From: dfloyd@io.com
Date: Mon, 9 Jan 95 17:25:52 PST
To: nesta@nesta.pr.mcs.net (Nesta Stubbs)
Subject: Re: Data Haven problems
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9501090902.A6205-0100000@nesta.pr.mcs.net>
Message-ID: <199501100125.TAA29250@pentagon.io.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> 
> On Mon, 9 Jan 1995, Mats Bergstrom wrote:
> 
> > Hardly. (*.gi0 and *.jp0 for a start?)
> > But what are data havens for, if not for controversial data?
> > One of the greatest needs, if not _the_ greatest, in our times
> > for a data haven is probably for storing porno. There is a
> > tremendous, world-wide demand for porno. Yet, there are numerous
> > countries where sex.gif's found on your disk (encrypted or not,
> > they can use thumb-screws to force the key out of your hands)
> > will put you in a very difficult situation (loss of social
> > status, jail, decapitation). It might be much more convenient
> > for, let's say, a Saudi teenager to store his encrypted private
> > gif's in a data haven in Sweden, download them when he feels
> > the urge and purge the copies after every use.
> 
> My feelings exactly.
> 
> Are we going to fall prey to the medias asault on porno and resort to 
> self-censorship?  If a data haven resorted to filtering out all gifs and 
> jpegs, or even porno, then it wouldn't be one I wouldn't use it, for my 
> porn, nor for my other data.  If it is going to be a datahaven it can;t 
> fall to such things as filtering data for controversial subject the owner 
> doesn't like.
> 
> 
> i want to know everything          http://www.mcs.com/~nesta/home.html
> i want to be everywhere                     Nesta's Home Page        
> i want to fuck everyone in the world               &
> i want to do something that matters         /-/ a s t e zine
> 

My problem is not that people will bitch about my DH.  My problem will
be arfholes or yellow journalists uploading K*dd*e p**n to my DH, then
making a long report how I cater to p*dofiles and other evil denezins
that pop from time to time.  Then, I get the police knocking at my
door, asking me to come to Club Fed for a looooonnnggg vacation.

Of course, the DH will be hidden by a good remailer (anon.penet.fi), but
it is trivial to use traffic analysis to find where the DH lies.  Just
monitor traffic from/to the remailer and do a series of store/retrives.
Then for confirmation, forge a mail from the dh site to the remailer with
the password (obtained from sniffing) to yourself.

This is the main reason I haven't worked on this code for so long, as
well as finals and other distractions.  Until I find a decent solution
to this problem (The alpha test will be a snap... just allow certain
people to send/get and ban all others, but once in full working mode
this ceases to be a solution.) I am hesitant on setting up a working
DH.