Article:Irish pioneer pilloried for file-swap software

jd

from
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1724424,00.html

Irish pioneer pilloried for file-swap software
Adrian Russell



AN Irish software designer has been attacked by security experts for developing a programme that will allow internet users to share files anonymously.

Ian Clarke, from Navan, Co Meath, will launch a new version of his Freenet system within months, making the sharing of digital information untraceable by the authorities, and making detection of piracy by corporations and governments more difficult.



While Clarke says he wants to promote free speech, security specialists are warning that the software will be abused by terrorists, paedophiles and computer hackers. Conor Flynn, technical director of Rits, an Irish information security company, says Freenet will be used for “malevolent and malicious purposes” and Clarke knows that.

“The Freenet system group say it’s for sharing information and they can’t help it if people abuse it. They know damn well that it will be,” Flynn said. “The ability to remain anonymous while surfing the web is dangerous. Internet protocol addresses and connection details have been used by police in many prosecutions. With systems like Freenet, the police would no longer be able to get information like that and the question is why?”

Flynn argues that Clarke’s invention is not like turning off caller ID on a mobile phone. “If you ring someone anonymously, at least the phone company has the information,” he said. “But with this technology nobody has a clue what you did or when you did it. Freenet is about destroying that data. It uses heavy encryption to disguise the user and that can only be for malicious purposes.”

The Senate Commerce Committee in America recently called on the US government to legislate against such technology because terrorists might employ it. Though his aim is to aid dissidents in countries where computer traffic is monitored by government, Clarke accepts that his innovation will bring security concerns.

“I think that these groups already have all the tools they need, even without Freenet,” he said. “But even if this weren’t the case, the benefits of Freenet far outweigh the disadvantages, just as the benefits of free speech far outweigh its disadvantages.”

The programmer says that his software will permit the anonymous publication and consumption of information on the internet, making it impossible for governments, especially repressive regimes, to restrict the flow of information. “My hope is that it will be more difficult for undemocratic countries to censor their citizens’ access to information through the internet,” he said.

An early version of Freenet is in use in countries such as China, allowing the free distribution of information despite government censorship. The programme is also used in countries, including America, to distribute censored information such as Church of Scientology documents. According to a New York Times article last week, the programme has already been downloaded by more than 2m people.

New so-called “darknet” technologies, such as Freenet, also make record companies’ detection of music file-sharing more difficult. A US Supreme Court ruling has effectively closed down sites allowing illegal downloading of music. Napster, the first peer-to-peer music sharing service, was shut down by court order, after several major recording companies filed lawsuits, and another file-sharing site, Grokster, was the subject of the Supreme Court ruling in June.

Clarke says that, as his system was not developed for downloading tracks, it should be within the law. “Freenet’s goal is not to permit copyright infringement, although this may be an inevitable consequence of our goals,” said the former double-winner of the Irish Young Scientist of the Year competition.

“We are aware of no laws either in Britain or America which prohibit the creation of software like Freenet.”

Clarke, a former pupil of Dundalk grammar school, Co Louth, now lives in Edinburgh and is employed by a music recommendation website. He is developing the system for free.

“Freenet is a non-profit project and my involvement is purely on a voluntary basis,” Clarke said.

“We do accept donations through our website, and use these to pay one developer to work full-time on the project.”

-comment removed cause i'm drubk-
jd

dahamsta

This is news? Freenet's been available for what, five years?

Looks to me like this Conor Flynn muppet was just looking for a bi of free PR from gullible "technology journalists".

adam

ecksor

I'm not at all well informed about file sharing, but it sounds like this is just making the technology to make transfers difficult to trace more accessible. I wonder what sort of malevolent people he's worried about that are so well dangerous but wouldn't have access to such technology and expertise already.

tck

It's been out for yonks, only cause hes releasing an update soon..is it in the limelight - nice idea too.

Martyr

They are probably highlighting the mentioned software because of recent IRMA court proceedings, perhaps?

The authorities already know that paedophiles in ireland using the internet, are free to use file sharing software to distribute images and videos of children being sexually abused, but claim not to have enough resources to tackle the problem..

This is the case in the UK also, but its rubbish if you ask me.

The fact that the authorities already know of these paedophiles, and what they are doing brings up alot of questions in my mind.

Its a sad situation, because I believe we all have a moral obligation to deal with the problem, rather than indirectly make it easier for the offenders to get away with the crimes they are committing, and ignore the reality, which is what we all seem to be doing.

And i do know that there are people with expertise that can provide the technology to remain anonymous on the internet already, but that to me doesn't make it acceptable to create more of the same.

Its like western countries that sell weapons to poor nations when they know that it will bring untold misery to the people caught up in the corruption of their leaders.."if we don't sell them, someone else will"

So that makes it alright?

And its the same with file-sharing, innocent children will suffer, and you might forget that.

I know my comments are off topic a little, as far as computer security goes, but I just wanted to give my opinion on it.

Pa ElGrande

The problem of paedophilia has existed for a long time worldwide, not just Ireland. If you look at the convictions of those who have intefered with children in recent yearsm none have had anything to do with the internet and are all committed by people whom the community has placed their trust - doctors, teachers, priests, gardai, civil servants, the list is endless, all average punters like you and me. It did not just suddenly arrive with the Internet and if you switched off the internet tomorrow it will never stop.

In fact if you want paedophile material and you want to keep it secret the worst possible place you can trade this material is via P2P since the system is so open and easily traceable. Most of this vile material is distributed via closed rings and detection largely relies on social engineering and police follow ups on individuals after raids or tip-offs from the public.

Freenet will not make this process of detection any harder, most people who have been done for child porn in this country have been convicted by evidence based on their credit card transaction's and remote web server logs.

Tackling the threat from paedophiles can only be dealt with at local community level not by monitoring internet traffic.

ecksor

Average Joe, your comments are perfectly on topic as far as I'm concerned.

I don't believe that failing to introduce new technology like this will help to keep this capability out of anyone's hands. This ability to do this certainly does already exist and it's fallacious to think that there's much to be gained by trying to stop the introduction of this application. These technologies are generally developed in the interests of free speech and escape from government censorship and we can't ignore the potential benefits any more than we can ignore the potential risks.

In terms of Ireland I'm pretty certain based on my knowledge of the extremely limited resources that are devoted to this problem (although my information is a few years out of date and if I'm wrong then I'd welcome being corrected) that traffic analysis has very little or no part to play in it.

rsynnott

ecksor wrote:

I'm not at all well informed about file sharing, but it sounds like this is just making the technology to make transfers difficult to trace more accessible. I wonder what sort of malevolent people he's worried about that are so well dangerous but wouldn't have access to such technology and expertise already.

Such systems make it frighteningly easy for people to download child porn. Even computer illiterate people. There's a flamewar on the topic on slashdot now and again.

ecksor

If the technology isn't available then you'll just have the computer literate ones downloading the child porn and everyone can just pretend that the capability doesn't already exist.

Can someone enlighten the discussion as to how they think this practically affects investigations into such crimes? The RITS chap claims that it does, but hasn't really gone into a lot of detail.

rsynnott

ecksor wrote:

If the technology isn't available then you'll just have the computer literate ones downloading the child porn and everyone can just pretend that the capability doesn't already exist.

The fewer people downloading it the better, IMO.

ecksor wrote:

Can someone enlighten the discussion as to how they think this practically affects investigations into such crimes? The RITS chap claims that it does, but hasn't really gone into a lot of detail.

There is a large element of plausible deniability. The system works by storing some files, fairly randomly, on each user's computer. These files may (and probably do; it's thought to be the major use of the network outside China) include child porn. So if you happen to be a Freenet user and child porn turns up in your freenet storage/cache directory... well, who's to say you put it there? The system may have by itself. (In addition, Freenet's traffic is encrypted and very difficult to trace from machine to machine, apparently; even finding out who uses it would be very difficult.

ecksor

That's a fair point, but the same applies to open wireless networks and the world is riddled with them.

rsynnott

It's even more the case here, though. Even if you find the offending material actually on a person's computer, there may be no way to prove whether it was put there by them or the system. In addition, I think a lot of non-paeodphile users possibly don't realise that they're providing disk-space and bandwidth for child-porn trafficing.

ecksor

There are a lot of non-paedophile ISPs doing the same thing.

rsynnott

ecksor wrote:

There are a lot of non-paedophile ISPs doing the same thing.

Fair enough. I'd be highly uncomfortable with this myself, though. In particular, with the idea that if I used this system I would almost certainly at some point be hosting child porn.

ecksor

Seriously, I don't mean to be flippant or dismissive above, I'm just unclear on where people propose that we draw the line. I mean, there's a very decent chance that boards has been used for undesirable activities over the years that we've been running it, but I wouldn't just shut it down on that basis. Some of the crud that I've occasionally discovered and removed on the free webspace we provide has been pretty manky for example (although I can't recall anything illegal, apart from copyright issues) but I'm not about to remove the service from the majority of decent users. I know that the scale and severity is different, but I think the point stands.

rsynnott

The point is that, in this country at least, there is no ethically defensible use of Freenet. Major applications include child porn and copyright violation (not too much right now, because of the network's extreme slowness). There's arguably a valid need in places like Saudi Arabia and China, where freedom of speech on the internet is locked down. I'm not necessarily arguing for banning it, but there are certainly problems with it, and the vast majority of Europeans using it are probably up to no good.

dahamsta

rsynnott wrote:

The point is that, in this country at least, there is no ethically defensible use of Freenet.

Ireland's data retention policy is a pretty ethically defensible reason to use it imho. The fact that the current government felt it necessary to initially implement it secretly and with no legislative basis, and the fact that documents still go "missing" regularly in Ireland, could give some people very valid reasons to worry about how that retained data may be used in the future.

adam

Martyr

Ireland's data retention policy is a pretty ethically defensible reason to use it imho. The fact that the current government felt it necessary to initially implement it secretly and with no legislative basis, and the fact that documents still go "missing" regularly in Ireland, could give some people very valid reasons to worry about how that retained data may be used in the future.

Can you say where you heard or read about this?

dahamsta

Average Joe wrote:

Can you say where you heard or read about this?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22data+retention%22+ireland+secret

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22data+retention%22+ireland

http://news.google.com/news?q=%22niall%20quinn%22&hl=en&lr=&sa=N&tab=wn

Gegerty

rsynnott wrote:

Fair enough. I'd be highly uncomfortable with this myself, though. In particular, with the idea that if I used this system I would almost certainly at some point be hosting child porn.

Newsgroup servers all over the world share files with each other but its no reason to ban them. In fact if it wasn't for newsgroups there would be no internet, so god knows what future technology you will be preventing by banning freenet. Look, at the end of the day it is the paedophiles that are to blame for child porn, not the creators of technology. Freenet was not created to make it easier to distribute porn, the fact that it can be used for that purpose is irrelevant. How did they catch the paedophiles before computers? They got up off their arses and did some work thats how.

Cake Fiend

How about banning the internet? The internet can be used for nefarious purposes ranging from kiddy porn to credit card fraud, so why not dismantle this vile network of perverts and villains and rid the world of this heinous tool?

Martyr

Quote:
Originally Posted by Average Joe
Can you say where you heard or read about this?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...+ireland+secret

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...tion%22+ireland

http://news.google.com/news?q=%22ni...lr=&sa=N&tab=wn

What has any of the above got to do with Free Speech in the Republic of Ireland..please tell me, or the EU for that matter?

Freenet was not created to make it easier to distribute porn, the fact that it can be used for that purpose is irrelevant.

Of course its relevant..*shakes head* you said it yourself, Freenet makes it easier for paedophiles to distribute child porn and remain anonymous from the authorities.Thats why we need to all take a step back, and ask ourselves.."who is this software really going to benefit"?

You can rationalise anonymous file-sharing as much as you want, at the end of the day, probably 100% of users outside of undemocratic countries such as china will use it to illegally distribute files without the authorities knowing who they are, and the biggest majority of those files will be child pornography.

And you know this! thats why i don't understand your justification!
The only arguement i've read so far is the "Free Speech" nonsense.

Seriously, how many of these Freenet users have been silenced by the authorities for speaking out against a facist regime?

I'd really love to know.

Sico, let me quote something which you've reminded me of.

This comment was made by Prince Philip of Britain after there was a call to tighten gun controls, following the shooting of 16 children in a school.

In 1996, amid calls to ban firearms after the Dunblane shootings, a comparison by the duke made headlines.

He said: "If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats?"

You probably see the logic in that statement, Sico.
Atleast thats the impression i get from your own moronic unconstructive comments.

No one said that the Internet didn't have problems already, but lets not create more, please.

rsynnott

My perspective on this is more or less that I trust our government to an extent; I don't worry about them seeing my emails and web browsing history. I have nothing to hide. Of course, perhaps they will eventually go down the police-state road; at that point, browsing history will be the least of our worries. I'm not advocating banning Freenet, but I would certainly advocate development of techniques to get around its secrecy provisions.

hmmm

The amazing thing in all these debates is the defensiveness of those who believe in privacy and their rights not to have their lives monitored by the state. The ones who should be defensive are those who feel that they have a right to supervise and surveil citizens on the off chance that a tiny minority of these citizens might possibly maybe who knows may be doing something nefarious. At the very least those who believe in the surveillance society should be required to produce much greater justification for widespread electronic surveillance other than "it's easy to do it so why not".

Martyr

My perspective on this is more or less that I trust our government to an extent; I don't worry about them seeing my emails and web browsing history. I have nothing to hide. Of course, perhaps they will eventually go down the police-state road; at that point, browsing history will be the least of our worries. I'm not advocating banning Freenet, but I would certainly advocate development of techniques to get around its secrecy provisions.

I think along the same lines.

dahamsta

Average Joe wrote:

What has any of the above got to do with Free Speech in the Republic of Ireland..please tell me, or the EU for that matter?

It says something about free speech in my post? You think free speech is the only valid reason to use freenet? You think - pay attention now, this is the tricky bit - maybe I was responding to the point I quoted?

Try this: Read the comment I quoted. Read my comment. Think for a second. Now respond. See how easy it is?

adam

ecksor

rsynnott wrote:

The point is that, in this country at least, there is no ethically defensible use of Freenet.

hmmm has answered that point far better than I would have.

Average Joe wrote:

You can rationalise anonymous file-sharing as much as you want, at the end of the day, probably 100% of users outside of undemocratic countries such as china will use it to illegally distribute files without the authorities knowing who they are, and the biggest majority of those files will be child pornography.

Can you back any of that up?

Martyr

It says something about free speech in my post? You think free speech is the only valid reason to use freenet? You think - pay attention now, this is the tricky bit - maybe I was responding to the point I quoted?

Try this: Read the comment I quoted. Read my comment. Think for a second. Now respond. See how easy it is?

I read some of links..there was nothing there about free speech.

Can you back any of that up?

Why don't you tell me, apart from "Free Speech" Freenet will be used for?
Please, indulge me.

rsynnott

But what ARE the civilian applications?

ecksor

His point is that he's not really talking about free speech at all. Read back over the posts.

Why do I have to indulge you? I haven't made any claims about the actual patterns of usage of this technology. You're the one saying things like "100%" and "biggest majority" to paint all sorts of scarey stories. Either you can justify that or you can't. You are essentially accusing any users of the software of committing a crime and in any of the modern democracies in which you claim that such usage must correspond to a crime it is the duty of the accuser to prove guilt rather than the duty of the accused to prove innocence. With that in mind, if you are to build a case for controlling or watering down this software then you need to justify the claims that you make.

rsynnott

I'm not advocating banning this service. Nor, however, am I advocating turning a blind eye to it. It should be investigated and watched like the general internet is.

ecksor

rsynnott wrote:

But what ARE the civilian applications?

I couldn't care less to be perfectly honest. In modern days when content filtering technology continues to be developed at a good old pace and the media is largely controlled by various politcal and business interests, I simply don't like the precedent of blocking the ability to distribute information without fear even if it open to some abuse.

rsynnott

ecksor wrote:

I couldn't care less to be perfectly honest. In modern days when content filtering technology continues to be developed at a good old pace and the media is largely controlled by various politcal and business interests, I simply don't like the precedent of blocking the ability to distribute information without fear even if it open to some abuse.

There has been no attempt by our government or by the government of any other European democracy to restrict free distribution of information and free speech on the Internet. There WAS an attempt in the US (the ludicrous CDA) but they backed down. I must say the way things are going in the US I'd see some need for this software there in the next decade. Here, though, I believe that we really do still have basic free speech.

dahamsta

rsynnott wrote:

My perspective on this is more or less that I trust our government to an extent; I don't worry about them seeing my emails and web browsing history. I have nothing to hide. Of course, perhaps they will eventually go down the police-state road; at that point, browsing history will be the least of our worries. I'm not advocating banning Freenet, but I would certainly advocate development of techniques to get around its secrecy provisions.

("You" in the following is hypothetical.)

A tip has been passed to the Gardaí by a malicious competitor, saying that there are images of naked preteen boys and girls on your computer. They know this because they sent you a demo of their latest software recently, which installed them in an irregularly accessed location on your computer. You don't know they exist. The Gardaí investigate by asking a superintendant for permission to examine your browsing history, and discover that you have a penchant for pornography -- just regular porn, nothing dodgy, but lots of it.

They pass this information to an eager-beaver prosecutor, who approaches a judge with a search warrant for your computer. The judge is a luddite and a prude and decides that your pencant for porn demonstrates probable cause, so he signs the warrant. They find the illegal images and prosecute you. The case goes to trial and the prosecution use the aforementioned penchant for regular porn in open court to taint your character. Even if you retain your freedom, which is touch and go, you may find it very difficult to do business again. (You could be a company that trades a lot with religious types, for example.)

If you'd used Freenet to trade your porn, nothing would have shown up in your browsing history. No probable cause. It's quite likely that would have been the end of the story. The Gardaí would keep an eye on you, might even request your browsing history again in six months or a year, but since nothing will show up, you have nothing to worry about. You're not embarassed by your penchant for porn, even discuss it with some friends, but you did have something to hide...

That's one example, but there's plenty more. Lawyers that want to help activists with boilerplate and advice but don't want to be associated publicly with them for fear of losing reputation or business. A group of whistleblowers in an oil refining company (*koff*) that want to pass documents around for reference before they hand them over to the Gardaí. Journalists that don't want their sources revealed down the road. Et cetera.

adam

rsynnott

I can sort of see where you're coming from (though if anything, viewing regular porn would be evidence that the person in question WASN'T a paedophile.

I don't quite understand how it works for those other groups? The lawyer's clients and the oil company don't have the right to monitor your internet connection, you know...

Martyr

ecksor, when I said 100% of users..I admit i made an assumption based on the people i know using file share software.
Also, i say "biggest majority" based on what i've read..NOT people i know.
It was said in some research that around 76% of file-share material was pornography, with 42% of it child pornography.

I'm not sure if the figures are accurate.
You might want to read the following:

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-hooks072203.asp

Also, experts in tracking paedophiles express their concern at software like "Freenet" and how it is attractive to child pornographers.

http://www.king5.com/sharedcontent/ptech/generalstories2/060105ccdrptechchildporn.2d023c2cd.html

I can tell you that most of the people i know using this file-share software,
use it to download copyrighted material, they have no use for file-share software legally.

Expensive software, copyrighted music and films, ebooks..basically anything that isn't normally legally free to distribute...no one i know uses it for "Free Speech" absolutely nobody.

I'm not saying or have ever said "ban freenet" either, not at all.

dahamsta

Average Joe, read the last paragraph of my last post again.

rsynnott wrote:

There has been no attempt by our government or by the government of any other European democracy to restrict free distribution of information and free speech on the Internet.

Sorry, but that's just patently incorrect. How about the time two Indymedia servers were seized by the FBI in the UK, apparently at the request of Italian and Swiss authorities uner an MLAT order. As far as I'm aware they still don't know why the servers were seized or what was done with them while they were in FBI custody, but most speculation centered around information on the servers relating to G8 summits in Genoa and Evian.

How about the anon.penet.fi anonymous remailer in Finland that was harangued time and time again by authorities and private enterprises to hand over information, and ultimately accused of distributing child pornography even though it was technically almost impossible to do so.

adam

ecksor

rsynnott wrote:

I don't quite understand how it works for those other groups? The lawyer's clients and the oil company don't have the right to monitor your internet connection, you know...

So? Paedophiles don't have the right to distribute the materials that are being discussed here either.

rsynnott wrote:

I must say the way things are going in the US I'd see some need for this software there in the next decade. Here, though, I believe that we really do still have basic free speech.

Ok, so we don't bother defending our ability to use such technology until we've reached the conclusion that the government is doing things that necessitate the usage of such technology. I have a slight suspicion that that would be too late you know.

You have a level of trust in our governments that I don't. Watching many european countries get railroaded into wars or treaties without public mandate and living in a country where the director of elections for the main government party nearly got away with introducing a substandard and overpriced electronic voting system without any reasonable level of transparency doesn't inspire a lot of faith.

dahamsta

rsynnott wrote:

I can sort of see where you're coming from (though if anything, viewing regular porn would be evidence that the person in question WASN'T a paedophile.

I'm not sure that follows psychologically and I'm not going to speculate on it.

I don't quite understand how it works for those other groups? The lawyer's clients and the oil company don't have the right to monitor your internet connection, you know...

Well, first of all the oil company does have the right to monitor their Internet connection to some degree if their usage policy states it clearly. Whistleblowers remember, they work for the company. However that's neither here nor there, you need to follow the logic of the first example to understand the other examples: If the file transfers in these cases aren't protected by cryptography and/or an anonymous trading system like Freenet, it'll all come out in Discovery and ultimately the trial, and your reputation will be shot to hell.

adam

Gegerty

Average Joe wrote:

.....Of course its relevant..*shakes head* you said it yourself, Freenet makes it easier for paedophiles to distribute child porn and remain anonymous from the authorities.Thats why we need to all take a step back, and ask ourselves.."who is this software really going to benefit"?......

This software is going to benefit people who live in places like China where they get arrested and beaten and put in prison for speaking their mind. As for Ireland, this software will benefit people like me who object to being monitored and my browsing/downloading history being used for market research and personalised advertisements. I'm not a paedophile and you cannot tell me it is ok for people to invade my privacy and spy on me just because I use the same software as them. ffs 95% of computer users use windows, lets ban that!

I respect your concern but the line has to be drawn somewhere. Go get the paedophiles and leave "normal" people alone.

I might add that people are forgetting what the internet is all about. It's been completely hijacked and in fact many people are shunning the world wide web for other alternatives such as the internet2 and usenet, which is what the internet used to be before the world wide web, shows that I am not alone in my opinion.