Should DU start a Hyphanet site?

[sir pball]

Freenet was a totally decentralized and totally anonymous network, that was specifically designed to evade the kind of censorship and crackdown that the Current Administration is carrying out. It's been superseded and the OG network is called Hyphanet…should we maybe be doing this? Ultra-secure ultra-anonymous comms?

Starting the network is beyond my technical capacity, though I'd happily host a node.

[elleng]

1. STOP!

[sir pball]

2. Stop what?

Stop what?

I see a very real possibility that any left-leaning thought could be prosecutable in America, and that we may need a true darknet to communicate and organize.

It's not like I'm advocating violence.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. The more a "possibility" is noisily bruted about, the more possible it gets. Do you want that?

Do you think Elad and Earl Grey haven't thought of Plans B, C, and D?

[intheflow]

8. Any backup plan they have will be moot

if the FCC rules we're terrorists and blocks our URL. How will they reach us? DU used to have backup meeting sites on Reddit and in Yahoo Groups (when that was a thing). I mean, I admire EarlG and Elad a great deal, their work on this site has been my lifeline for 21 years. And also, they aren't Gods who can summon us all to meet up someplace if Carr does decide to pull the site. There is nothing wrong with multiple solutions to counter any action against us, by multiple DUers. Putting the onus on EarlG and Elad alone is not fair to them, and honestly, suggests you prefer a top-down approach to community. Plese reconsider tut-tutting people for trying to organize resistance.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

10. A gangster web is not resistance bc it will attract more surveillance, not less & attract harsher crackdowns

There are many ways to resist and organize that have no need for association with corners of the dirty dark web. "Well Mr and Ms General Populace, after all, they were organizing on the dark web, on an app that allows migrant traffickers and money launderers" (whatever "OG" dark web was used)

One of the best is in person meetups at demonstrations for an example. Saturday, October 18, for example.

I am tut-tutting people for hare-brained ill-considered schemes. If you want to get into really serious resistance look into cell structure such as Adam Selene had. There are many variations on that and on the networking involved, some involving networks of technology and others having nothing to do with technology.

"If the flower pot is moved to the left ...."

If there are any well thought out proposals, a good way would be share by DU mail with a few people to refine it, and then approach Elad and EarlG with it. Nobody put the onus on them. Top down community organizing can coexist very healthily and efficiently with bottom-up organizing and sideways organizing. By mentioning our two benefactors, I'm urging cooperation and coordination. But, for some reason, you viewed it as authoritarian.

Re tut-tutting, you have already written off E & E plans as "moot".

[intheflow]

13. I haven't written anything off as moot.

I'm just saying we need to have multiple plans in case other plans fail.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

14. Post #8 you wrote "Any backup plan they have will be moot"

8. Any backup plan they have will be moot

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. Never heard of it. Must be enormously popular, known to all DU members except me, so everyone can find it.

Does OG mean "original gangster"? Gangsters are honest?

[sir pball]

5. It's the ultimate Dark Web.

I'm assuming you loudly and proudly show your liberal self (which is not a bad thing)…
…but in this new fascist dictatorship in which we live, being loud and proud is dangerous.

Hell, in this new, post-Kirk fascism, not even toeing the line is dangerous.

Wouldn't the Left be better to cordon themselves off someplace that Kash and Pam and Donny can't surveil?

[Bernardo de La Paz]

6. If you can join it but you think Patel or Blondi can't surveil it, you are indulging in fantasies

Does OG mean "original gangster"? Gangsters are honest?

[intheflow]

9. C'mon.

"Gangsters are dishonest." What's dishonest is the way you can't even be bothered to look up contemporary usage of OG before pretending the poster is stupid or has some insidious motives.

Here are the first two entries for OG from the Urban Dictionary. Took me all of two clicks to find these definitions.

1) OG

OG used to mean Original Gangster although some people these days use OG as a quicker way of saying Original.
Oh man that was so og what you did back there
by Saxo_Broko August 16, 2016

2) OG

Acronym for original gangster. Means you have a classic style or stay with the older ways instead of newer.
Mr. Pollard is an OG because of his style and manner.
by MDMBoss777 January 22, 2016

http://og.urbanup.com/10118301

[Bernardo de La Paz]

11. I am well aware of "OG" for years. It is a disgusting homage to criminals from early days of rap and such.

OG was often also used as meaning the best or excellent. Fortunately it was semi-popular slang before 2016 but has fallen into disuse.

Going by your second meaning, I think any underground DU resistance of 2026 or 2028 (if it came to pass) would want to use modern tools rather than "classical older ways", though some of the oldest non-tech ways are still powerful. Whatever, I think a smart DU resistance would not want to associate with the dark web, whether or not it is "OG" or a hypermodern black hive of scum and villainy.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

12. My point about surveilance has not made an impression on you

If a large number of DU members is to successfully organize outside of DU, then it would not be super-technical; just the opposite in fact.

So just like progressives surveil inside {un}Truth Social, Patel and Blondi's minions could join some "OG" thing as easily as DU members and surveil from within; dark web or dusty corner in the shade, or booth at the county fair.

[sir pball]

15. They can surveil it, but that's all they can do.

They can't identify any of the users, nor shut it down.

You should look into it, it's designed from the ground up to be censorship and identity proof.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

16. Users leave clues in their content. And comprehensive surveillance of internet onramps would be very revealing. . . .nt

[sir pball]

17. Clearly you aren't familiar with the network.

I won't go into why it's so secure other than to say that there is literally no content any user leaves on their, or anyone else's, computer. It's all broken into tiny, encrypted bits, and spread across a vast global network…like a fungus, that's why the new version is called Hyphanet. "Hyphae are the fundamental, microscopic, thread-like filaments that make up the main structure of a fungus."

Not to mention there are also no "onramps" to track, it isn't an anonymizing network like TOR but rather…it's a darkspace. They can see you've been doing business with the darknet, of course your ISP sees all of your connections, but beyond that once you link to the darknet they know nothing.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

18. If users can easily talk to each other, then some are talking to bots or agents, particularly on the dark web.

Or if it is truly difficult to get authenticated and hooked up, then few people will go there.

[sir pball]

19. Users can talk fairly easily, but they retain anonymity.

Just look into the network, really.

It was designed for communications under exactly the kind of fascist surveillance regime we have now.

Yes, they can see it, they always can. But they don't know who it is, and they can't stop it.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

20. If content is put up to the cloud it can be analyzed. If it is destined to your favorite dark web

... then you can bet that a data center will be heating up chips decrypting it. If it can't be or isn't decoded, then all uncoded traffic from that phone or computer or to it will be captured, collated, correlated, deconstructed, tabulated, and cross-referenced.

Read about the CEO of Palantr.

[sir pball]

21. It's not in the cloud.

The entire network is hosted on the personal computers of interested people. If you agree to host a node, you get a "black" chunk of data, a totally encrypted nugget, that gets pulled out and replaced when the data in it needs to be accessed.

BTW Freenet uses DSA…if you know of a chip that can decrypt the DSA algorithm, I think the NSA would like a talk with you.

And yes, I am familiar with Palantir. Freenet-style networks are the best defense against them, even analyzing 1000s of people isn't going to crack that network. There's just no one point of failure.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

22. NSA knows more about DSA than we ever will. Plus they have no shortage of compute power.

You can be sure that they are experimenting with quantum computing, which has reached a promising stage for the moment.

If it goes onto the internet it is in the cloud. That term is commonly used to mean storage but that is not the main point of attack and a repository / database is not a prerequisite.

Like I said, encrypted stuff can be ignored, but routing will not be and unencrypted stuff no matter how mundane will be automatically minutely analyzed and correlated with other unencrypted stuff until enough clues have built up to trigger an expensive NSA decrypt.

I am not privy to any secrets or plans but I will not say much more on this thread because as a computer programmer I have a powerful, active idea generator.

[sir pball]

23. As a programmer, you should know how Freenet works.

It is literally unbreakable, for what it sets out to resist. It's decentralized and encrypted to the extent that we can all say "I never had any incriminating data on my computer and you can't prove otherwise."

Yes, nodes can be taken down and theoretically it could be port-blocked, but ports are easy to change…of course, if you think DSA is straight-up broken, then we don't have much more to talk about.

[usonian]

7. I'll take a look.

It has been my feeling that any community, not just DU, but even my friends (Buddhist group) should have very local discussion groups, with calendaring and scheduling and structured discussions, of only HIGHLY TRUSTED members, with the ability to connect (somehow) to other similar groups.

As it is, we have some online discussions, but nothing is saved for future quotes (meaning lost) or to gather info into a knowledge base. That would be especially useful for new members, so they can catch up with accumulated wisdom in addition to getting current advice and hearing stories from leaders and old-timers that can be really valuable.

I am unfamiliar with all the recent forum software, and what I knew has changed names, just to confuse everyone.

In addition, I have some paradigms for information management not yet unleashed on the world. (top hush for now).

I have followed Moodle for many years, and it hasn't changed its name! YMMV, but I used to install it on laptops (my own) and company servers to hold my project documentation. Given that unless people do a deep dive, like using github, that usually amounts to going over someone else's "doc" files. Hardy collaborative.

So, I'll check into things "that just work" and as an aside, continue to urge people to use Signal Messenger. It messages, it does video conferencing ... and is designed from the start to be secure (though lazy use could weaken it in action)

No forum software that I know of is ultra-secure, but being able to move a small instance around (with those connections as needed) saves the "all your eggs in one basket" kind of vulnerability we see.

I do see more decentralization as big organizations cower to the emperor. (as in programs moving off TV, which BTW, I don't use except for one football game a week)