Saturday, February 09, 2013

[bscvetcq] Freenet cannot be used for activism

Freenet cannot be used to anonymously coordinate most kinds of activism, because activism necessarily involves publicly visible action, actively attempting to change the world.  Such visible action leaves physical evidence with which an adversarial government can assemble a "short" list of suspects.

Being on a short list violates the first condition of Freenet's threat model: that the attacker is distant. Note well that this negative conclusion applies both to opennet and darknet. Once on a shortlist, the attacker can seek to compromise the darknet friends of a suspect to confirm identity.

Freenet might be able to be used if the activism consists initially of only discussion with no action, or only secret action, and culminates in exactly one final public action, then no further anonymous discussion or action.  Maybe it is impossible for activists to work this way, but maybe modern democracy was born this way.

Freenet can also be used for whistleblowing activism, where the whistleblower does not want or need to remain anonymous ("going public") after the data has been inserted and disseminated over Freenet.  For such an application, the importance is Freenet's censorship resistance, not author anonymity.

Freenet can be used for the dissemination of entertainment which is quietly consumed with no publicly visible effects.  This includes copyright violations and pornography.

No comments :