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Title: The cost of online anonymity
Source:
BBC News
URL Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/4227578.stm
Published: Sep 11, 2005
Author: Dan Simmons, Reporter, BBC Click Online
Post Date: 2005-09-11 22:32:10 by robin
Keywords: anonymity, online, cost
Views: 28
Comments: 3
In the second report looking at privacy and the internet, Dan Simmons examines whether it is possible to be totally anonymous and asks if this is really a desirable thing.
In London's Speaker's Corner, the right to freedom of expressions has been practised by anyone who cares to turn up for centuries.
But in countries where free speech is not protected by the authorities, hiding your true identity is becoming big business.
Just as remailers act as a go-between for e-mail, so there are services through which you can surf the web anonymously.
After 10 years in the business, Anonymizer has two million active users. The US government pays it to promote the service in China and Iran in order to help promote free speech.
But these programs are becoming popular in the West too.
The software encrypts all your requests for webpages. Anonymizer's servers then automatically gather the content on your behalf and send it back to you.
No humans are involved and the company does not keep records of who requests what.
However, there is some censorship. Anonymizer does not support anonymous uploading to the web, and it blocks access to material that would be illegal under US law.
No to censorship
For the last five years, Ian Clarke has been working on a project to offer complete anonymity.
Founder and co-ordinator of Freenet, Ian Clarke says: "Our goal was to provide a system whereby people could share information over the internet without revealing their identity and without permitting any form of government censorship."
The system is called the Free Network Project, or Freenet. A Chinese version has been set up to help dissidents speak out there.
Freenet encourages anonymous uploading of any material. Some users of the English version believe it is so secure they have used it to confess to crimes they have committed, or to their interest in paedophilia.
Each user's computer becomes a node in a decentralised file-storing network. As such they give up a small portion of their hard disk to help the system hold all the information and as with anonymous surfing, everything is encrypted, with a military grade 128-bit algorithm.
The storage is dynamic, with files automatically moved between computers on the network or duplicated. This adds to the difficulty of determining who might be storing what.
Even if a user's computer is seized, it can be impossible for experts to determine what the owner was doing on Freenet.
But such strenuous efforts to protect identity have two side effects.
Firstly, pages can take 10 minutes or more to download, even on a 2Mbbps broadband connection.
Secondly, the information is so well encrypted it is not searchable at the moment. Forget Google, your only option is to scroll through the indexes provided.
It is hoped usability of the service will improve when it is re-launched later this year.
Ethical issues
But those are the least of our problems, according to some experts, who think Freenet is a dangerous free-for-all.
We believe that the benefits of Freenet, for example for dissidents in countries such as China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, far outweigh the dangers of paedophilia or terrorist information being distributed over the system 
Digital evidence expert at the London School of Economics, Peter Sommer says: "A few years ago I was very much in favour of libertarian computing.
"What changed my mind was the experience of acting in the English courts as a computer expert and examining large numbers of computers from really nasty people, who were using precisely the same sort of technology in order to conceal their activities.
"I think that creates an ethical dilemma for everyone who wants to participate in Freenet.
"You are giving over part of your computer, it will be in encrypted form, you will not know what you are carrying, but some of it is going to be seriously unpleasant. Are you happy with that?"
What worries many, is that Freenet is a lawless area.
It can be used for many good things, like giving the oppressed a voice, but users can also preach race-hatred or share child pornography with complete impunity.
Peter Sommer says: "Ian [Clarke] is placing a powerful tool in the hands of other people. He's like an armaments manufacturer.
"Guns can be used for all sorts of good purposes but you know perfectly well that they are used to oppress and kill.
"Most armaments manufacturers walk off and say 'it's not my responsibility'. Is that Ian's position, I wonder?"
Ian Clarke response is to explain that any tool is capable of misuse.
"We believe that the benefits of Freenet, for example for dissidents in countries such as China, Saudi Arabia, Iran far outweigh the dangers of paedophilia or terrorist information being distributed over the system," he says.
Commercial programs for the web help you maintain a high degree of anonymity while surfing or mailing, but the realm of publishing anonymously, without fear of any comeback, challenges each society to ask just how free we want ourselves and others to be.
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#1. To: robin (#0)
The irony of the article you posted is that, in a story devoted to the lack of privacy and anonymity on the internet, the publisher of the article [BBC] chose to hide a very small and transparent web bug to track who is reading their story. Look at the bottom of your thread article, at the notice that the article contains 7 images, but when you scroll up, only three of those images are easily found. A little careful hunting reveals another three images that are just graphics used in the quote underneath the second image. They include the open parenthesis, the close parenthesis and the underline. But still, that's only six of the seven images. Where is the last image hiding? Do a [Ctrl]+[a] and then scroll down to the second image, the one of Ian Clarke. Notice that between the main article on the left and the quote underneath Ian's picture to the right, that you now can see a very small black dash. That image is a transparent, 5x1 pixel web bug with a source URL of http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gif. When anyone attempts to view this thread, a copy of the source code for this page is sent from Freedom4um to the viewer's own computer where an interpreter converts that source code to the what we see on the monitor before us. But when that source code contains an html image-source tag, the viewer's browser goes to the URL shown in that tag [in this case, the BBC] to retrieve a copy of the image. That means that everyone who views this thread sends a request to the BBC for a copy of the images, including the web bug image. In order for the BBC to know where to send the copies of the images, your browser gives them your IP address. When the BBC gets a request for the "o.gif" image [the web bug], all they have to do is record the IP return address you sent them. Your IP address may not be as exact an identifier as your physical address is, but it can get pretty darn close geographically. Supposedly only your ISP provider can convert your IP address to your real name, exact physical address, phone number and email address, but there are numerous, legitimate and illegitimate, ways to get that info from an ISP. I'm sure that the BBC's reasons for including a web bug are rather benign, just a marketing tool most likely, but there is great irony in the fact that they include a stealth means of invading your privacy in an article entitled "The cost of online anonymity" !!!
re: web bug .. People are so snoopy. I used freenet and got rid of it. It uses way way too much bandwidth for the network. I guess that means it needs more users, but they'll have to be people with fast connections. There was something else about it that bothered me, but I can't recall what it was. Oh, it took like 20 minutes to get results back from a search, then the results were unreliable(I want my kiddie porn and I want it FAST, heh). Again, more users are needed for a distributed network to be reliable. I am using Tor right now. It won't necessarily hide you from the gubmint, but I see no use for that. It does help protect against nosey sysadmins who might try to "backorafice" your machine and web buggers who want to bother you. It has more servers than in the past, and I notice it's considerably faster and more reliable than when I first started playing with it.
Rereading TFA, I remember more clearly now. Searching: you have to load index pages, each of which takes like 20 minutes. "personal" 20 minutes, "photos" 20 minutes, "nude" 20 minutes, "raping babies and chopping them up in delicious little pieces" 20 minutes, then my connection fails... Okay, I'm wearing out the kiddie porn thing(even though I seem to recall that he did have it indexed and mentioned on or near a main entry point), but whatever the topic, it was like that. The only recommendation I have for someone who wants that degree of privacy is to stay off the 'net. Everything's crackable, eventually, and you'll only find out about the back door in freenet when the cops knock at your front door. Besides, anything that blatantly advertises it's usefulness to pedophiles is either evil or run by cops or both.
#2. To: Bill Dolby (#1)
#3. To: All (#2)
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