watched. Do you understand the difference between those two concepts? If someone doesn't want to be seen, then yes, they should draw the curtains. But in my opinion it's reasonable to expect not to be watched in your own home even if you are visible from the outside.
We use the phrase "in public" to indicate the times when you don't have an expectation of privacy.
Right, I understand the difference between public and private, but the question is where the boundaries lie and who's responsible for making sure they're not overstepped.
No, I "respect" your privacy by not trying to break it. A thin curtain indicating your intention of being private is enough, even if I could see you through it by using an IR camera.
If a thin curtain is enough, why isn't the fact that I'm inside my house enough? I consider the insides of other people's houses to be private - I don't avoid looking at houses in case there's someone in the window, but I don't stand outside the window watching people either. It's the difference between 'not seeing' (impossible) and 'not watching' (possible). That's the kind of distinction that gets lost when you photograph every house in the country and create a searchable public archive of the photos.
But anyway, I think we're really just disagreeing about specific cases here - we agree that the boundaries of privacy are set by a combination of the viewee indicating a desire for privacy and the viewer respecting that desire. Everything else is just a matter of degree.
Stabbing you in the eye is a crime because it causes real damages. The only thing photographing someone does is steal their soul, which isn't a crime because it's a joke.
Society decides what's "real damage" and what's not - for example you can sue people for defamation because society values reputation. I'm arguing that society should value privacy in a similar way.
But you rant on about eye-gouging and people being dicks because they exercise their legal right to photograph anything they can see without trespassing.
Do you understand the difference between a legal right and a moral right? Can you think of any circumstances at all, not necessarily related to privacy, where a person might be acting within their legal rights but infringing on other people's moral rights? That's all I'm talking about here. I have no problem with people walking around snapping photos, but when they start to offend other people's sensibilities by intruding on their personal lives, even if they do so without breaking the law, they are being dicks.
If your privacy depends on me pretending not to look, you aren't private. If you realized that I might look and bought a curtain you would be private.
You're confusing privacy with secrecy. Privacy often depends on other people's voluntary restraint - that's why you hear about "respecting people's privacy". Pushing the boundaries of observation as far as the law allows, with no regard for other people's wishes, is disrespectful.
Why is it worse to do this in bulk?
Good question. It's worse because more people are affected.
Is your privacy lessened because there's a photo of my house as well? I'd think that'd bring some anonymity.
No, my privacy isn't lessened but yours is. The more photos there are, the more people are affected - there's no anonymity in numbers because the database is searchable.
If Google did this there'd be less need for everyone else to do it.
Less "need"? How many people need a photo of my house?
But if everyone does this manually your privacy will die in a thousand individual snapshots on sites you can't contact to get accidental nudity, etc removed.
False dichotomy - Streetview won't reduce the number of other people taking pictures.
All for totally justifiable reasons - your neighbor will snap your house while taking a picture of his daughter's first steps and he won't be willing to delete the picture just because you're buying weed in the background.
I don't really care if my neighbour accidentally snaps me buying weed. I care if he follows me around photographing everything I do, and I'll still care even if he can prove he's within his legal rights.
No, the statement hasn't been invalidated - no circumstance can invalidate it, because it's a statement about what should happen, not what can happen. We still have a moral right to privacy even if our legal right to privacy is not being upheld by the courts. That's why I drew the distinctions between expectation-as-prediction and expectation-as-entitlement: if you don't distinguish between what can happen and what should happen, any right can be "proved not to exist" just by violating it.
I have no idea why they teach us as children that everyone thought Chris Columbus would sail off the edge of the earth.
Because otherwise they'd have to admit that he discovered the Americas by mistake, which is a bit of an anticlimax for a national origin myth.
"Ever since Christopher Columbus stumbled across this proud land while looking for somewhere else, Americans have cherished the values of bravery, integrity, and ignoring expert advice."
Flat earthers etc. are fine with me so long as they don't all join the school board and force the teaching of their ideas in public schools.
Why is everyone so bothered about creationism being taught in schools? Kids aren't stupid, they know bullshit when they hear it. Like most Europeans I was taught religion at school and developed a healthy skepticism for it. Let the kids get innoculated while they're young and cynical and maybe they won't catch the disease when they get old and desperate.
Reality. People need to cope with it. They're visible.
Nobody's asking to be invisible - people are asking not to be watched. Anybody can photograph me without my permission, just as anyone can stab me in the eye - but I still don't want them to do so. If they disregard my wishes, I'd like the law to back me up.
Privacy isn't about pretending you can't be seen, it's about asking people to treat you with respect. Photographing people's houses en masse and posting the photos on the web without permission is disrespectful. Not impossible, not illegal, but still wrong.
If they're doing something interesting their neighbors are already taking pictures, they just aren't (yet) sharing them in an easily indexable way.
Then those neighbours are being dicks. Perhaps Google should change its motto to "Don't be a dick."
Banning Google's Streetview would prevent people from seeing the area, but would not prevent an enemy of yours from placing a perfectly legal webcam and watching you specifically, or sharing this data
"An enemy" might do just about anything, including stabbing me in the eye. I'm more concerned with what ordinary companies and individuals might do - the kind of ordinary companies and individuals who will generally obey privacy laws if the government has the balls to introduce them.
But before we start calling for legislation let's see how much can be achieved by pointing out that Google is being a dick. That's what the writer mentioned in TFA was doing, and I fully support it.
The only way to have a reasonable expectancy of privacy is to enforce it yourself by using insane amounts of encryption.
Having a reasonable expectation of privacy doesn't mean it's reasonable to expect that nobody will invade your privacy, it means it's reasonable to expect that nobody should. 'Expectation' in this context doesn't mean 'prediction', it means something closer to 'entitlement'. A reasonable expectation is one that most people would recognise, not one that nobody can violate.
Just a few years ago, the same USA demanded that ALL passports to be used while entering the USA had to be machine readable and it is the case now.
What you say is true but widely misinterpreted. "Machine readable" doesn't mean contactless smartcards - the strip of OCR characters already present in most passports is machine readable according to ICAO regulations. Likewise for "biometrics" - the ICAO regulations don't require fingerprints, iris scans or DNA, just a digital photograph (and the photograph doesn't need to be stored on the passport itself, it can be stored in a database and called up by swiping the passport's OCR strip).
Most countries' passports already meet these standards and have done so for years. The push to adopt RFID, fingerprints, iris scans, DNA and an international public key infrastructure is not driven by ICAO regulations, although that's the excuse every government has been making.
Why bomb one plane when you could blow up a whole airport terminal?
Because bombing a plane is more terrifying - many people are scared of flying, few are scared of airports.
Anyone remember Oklahoma city? Much more devastating than just a plane blowing up in mid-flight.
And much less terrifying. I don't know anyone who gets nervous walking into public buildings.
Look at that guy in Japan that ran over people in a mall with a truck and then started stabbing people. He was armed with a KNIFE.
Yup, he killed more people than any of the London tube bombers. No backpack full of explosives, no elaborate plan, just a truck and a knife. But I bet people in Japan didn't spend the next year breaking out in cold sweats whenever they went to the mall.
Difficult to get around restrictive "cyber laws" when the government can exercise control over the infrastructure.
Then we'll have to manage without infrastructure: neighbourhood wireless networks, sneakernet with Bluetooth phones and memory sticks, password-protected zip files sent over "authorized" IM networks. Maybe it's not exactly the bright cyber-future William Gibson had in mind but it still beats watching TV.
I completely agree - given the recent actions of the US government with regard to internet freedom it's not only hypocritical of them to criticise the Chinese government, it might also be counterproductive, since Chinese people can see the hypocrisy and may be tempted to defend their own government. On the other hand I think it's important for groups outside the government in both countries to keep up the criticism and show that the real distinction isn't between America and China, but between freedom and control.
I visited this GIFC site. Noted that there is no way to contact anyone there! (freedom ??).. and its statements seem to be written by some right-wingers who believe in some 'sanctity' of 'freedom of information' in these United States of America
According to its Deputy Director, Shiyu Zhou, GIFC is "a small team of dedicated volunteers, connected through their common practice of Falun Gong, who have come together to work for the cause of Internet freedom." GIFC recently asked the US Senate for $50 million in funding to continue its work.
Please note that I'm not posting this information to discredit GIFC - I agree with what they're doing (see my homepage), but I think we should pay attention to why they're doing it and who's paying the bills.
One of the things that I have found in my travels to China is that they do not regard their govt the same way we do (I'm assuming the parent and GP poster are Americans, b/c I'm American, and that's what we do:-) ). Chinese do not identify their country with their govt, they're two separate things.
I'm intrigued to hear that, because I'd started to form the opposite impression: whereas Americans consider it patriotic to criticise their government (attacking the government == defending the people), Chinese seem to consider it unpatriotic (attacking the government == attacking the people). But I've never been to China - perhaps the crucial difference is whether the criticism comes from inside or outside the country?
I must admit I find it hard not to get defensive about my country's actions, even when I disagree with them, if I feel I'm being blamed. If Chinese people feel the same way then maybe it's more productive to focus on tools that help them organise resistance within their own country, than on tools that help them access Western media (with the implication that they should aspire to be more like the West)?
Slashdot Mirror
In general that's true, but in the situations OneSwarm is designed for it's less of a problem. The full details are in the OneSwarm research paper, but here's a summary:
Um, really? Your website makes it sound like you're doing something very similar, but routing through strangers rather than friends:
Why is routing through strangers better than the "slow Friend to Friend system" used by OneSwarm?
But did you really switch to Linux, or did you discover that deep down, although you were scared to admit it, you've always been a Linux user?
Nah, old people get high like everyone else, they just have the sense not to talk about it. Did you ever wonder why your grandmother drinks nineteen cups of tea a day and always has that far-away look in her eyes? While she's patting your hand and saying "That's nice, dear" she's looking over your shoulder at a four-foot purple spider crawling up the wall behind the TV singing verses from the Koran in the voice of Bing Crosby and she's fucking LOVING IT!
The test release works with FF3, I've just installed it - thanks for the link.
Oh great, so now someone can destroy the world just by messing around with Greasemonkey?
Nah, you just present it with a situation where acting will harm one human and failing to act will harm another. Then it jams up and starts vibrating and sparks shoot out of its ears. (Or at least that's how it works for robots. To be honest I don't know where a routing algorithm's ears are, but this seems as good a way as any to find out.)
Yeah, of course - if people don't want to be seen they draw the curtains. But what if they don't mind being seen doing the dishes, but get kind of uncomfortable if someone stands there and watches them doing the dishes for half an hour? Who's being rude in that situation?
That doesn't sound like the situation we're discussing, which is one company creating a massive database of photos.
Like I said before, I don't object to being seen, I object to being watched. Do you understand the difference between those two concepts? If someone doesn't want to be seen, then yes, they should draw the curtains. But in my opinion it's reasonable to expect not to be watched in your own home even if you are visible from the outside.
Apart from angry customers, what would the providers gain by choosing address/port-dependent filtering?
Right, I understand the difference between public and private, but the question is where the boundaries lie and who's responsible for making sure they're not overstepped.
If a thin curtain is enough, why isn't the fact that I'm inside my house enough? I consider the insides of other people's houses to be private - I don't avoid looking at houses in case there's someone in the window, but I don't stand outside the window watching people either. It's the difference between 'not seeing' (impossible) and 'not watching' (possible). That's the kind of distinction that gets lost when you photograph every house in the country and create a searchable public archive of the photos.
But anyway, I think we're really just disagreeing about specific cases here - we agree that the boundaries of privacy are set by a combination of the viewee indicating a desire for privacy and the viewer respecting that desire. Everything else is just a matter of degree.
Society decides what's "real damage" and what's not - for example you can sue people for defamation because society values reputation. I'm arguing that society should value privacy in a similar way.
Do you understand the difference between a legal right and a moral right? Can you think of any circumstances at all, not necessarily related to privacy, where a person might be acting within their legal rights but infringing on other people's moral rights? That's all I'm talking about here. I have no problem with people walking around snapping photos, but when they start to offend other people's sensibilities by intruding on their personal lives, even if they do so without breaking the law, they are being dicks.
You're confusing privacy with secrecy. Privacy often depends on other people's voluntary restraint - that's why you hear about "respecting people's privacy". Pushing the boundaries of observation as far as the law allows, with no regard for other people's wishes, is disrespectful.
Good question. It's worse because more people are affected.
No, my privacy isn't lessened but yours is. The more photos there are, the more people are affected - there's no anonymity in numbers because the database is searchable.
Less "need"? How many people need a photo of my house?
False dichotomy - Streetview won't reduce the number of other people taking pictures.
I don't really care if my neighbour accidentally snaps me buying weed. I care if he follows me around photographing everything I do, and I'll still care even if he can prove he's within his legal rights.
No, the statement hasn't been invalidated - no circumstance can invalidate it, because it's a statement about what should happen, not what can happen. We still have a moral right to privacy even if our legal right to privacy is not being upheld by the courts. That's why I drew the distinctions between expectation-as-prediction and expectation-as-entitlement: if you don't distinguish between what can happen and what should happen, any right can be "proved not to exist" just by violating it.
Because otherwise they'd have to admit that he discovered the Americas by mistake, which is a bit of an anticlimax for a national origin myth.
"Ever since Christopher Columbus stumbled across this proud land while looking for somewhere else, Americans have cherished the values of bravery, integrity, and ignoring expert advice."
Why is everyone so bothered about creationism being taught in schools? Kids aren't stupid, they know bullshit when they hear it. Like most Europeans I was taught religion at school and developed a healthy skepticism for it. Let the kids get innoculated while they're young and cynical and maybe they won't catch the disease when they get old and desperate.
LIES! The Earth has no underside! Australia is a fictional country, like Uqbar and West Virginia!
Nobody's asking to be invisible - people are asking not to be watched. Anybody can photograph me without my permission, just as anyone can stab me in the eye - but I still don't want them to do so. If they disregard my wishes, I'd like the law to back me up.
Privacy isn't about pretending you can't be seen, it's about asking people to treat you with respect. Photographing people's houses en masse and posting the photos on the web without permission is disrespectful. Not impossible, not illegal, but still wrong.
Then those neighbours are being dicks. Perhaps Google should change its motto to "Don't be a dick."
"An enemy" might do just about anything, including stabbing me in the eye. I'm more concerned with what ordinary companies and individuals might do - the kind of ordinary companies and individuals who will generally obey privacy laws if the government has the balls to introduce them.
But before we start calling for legislation let's see how much can be achieved by pointing out that Google is being a dick. That's what the writer mentioned in TFA was doing, and I fully support it.
Having a reasonable expectation of privacy doesn't mean it's reasonable to expect that nobody will invade your privacy, it means it's reasonable to expect that nobody should. 'Expectation' in this context doesn't mean 'prediction', it means something closer to 'entitlement'. A reasonable expectation is one that most people would recognise, not one that nobody can violate.
That's truly sad.
What you say is true but widely misinterpreted. "Machine readable" doesn't mean contactless smartcards - the strip of OCR characters already present in most passports is machine readable according to ICAO regulations. Likewise for "biometrics" - the ICAO regulations don't require fingerprints, iris scans or DNA, just a digital photograph (and the photograph doesn't need to be stored on the passport itself, it can be stored in a database and called up by swiping the passport's OCR strip).
Most countries' passports already meet these standards and have done so for years. The push to adopt RFID, fingerprints, iris scans, DNA and an international public key infrastructure is not driven by ICAO regulations, although that's the excuse every government has been making.
Because bombing a plane is more terrifying - many people are scared of flying, few are scared of airports.
And much less terrifying. I don't know anyone who gets nervous walking into public buildings.
Yup, he killed more people than any of the London tube bombers. No backpack full of explosives, no elaborate plan, just a truck and a knife. But I bet people in Japan didn't spend the next year breaking out in cold sweats whenever they went to the mall.
Then we'll have to manage without infrastructure: neighbourhood wireless networks, sneakernet with Bluetooth phones and memory sticks, password-protected zip files sent over "authorized" IM networks. Maybe it's not exactly the bright cyber-future William Gibson had in mind but it still beats watching TV.
I completely agree - given the recent actions of the US government with regard to internet freedom it's not only hypocritical of them to criticise the Chinese government, it might also be counterproductive, since Chinese people can see the hypocrisy and may be tempted to defend their own government. On the other hand I think it's important for groups outside the government in both countries to keep up the criticism and show that the real distinction isn't between America and China, but between freedom and control.
According to its Deputy Director, Shiyu Zhou, GIFC is "a small team of dedicated volunteers, connected through their common practice of Falun Gong, who have come together to work for the cause of Internet freedom." GIFC recently asked the US Senate for $50 million in funding to continue its work.
Please note that I'm not posting this information to discredit GIFC - I agree with what they're doing (see my homepage), but I think we should pay attention to why they're doing it and who's paying the bills.
I'm intrigued to hear that, because I'd started to form the opposite impression: whereas Americans consider it patriotic to criticise their government (attacking the government == defending the people), Chinese seem to consider it unpatriotic (attacking the government == attacking the people). But I've never been to China - perhaps the crucial difference is whether the criticism comes from inside or outside the country?
I must admit I find it hard not to get defensive about my country's actions, even when I disagree with them, if I feel I'm being blamed. If Chinese people feel the same way then maybe it's more productive to focus on tools that help them organise resistance within their own country, than on tools that help them access Western media (with the implication that they should aspire to be more like the West)?
I didn't realise that - not sure whether it makes me feel better or worse. :-)