

Using Freenet - doublec
http://bluishcoder.co.nz/2014/12/18/using-freenet.html

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Renaud
Haven't looked at Freenet in many years. Maybe it's time to take it for a spin
again. It's an extremely interesting project that tries to implement secure
and anonymous communications with completely different objectives than Tor and
other P2P networks like I2P.

The fact that the network itself also contains all its content in an
anonymous, distributed way it a very interesting approach since no one knows
what encrypted fragment they hold and there are no central servers.

I remember that since each resource in a website could be scattered across
many many nodes, any webpage that loaded external resources would take a very
long time to load, and many of the resources would have disappeared after a
while, especially when considering that a lot of people would not stay
connected to the network continuously or allocate much storage for their node.

One solution would be to load all resources as part of a single page site that
would contain HTML, CSS and base64 encoding of the images. It would take a
long time to get all the blocks for a large page/site, but nothing would be
lost.

Enabling Javascript is probably a bad idea when browsing Freenet, but using it
would open a lot more possibilities (like using the newfangled BGP image[ _]
format to significantly reduce the payload).

[_]:[http://bellard.org/bpg/](http://bellard.org/bpg/)

~~~
okasaki
> since no one knows what encrypted fragment they hold

But they do, since they have the key to it. The encryption is just feel-good
obfuscation.

~~~
icebraining
No, they only have they key if they have the address of the content, which may
not even be publicly known.

[https://wiki.freenetproject.org/Plausible_deniability](https://wiki.freenetproject.org/Plausible_deniability)

~~~
okasaki
I guess it was changed. When I ran a node a years ago the only option was to
encrypt the entire store with one key.

~~~
sanity31415
I think you're referring to something different.

The "request key" is what you request from Freenet, but it transformed into a
"store key" (not official Freenet terminology) before the request is sent out
over the network. If you have the encrypted content you only see the "store
key", but the "request key" is required if you actually want to decrypt it.

This means that, to see what content you're actually storing, you'd need to go
to a lot of trouble (basically a dictionary attack on the store key). Not
impossible, but enough for plausible deniability.

------
CDokolas
I've followed the Freenet Project for some years at its early stages, and I
have to say that it has come indeed a long way. It's also been positively
affected from more CPUs, RAM, and the general computer speed advances in
recent years. The ecosystem has also stabilized (jSite, SONE, etc. as
mentioned in the article). I personally like what has happened in the Freenet
user interface and the ability to choose between levels of connection
security/trust over speed (read about that on the site).

------
jmnicolas
I used it for a while a few years ago, but ultimately the slowness and the
lack of content discouraged me.

I may try it again, to see what has changed. It's a very interesting project
but contrary to TOR, not very popular.

------
yason
Freenet has really sped up since the last time I tried it. I'll definitely
dive into it again in the upcoming weeks.

The Freenet has a wild array of content and much of it is not particularly
interesting to the common man. And the web interface is kind of not so user-
friendly. But the mechanism itself is great: you could use Freenet as an
anonymous shared data store for your application.

For example, PirateBay could move to live on Freenet and have its own client
(either a local application or a locally run webapp) just fetch the torrent
listings from Freenet data blocks. For now, Freenet can't do big files so that
must still be done on the opennet but much of the metadata could be
irreversibly stored in the decentralized system that is Freenet.

As computers and the internet get faster and faster, we might be able to
sacrifice some speed for safety, anonymity and plausible deniability. At the
simplest, big files could be distributed in the open by simply xoring them
together with other big files. You'd have to download two big files to
construct the one you want. On the other hand, a single file would host
information from several files so downloading it couldn't possibly be
considered infringing anything. It could just be genuinely random data that,
when xored with another file, turns out to be an mp4 of a film.

~~~
sanity31415
Out of interest, why do you say that it can't do big files?

It definitely has the capability to distribute large files (it has a built in
download manager so it can do it in the background).

Or are you arguing that it just isn't good at it in practice?

~~~
doublec
I have stored 100+ megabyte files as tests and it works fine. It takes a long
time to insert though. Thankfully you can queue them up using the download
manager as you mention.

A pirate bay like site on freenet could provide magnet links for those that
want to torrent externally and also provide files for those that want to
retrieve from freenet itself.

------
pmoriarty
What are the legal implications of participating in Freenet in the US?

~~~
nhayden
Having encrypted information on your computers is a liability. It could be
misconstrued as information you have access to and relevant to whatever
criminal charges you might have against you. Failure to provide the encrypted
information, even though _you_ know you can't decrypt it, can land you in jail
for life.

But that's pretty obscure and unlikely.

~~~
dogpa
I don't know about the US but in the UK you are correct. In the UK unless you
can unencrypt on demand of court its jail time - end of. I do not think this
is obscure or unlikely. It is highly likely that paedophiles will use this
network for instance and that somewhere on your computer you'll be storing
fragments of child rape videos - a serious crime in itself. You will also be
an accessory to the original crime.

