After 3 Years, Freenet 0.7 Released

evanbd writes "After over 3 years of work, the Freenet Project has announced the release of Freenet 0.7. 'Freenet is software designed to allow the free exchange of information over the Internet without fear of censorship, or reprisal. To achieve this Freenet makes it very difficult for adversaries to reveal the identity, either of the person publishing, or downloading content' ... 'The journey towards Freenet 0.7 began in 2005 with the realization that some of Freenet's most vulnerable users needed to hide the fact that they were using Freenet, not just what they were doing with it. The result of this realization was a ground-up redesign and rewrite of Freenet, adding a "darknet" capability, allowing users to limit who their Freenet software would communicate with to trusted friends.'"

Are we just now getting this dupe

because it was uploaded via freenet?

Re:Are we just now getting this dupe

... because it was uploaded via freenet?

No.

It's because the previous article was the release candidate and the official release came out today.

Great! How do I download it...

...without disclosing the fact that I want to hide the fact that I'm hiding something?

Because, of course, if I haven't got anything to hide, why would I want to hide the fact that I'm hiding something?

Maybe Freenet 0.8 will provide a way to hide the fact that I'm hiding the fact that I'm hiding something.

Re:Great! How do I download it...

...without disclosing the fact that I want to hide the fact that I'm hiding something?

Step 1 : Post as Anonymous Coward...

Re:Great! How do I download it...

Step 2: Don't put a link to your mother's book in your sig.

(That book looks awesome!)

ground-up redesign

The result of this realization was a ground-up redesign

They ground up the redesign? ;)

The failure of Freenet

Freenet is an important concept. On it you get complete freedom of speech: the ability to discuss and spread your ideas, with full anonymity and freedom from censorship. Of course, this means that you will probably come across things on it that will go against your beliefs. While nothing forces you to actually visit these freesites, you will have to come to terms that this might be cached on your computer even without you visiting them. But this is important to freedom of speech: if people where able to censor anything, the system just wouldn't work.

So why does Freenet fail? Lack of documentation. I don't mean ease of use in the interface - I mean for the protocols and network design. A system as important as Freenet -- one that people expect unfaltering anonymity and security from -- should be rigorously and meticulously documented.

But it's not. In fact, if you bring it up with the Freenet developers they will gladly tell you this is intentional -- that they use security through obscurity [wikipedia.org] to guard against someone finding a way to break the system.

So -- do you trust your freedom with the competency of a handful of developers to make a good design? I don't. I want as many people looking at the system as possible. I want people to really bash on it, to try to break it. This gives me confidence, not worry, because problems will be solved sooner than later.

This would also open up the possibility of more than one client to access the network. If you have two separate clients that implement the same strict protocol and one of them messes up, it's likely to be caught far sooner than with just one. An immediate example of where this would have helped is with a bug that existed in 0.7's AES implementation for a very long time, where the data wasn't being encrypted properly.

The Freenet developers don't want multiple clients either -- again, they worry that one might break the network. This line of thought is incomprehensible to me, because as a developer I would want things that could break my network to be discovered as soon as possible so I could fix the design.

Sure, you could look at the source code. It is Open Source, after all. But what if you don't know Java? I don't particularly want to learn Java just so I can review Freenet's code. As a C++ developer I might be able to read and understand most of it, but I don't trust myself to review something so important without years of prior Java experience -- the chance that I'd miss something is just too great.

Re:The failure of Freenet

It is not true that we practice security through obscurity. It *is* true that we haven't documented Freenet to the point that it could be reimplemented easily from the documentation. We don't want other node (not client) implementations right now, because Freenet is very much still a work in progress, and as a distributed, emergent system, lots of node implementations all of which implement slightly different behaviour (but the same protocol) would be a major problem: It would make it even harder for us to evaluate the effect of changes in the routing algorithm, for example. As a C++ developer with experience in security software, you'd be fine, java is easy, although there are some more interesting bits.

Re:The failure of Freenet

In fact, if you bring it up with the Freenet developers they will gladly tell you this is intentional -- that they use security through obscurity to guard against someone finding a way to break the system.

I'm the coordinator of the Freenet project and I'm calling bullshit on that one. I very much doubt any Freenet developer said that, and if they did, they weren't speaking on behalf of the project.

Yes, Freenet's low-level protocols could be better documented, but they are a work in progress, and in almost constant flux.

As for security through obscurity, we go to great lengths to explain to people how Freenet works, you can find a bunch of papers, and video lectures on our "Papers" page [freenetproject.org]). Take a look at this video [freenetproject.org] from three years ago explaining the 0.7 design before we'd even begun to code it.

Yes it would be wonderful if every tiny detail could be documented meticulously, but before we document it we have to design and test our ideas, and that means developing and releasing the reference implementation.

Freedom of Speech vs. Freedom of Hosts

I am impressed by Freenet's devotion to freedom of speech, but if my computer is hosting content, I should have the freedom to choose what that content is. Freedom of speech does not mean I should have to provide any resources to help you. This is where Freenet goes overboard. Freedom of speech is not an absolute.

Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles.

A new and improved way to share that child pornography!

More congratulations are in order for the powers that be. They have managed to convince a large segment of the population that the only consequence of anonymous communication on the internet is the proliferation of child porn. The citizens are now ready and willing to be tracked and logged.

Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles.

More congratulations are in order for the powers that be. They have managed to convince a large segment of the population that the only consequence of anonymous communication on the internet is the proliferation of child porn. The citizens are now ready and willing to be tracked and logged.

It's a signal-to-noise ratio problem, and what constitutes signal (or noise) is a function of what the authorities are looking for.

In China, Freenet is a tool used by traitors to pass destabilizing messages (to the PRC, that's signal) back and forth, hiding in a sea of American child porn (to the PRC, that's noise).

In the USA, Freenet is a tool used by pedophiles to pass disgusting images back and forth (to the FBI, that's signal), hiding in a sea of "Free Tibet" and "Falun Gong" emails (to the FBI, that's noise).

Unfortunately, since the network is designed that you can't host one without hosting the other, neither is a particularly advisable thing to have on your network, no matter where you live.

Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles. QWZX

Have you actually seen Freenet? The only purpose it's pretty much used for is the exchange of the worst crimes of humanity.

With Freenet you have to actively look for what you want. If you found "the worst crimes of humanity" it's because you were looking for them in the first place.

Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles. QWZX

The last time I used Freenet, in the 0.4? days, there were sites that would index whatever was submitted, without regard to content, and it was these index sites that were most heavily promoted for "finding" anything in Freenet. It was hard NOT to notice "the worst crimes of humanity", so to speak, when they're sitting there with a full description. Whether the descriptions were accurate, I have no idea, as the novelty of Freenet wore off as soon as I realized I could get better speed from a tape-carrying tortoise.

Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles. QWZX

Freenet 0.7 is vastly faster than 0.4, though not as fast as bittorrent (obviously). Currently, all the good index sites have anti-CP policies. They'll happily link photos from Tibet, though, or wikileaks mirrors (both present). The current crop of index sites also tends to do a good job indexing things. Also, much of the content is centered around FMS and the (less functional) Frost messaging systems (broadly similar to usenet; FMS even operates as an NNTP gateway, allowing you to use your favorite newsreader). You'll get content posted to boards you subscribe to, which tends to be at least somewhat relevant (ie, the signal to noise ratio is probably better than /. ;) ). I'd encourage you to try it out again, if you're interested in privacy and an anonymous network, but not if all you're looking for is the next bittorrent (though you can find music, movies, etc on Freenet if you want).

Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles. QWZX

The problem actually comes down to this :
The are 2 ways to regard spread of information

Either it should be possible to stop the spread of certain information , and that will put a stop to the abuses , but it will also make it possible for an authoritarian regime to silence any criticism , and will basically stop freedom of speech .

The other way is to make it impossible to stop information from spreading , and that way you wil ensure freedom of speech , and anonymity to whistle blowers and criticism , but at the same time , abuses will be unstoppable .

There is no midway to this , as it's about technical capabilities .

Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles. QWZX

Again, have you actually used Freenet?

I've used freenet. Albeit briefly. I went to a couple index pages and did not see any child pornography nor links to it. But then again I wasn't looking for it too closely. I saw mostly political blogs, MP3s, movies, and hacking tools.

Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles. QWZX

The only purpose it's pretty much used for is the exchange of the worst crimes of humanity.

Also, guns kill people
Cars kill the enviornment
Retention of individual sovereignty/responsibility/money kills "fairness".
So, I'm thinkin': a government program can fix all of these woes.

Re:Exchanging gas ovens?

You know, I never thought about it before... but why is it necessary to compare "rape" and "murder" and decide which of the two are worse?

Both are supremely unacceptable acts, full stop. The hypothetical question asked doesn't seem very realistic. "I would choose neither." "NO! What if you had to choose... because you're on a bus! And a madman would blow up the bus if you didn't choose, or it slowed down!" I'm not feeling it.

I'm not prepared to agree that killing N people is better or worse than raping N people, and that's before I even GET to the part where we bring up the religion thing. What if you *raped* N people for religion, but then killed N others just because you're a jerk? How does that stack up? And what if you double-parked because you wanted to make it harder for someone to drive away, thereby increasing the energy they expended and hastening, ever so slightly, the end of the universe? And you just raped N people to produce delicious candy? Hard to call that one, I tell you.

Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles.

Is that the only use you can think of for this? Is this just a hopeless attempt at trolling? Is your world view so ethnocentric that you don't realize how censorship affects people?

Here's a quick list of situations or people off the top of my head that could benefit from this:

- Citizens of a government which controls information flow (China, Kuwait, etc)
- Investigative journalists releasing stories (Judith Miller, anyone?)
- Leaking protected or damaging information (Wikileaks has been shown to be vulnerable)

If all you can think about is "OmG teh CHILDRENS!!111", then something is seriously wrong with you.

Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles.

Wikileaks has been mirrored to Freenet more than once. I don't know of an up to date link, or a single regularly updated source, but it's there.

A large number of photos from Tibet are available, and there is at least one highly active user posting them and keeping them up to date, with commentary.

Re:Congratulations to all pedophiles.

If I'm not mistaken, you could always load up freenet and use a Truecrypt drive as your "swap" space.

Re:How do you find trusted friends on a darknet?

To be honest Opennet seems much more fitting to their philosophy than Darknet, but for some reason or another they really want people to switch to Darknet. They even disabled the option to use Opennet in previous builds, until users complained. Generally you have no reason not to use Opennet, unless you're really paranoid, or in a country that forbids Freenet by law.

Re:How do you find trusted friends on a darknet?

We hadn't "disabled" opennet in previous builds, it just hadn't been implemented yet.

Re:Nothing to see here.... move along

Sounds like you could use some sort of "free network" to get around your employer's attempts at censorship. Unfortunately, as you've just discovered, no such thing exists.

Oh well, back to the grind.