[p2p-hackers] In search of the Darknet....

[Michael Rogers]

Hi Duncan,

> But, and this is where I may have misread the slides or there may
> be more to it than I got from the slides: this /isn't/ about a Darknet -

I think "darknet" can refer to the visibility of the network as well as 
the visibility of content. Freenet 0.7 is a darknet in the sense that 
only your friends know you're part of the network. Users can see all the 
content in the network, but they can't see all the participants.

> limiting connections to trusted friends
> in itself creates a small WASTE-like network - otherwise, how do you
> prevent leakage, without adding the enforcement of ACLs (which was not
> mentioned in the slides)?

Sorry, what do you mean by leakage? Freenet's aim is to prevent 
publishers and readers from discovering one another's identities, not to 
restrict the propagation of files.

> In other words, the goals of the Darknet (privacy for small groups) are
> opposite to those of both of Freenet and seemingly also 'Freenet 2'
> (anonymity, public publishing and querying).

I don't agree that anonymity is the opposite of privacy. If only your 
friends know you're part of the network, and even your friends don't 
know which files you read and publish, then how does that undermine the 
goal of privacy for small groups?

> In the meantime, I'm still left with the surprising conclusion that
> no-one is implementing the global Darknet (or 'Friendnet') in an open
> way!!

I've been working on a scalable, robust, anonymous F2F communication 
network for the last three years - but as for "implementing", it might 
be a while yet.  :-)

Cheers,
Michael