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GIA to use P2P to Avoid Litigaton 238

Posted by CmdrTaco from the serious-uses-for-p2p dept.
DrMorpheus writes "With the recent demise of the Bush administration's controversial Terrorist Information Awareness (TIA) programme to monitor everyone in the US, citizens now have a chance to get their own back. A website to be launched later in 2003 will allow people to post information about the activities of government organisations, officials and the judiciary. The two MIT researchers behind the project face one serious problem: how to protect themselves against legal action should any of the postings prove false. The answer, they say, is to borrow a technique from the underground music-swapping community. Instead of storing the data in one place, they plan to distribute it around the internet in a similar way to the notorious Napster software that got music file-sharing under way."
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GIA to use P2P to Avoid Litigaton More

GIA to use P2P to Avoid Litigaton

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  • Wouldn't Kazaa be a better model? Napster was brought down by the centralization of the network. Kazaa can claim ignorance as to what people are downloading because they lack central servers that route the traffic. Instead they use a distributed network that .... well you guys know what I'm getting at.

    Nitpicking asside I think this is a great way to circumvent the not so liberal media's grip on information. Now if I could just figure out how to install the internet on my computer.
    • Methinks the Freenet Project [freenetproject.org] is a much better solution for anonymous, distributed publishing.

      Hopefully they'll adopt this protocol and give Freenet the recognition it has deserved for so long.
      • Unfortunately, Freenet in it's current form is virtually unuseable for most average users. I was even reading through all of the FAQ and scratching my head after a half hour.

        • Re:Freenet (Score:2, Informative)

          by Troed ( 102527 )
          Uhm.

          *) Install Freenet
          *) Browse to localhost:8888

          Done. What's unuseable?
          • Then you have to find lists of servers, etc... ugh. too damn complicated when I can just fire up K++ Lite and search.
          • The fact that it just sits there playing with itself when I click on a link to one of the supposedly "major" portals.
          • You really want to know?

            Most users would've quit at the installation because it was entirely too esoteric.

            OK, 127.0.0.1:8888 doesn't explain anything. What in the hell do I do?

            On top of that, why don't I have an Internet connection any more, and why is my computer so goddamned slow? (Note, I have a *very* big pipe here, and it seems to be saturated, with not even Freenet working).

            And I click on the "bookmarks" on that page, and none of them seem to work.

            Regardless of what Freenet is doing in the bac
      • The freenet project is an excellent tool to publish anonymously. With normal P2P you have to be connected in order to share the content, but with freenet you can publish, turn off your computer, and your content will still be there available to everyone.

        Freenet is a work in progress, but there is no doubt that freenet will become a p2p force to be reckoned with, it's just a question of when.

        Freenetters out there should just take it upon themselves to publish the GIA material on freenet, it will become th
    • I've been running a local GIA of sorts [denvercopwatch.org] for a while, and the ACLU says all we need to do is use a small disclaimer at the end of every page stating that the comments belong to the posters of said comment.

      I delete server logs on a daily basis, and almost all information is submitted anonymously.

      I understand the fear of prosecution, but is P2P really well suited for this?
      • the poster of the story probably meant to say Kazaa (though the techie in me says he/she should know the difference). Also the parent (and the ACLU of course) has the right idea there.

  • Re-inventing the wheel? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Noryungi ( 70322 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @12:25PM (#7209986) Homepage Journal
    Using a distributed P2P network? Isn't that what Freenet is all about? It also has the added bonus of offering strong encryption...

    I fail to see what's new here, except the fact that it takes place in the USA.
    • Freenet has problems; the authors of Freenet have stated that Freenet is subject to breakage at any time because it is NOT production software; it's actually a research project that should not be trusted to carry important data. Naturally this upset quite a lot of people. I think Slashdot even had a story about it as well.
      • That's mostly because its so hard for some people to grasp the concept of software being both for production and experimentation, like the Linux kernel. They'll get it one of these days. Until then geek sites like slashdot will happily use any misconceptions to create flame-war traffic, page hits and ad sales. Its users generate all this controversy by repeating stupid comments that they probably know nothing about.

  • Ugh (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sneftel ( 15416 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @12:29PM (#7210027)
    Oh, thank goodness! The magic of P2P will allow researchers to libel mercilessly without any fear of repercussions! Tell us again about the FREEMASONS!

    When did "information wants to be free" become "information wants to be indemnified"?

    • Re:Ugh (Score:3, Insightful)

      by nocomment ( 239368 )
      Doesn't this mean that anyone can post anything regardless of it being true? This bascially undermines the principal of the project, and makes the whole thing invalid. If they actually set it up that way, it's only use will be a good place to store all the predictions that come out before a macworld expo.

      • Doesn't this mean that anyone can post anything regardless of it being true?

        Actually, the FAQ elaborates on this possibility quite well. I've been watching this project for at least a month now, and I'm very excited by the prospects. To quote verbatim from model explanation page [mit.edu]:

        GIA contains many kinds of information, including data from public sources, images culled automatically in real time, as well as contributions from any individual who cares to help. If you contribute information, you'll do so

        • History has proved over and over (and over and over) that personal trust is not an effective method of ensuring accurate reporting. "Cited Sources", of course, are worthless in such a context; all you have to do is cite an internally circulated Departmental memo (or whatever) which the public does not have access to. That is, after all, one of the main points of this project. And if the information is the slightest bit damning, most people will discount denials by the authoritative source (as well they shou

      • Re:Ugh (Score:2)

        by 4of12 ( 97621 )

        Doesn't this mean that anyone can post anything regardless of it being true?

        Yes.

        However, it would be nice if information were digitally signed so that it could be both uniquely attributable and authentic. This need not compromise anonymity, either.

        Over time, those users contributing consistently good information would gradually become more trusted, while those contributing rumour or libel would be largely ignored.

        This kind of P2P network would be a good testbed for making a web of trust work.

  • Rumor mill run wild. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Hawthorne01 ( 575586 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @12:29PM (#7210028)
    Maybe it's just me, but without a system in place for fact-checking and followup, it seems to me this would quickly turn into a breeding ground for conspiracy theories of the worst sort, be they from the Right or the Left or anywhere in between.

    • If they figure out how to make it into something like a Wiki with comment histories to allow corroborating information to build, then false information would probably have a way to be corrected in time. This is the beauty of the Internet, for example, where anyone has the opportunity to provide a different viewpoint, and, eventually, the viewpoints average out into something that is fairly accurate. I'd believe information from several disparate news sites spanning several countries before I'd believe CNN
      • >then false information would probably have a way to be corrected in time.

        But people with an agenda can overload the system with not-true comments and distort the truth.

        For example look how many people advocate Linux here. Now look at a MS or an Apple website. What is the "truth"?
        • But people with an agenda can overload the system with not-true comments and distort the truth.

          We have that today already. The increasingly few monolithic media companies can't be bothered to put on any stream of news that doesn't propagate their cultures of fear and consumerism, and in some cases religious agendas. I'm interested in trying to sort through the junk+truth that comes from a big cross section of the world's population than the junk+truth that comes from a very small minority of people who

    • This article doesn't even touch on that part, but I assume the idea is that there's a lot of information which is easy to prove (e.g., person X appeared on C-SPAN and said Y) and could be signed by the site collecting and inserting it. Then there's insider information which can't be verified easily, but could be signed pseudonymously, in case the source wishes to come forward in the future. Furthermore, it's sometimes worthwhile to have rumors stated explicitly, in case someone wants to come forward and con
    • But if it's on the internet it has to be true! No need for any fact-checking! I can't remember the last time I actually had to "consider the source!" That was so like, yesterday!
    • Yeah, you could end up with wild claims of weapons of mass destruction and have an entire war based on some 2nd hand facts.... oh... wait... that already happened...

  • I will love this plan... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Valdrax ( 32670 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @12:29PM (#7210032)
    I will love this plan more than you can imagine if they can find a way to make it easy to upload information in such a fashion that it's organized and easy to find. One of the main reasons I gave up on FreeNet was the nigh impossibility of finding new and interesting content. If they could fix this, I think it would be a great thing for increasing government accountability.
  • What does this have to do with the Gemological Institute of America [gia.org]?

  • Validity (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Boing ( 111813 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @12:32PM (#7210074)
    Does it seem to anyone else like the GIA program is going to drown in its own chaff? I mean, if it's really supposed to be giving people "insider" information about the government, how are they going to confirm that any submission is true? Think of all the just-shy-of-slanderous commercials that air around election day... and that costs money. If people can anonymously, cheaply spread whatever "information" they want about their least favorite candidate, we'll never know whether anything we read is accurate.
    • >I mean, if it's really supposed to be giving people "insider" information about the government, how are they going to confirm that any submission is true?

      Excellent points.

      I suppose its the same with other secret political information in tightly-controlled state countries like China. You choose what you want to believe.

    • Re:Validity (Score:4, Funny)

      by rsborg ( 111459 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @01:00PM (#7210462) Homepage
      Does it seem to anyone else like the GIA program is going to drown in its own chaff? I mean, if it's really supposed to be giving people "insider" information about the government, how are they going to confirm that any submission is true?

      I have an awesome idea... They should allow a certain percentage of the users to "Moderate" in a rotating fashion, depending on their usage statistics.
      Ah, you say... who will police the police? Good question!
      They should also have a group of "Meta-moderators" that "Moderate" the "Moderators", thus preventing malicious "Moderation"... Wow, this is an incredible way to improve the signal to noise ratio!... I should patent it!

      Unless, of course there's prior art :-/

    • From one of their "About" pages: [mit.edu]

      To help ensure credibility, when you submit information about a particular individual or organization they will be contacted, allowing them to confirm or deny the information you submitted. Much like an FBI file, the information remains whether or not it turned out to be true.

      So, if something outrageous is posted, there are several possibilities: It's true but denied by the agency, true and confirmed by the agency, or false and refuted by the agency. I would venture that m

  • how do you think the government (or the loosely attached to the government) would react to such information being distributed? In the beginning it would be easy to target the small amount of computers/people possessing the information. any p2p network is only as good as how wide the file ditribution runs. Who would be willing to take the risks?
  • the file tranfers were p2p, but the file searches were centralized; napster was sued and forced to make it's searches filter 100% of coptyrighted files by the courts, which was infeasible, and that was the beginning of the end.
  • . . . how do we vet the legitimacy of the information posted?

    The article was much too short to provide detail, but the one concern I have is that posting reports of suspicious government activity doesn't guarantee its truth. Will there be some type of mechanism that will allow peer review (just like /. or kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org]) to determine an item's validity? Otherwise, it just becomes another rumour mill a la F---ed Company [f---edcompany.com], of little value to anyone except the tin-foil hat crowd.

  • Federal Judge information (Score:2, Informative)

    by zenray ( 9262 )
    Good Luck in getting any FOI information about Federal Judges. Even though they are subject to the same public information disclosure laws that everybody eles in the federal governemt there is one aspect that is different. To insure their safety all FOI requests about them are highly documented about the requester and then vetted by the Judge before any information is released. In other words 'they' know about all requests for information and the specific Judge controls whether the information is release

  • technical details (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dilvie ( 713915 )
    I'd like to see more technical details. How does the posting work? This model would be different from a normal data-driven website where PHP and a DBMS could reside on a central server and retrieve information. Will the server at MIT be a P2P client that gathers posts from clients together on the fly for each http request?

    Anybody have more info? Maybe I'm just blind, but I don't see any links to technical info on the site itself.

  • Solution looking for a problem? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kawika ( 87069 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @12:39PM (#7210181)
    What makes them think that they would somehow be responsible if they were to do something simple and straightforward like a discussion forum? The high court has already ruled on several of these kind of cases and free speech won. For example, they struck down the CDA [cdt.org] and they also said that Yahoo didn't have to rat out an anonymous Yahoo Groups poster.

    Why use an obscure technology? That will have more of a chilling effect on active participation than any other factor.

  • Full Circle (Score:3, Informative)

    by Afty0r ( 263037 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @12:41PM (#7210215) Homepage
    If you are willing to wait long enough, history repeats itself.

    Now, the citizens of the USA (academics at that) are having to resort to using the tactics of the underground to disseminate information about the conduct, actions and transgressions of their government for fear of persecution.

    There was a time when people respected the US for its stance on individual rights, freedoms and the ideals of America.

    While not a direct, damning criticism, one of the HUGE indicators of a state entering into an oppressive regime is when academics are not valued, and when academics are not free to openly discuss, read and disseminate ideas.
    This has already happened in the US... is this an indicator of what is to come, or just an anomaly?

  • Finally, a resource for the little people (Score:3, Interesting)

    by defile ( 1059 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @12:42PM (#7210224) Homepage Journal

    No Total Government Awareness program would be complete without chronicling information on every single police officer, district attorney, etc.

    Imagine how hard it would be for police to get anything done when it's public knowledge that they beat their wives, run every single red light they've ever come across (see video), and go to "massage parlors" for hours at a time (maybe to meet up with their congressmen).

  • Firstly if the information is wrong, and you can't remove it, it destroys the value of the site as a resource.

    Now on liability.

    If someone posts fraudulent information, wouldn't they be the ones that are liable?

    If the hosting site is liable then you have the second issue.
    1 The place where the information is.
    2 The holder of the link to that location could also be found liable. Some courts have ruled that linking is.

  • "they plan to distribute it around the internet in a similar way to the notorious Napster software that got music file-sharing under way"

    The main problem with Napster and the reason why it failed was because it kept a centralized list of files available, so they could simply shut down those servers.

    The newer p2p clients do not have this centralized list, but are truly distributed.

    I've heard this comparison a couple of times before and it is just wrong.

  • The answer, they say, is to borrow a technique from the underground music-swapping community. Instead of storing the data in one place, they plan to distribute it around the internet in a similar way to the notorious Napster software that got music file-sharing under way.

    That's great... We're worried about getting sued, so we're going to borrow a technique from a company that was sued out of existence. Smart plan.

  • I designed that network independtly of actually hearing about it.

    Its original purpose in my mind would be to make Diablo 1 unhackable even if there is no central server.

    Basically every node polices the other and stores as much character information. Then when one logs on, it gets the character information from the other nodes.

    Its tough to think about P2P, and its work coding them, so bleh.

    My newest P2P invention would be a serverless quake game. All computers spam out whats going on on their side, and
  • Swell. We're back to the standard anonymity issues. With such a mechanism, anyone can leak secret information with impunity, any time it's politically convenient. And not just for the government either; such a mechanism would be very useful for disgruntled employees to leak proprietary information.

    Remember, you might not like who's in power at the moment, but secrecy has valid purposes, such as keeping alive sources of intelligence [Many Bothans died to bring you this information...]

  • Demo site available at MIT (Score:4, Informative)

    by Jonah Hex ( 651948 ) <hexdotms AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @12:50PM (#7210334) Homepage Journal
    It is based on a site that Chris Csikszentmihalyi and Ryan McKinley of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Laboratory set up in July. That site encourages members of the public to post information about organisations, officials and politicians, such as their business links and the source of their campaign donations.
    The demo site [mit.edu] mentioned above is pretty damn cool, even offers monitoring of C-SPAN/C-SPAN2 [mit.edu] as well as a "robot" that watches and records [mit.edu] appearances by "people, pundits, or politicians who have recently been entered into our facial database". Hopefully the system looks this polished when it moves to being a P2P network!

    Jonah Hex
  • I thought this sounded familiar - here it is! [mrxswebpage.com]

  • Kill two birds with one stone (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ralphclark ( 11346 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @12:51PM (#7210357) Journal
    Why don't they just write up the allegations in the form of a song (popular music, i.e. "folk" music, *used* to be used to transmit stories after all) and stick it out on kazaa etc.

    Angry music and properly satirical lyrics ... hmm, that *would* be an improvement on the usual dull droning on and on about sex like 90% of the crap the listening public has to endure.

    Like I say, kill two birds with one stone.
    • dull droning on and on about sex like 90% of the crap

      Most of the remaining 10% is about the artist's angst over how dysfunctional his family is/was. Guess it beats singing about fuzzy bunny rabbits and teddy bears. Barely.

    • I think Ferris Fremont is on the line
      • Why don't they just write up the allegations in the form of a song and stick it out on kazaa etc.

        It's a song about 'party time.' It goes something like, 'Come to the party.' It sounds of course like a fun party; you know. Then later the vocal line goes, 'Join the party?' The singer says, 'Everybody join the party.' And a subtrack goes, Is everybody at the party? Is everybody present at the party?' Only if you listen carefully, they're saying, 'Is everybody president at the party?' and the singer is sin
  • I could have sworn that Poindexter's program was called "Total Information Awareness", not "Terrorist Information Awareness".

    Equally, I was under the impression that the aim of TIA wasn't total domestic surveillance of every bit of your life. But then again, on /., saying "information collection" and "government" in the same sentence automatically leads to a conclusion that the system is designed to take away every bit of your privacy for the NWO to exploit.

    -Erwos

  • Simple solution (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Cat_Byte ( 621676 )
    Why not just move the site offshore & hire foreigners to maintain it from anonymous submissions? It seems to be the answer for everything else and CEO's love it.
  • I understand the attempt to diffuse legal responsibility for false and defamatory information in the GIA database, but wouldn't the public interest be better served to create a GIA-like database where the information was known to be unbiased and accurate?

    The credibility of such a database is defined by it's weakest links. If the database becomes cluttered with inaccurate information from any conspiracy loon who comes along or person with an axe to grind against a political rival it will fail to be a credi

    • Sure, if you can find unbiased information. You can't though. The act of not putting up incorrect information is a bias against those who belive and support that viewpoint. In fact just putting all sides to an argument in order places a bias in. People remember what they read last and first (in that order) more than the middle parts, but what is first may be the only thing someone reads. Even though you tried, the very act of people reading (or hearing...) something means it goes though a bias filter

  • There's a neat idea that could be borrowed from freenet: digital signing. A person could choose to digitally sign all their postings to the p2p network, even if they remain anonymous and don't give their name. In this manner, a person can build a reputation for being trustworthy, or "on the inside", or "a thinker", etc. System support for searching for legitimately signed docs might be helpful.
  • Sort of like the purpose behind Iraq Coalition Casuality Count [lunaville.org]. Check out thier methodology [lunaville.org]. It would be nice to have a collection or reliable sources all together from public (read=verifiable) information.
  • Don't intentionally distribute information you know is false, and you won't have a problem. Newspapers, for example, publish all kinds of nasty things without getting nailed by liability suits. If a major concern of a project is how to protect themselves from liability when they screw up (or worse), something has gone wrong with that project.

  • how to protect themselves... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @01:46PM (#7210966)
    how to protect themselves against legal action should any of the postings prove false.

    And why, exactly, should they (whomever they may be) be immune from legal action should they post falsified data?

    Check your sources before distributing some random bit of gossip.

  • Use anonymous reputations to confirm data (Score:4, Insightful)

    by lawpoop ( 604919 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @01:48PM (#7211001) Homepage Journal
    It seems to me that there's several ways to confirm the validity of the data.

    One, use anonymous, public keys. Create a reputation system where anybody gives a personal rating to anyone else. (Sorta like Slashdot "friend or foe"). Reputations build over time, and some sources will be more reliable than others. You can decide who you will trust to tell you what's going on. You can rate sources, and you can see how others rate sources.

    Two, use what's called 'triangulation' in interview journalism. If three or more 'independant' sources agree on a datum, is more likely to be true than if just one says it's true. (if there is some kind of sinister collaboration to hack the triangulation system, fall back on the reputation system).

    • One, use anonymous, public keys. Create a reputation system where anybody gives a personal rating to anyone else. (Sorta like Slashdot "friend or foe"). Reputations build over time, and some sources will be more reliable than others. You can decide who you will trust to tell you what's going on. You can rate sources, and you can see how others rate sources.

      I thought we could all trust the network of news agencies to give us the lo-down everynite at 6 & 11pm? I mean, all the networks were yip-yapping

  • For those who question the need for protection from lawsuits, consider that you can be sued for publishing the truth. Also, a distributed system is less vulnerable to destruction than is a central-storage system.

    Opengov intends to illuminate of the dark corners of government where nasty things hide, by collecting information from a contributors. Done properly, it will combine information from all sides of the political spectrum to produce a coherent picture of our government. I have high hopes for its su

  • In the US, the First Amendment to our Constitution is not absolute.

    The value of the speech protected is weighed against the harm that such speech can cause to the community. "Fire" in a crowded movie house and all that.

    The most highly protected form of speech under the First Amendment to the US Constitution is political speech.

    Commercial speech, by comparison, receives far less robust protection in the courts. Clearly, there are types of speech which are neither political, nor commercial.

    This acti

  • P2P is fine if they want to use it, but I don't think that hiding behind technology is a very good solution to their problem, if indeed the problem is real.

    A much simpler defense against false reports is to encourage people who submit reports to suggest ways to verify their report, and at the same time to encourage others to actually do the verification, possibly attaching/linking a claim of verifcation to the original report. Readers would be openly informed that unverified reports should be treated as ex
  • So now we'll use P2P to shield ourselves from repercussions from false statements about lawmakers, thereby alienating lawmakers. What will they do then? The only thing they'll be able to do: create laws against P2P.

    Brilliant, people. Just brilliant.

    ::Colz Grigor

  • This project just SCREAMS freenet. Yes, the project had a little turmoil, but it is functional and doing well...

    Freenet allows you to post things others might not want you to post, anonymously, securely, and if your computer is turned off, that information can still be stored over the network in a nodes 'cache'... the more popular the file, the easier, faster, and more distributed the file gets....

    Freenet [freenetproject.org]
    Freeweb [sourceforge.net] - easy way to post websites(freesites)
    Frost [sourceforge.net] - a message board frontend for downloading/se

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