From: Mike Duvos <enoch@zipcon.net>
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 04:11:52 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Re: CPAC, XtatiX, and the Censor-State
Message-ID: <19970728200020.5383.qmail@zipcon.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



In alt.cypherpunks, Censorship Suck <FBI@Sucks.NSA> writes:

 > That's pretty bad, when there's not even any sex.

Yes.  Most of these Web pages are not even political or sexual in
nature, but cute boys anywhere on the Net these days cause the
Fundies to have Grand Mal seizures.

 > My previous suggestion was to create "virtual" WWW sites
 > (when necessary, possibly as a stop-gap measure when there
 > is a censorship attack).

I read your earlier post, and find the notion of hosting Web
sites on Usenet intriguing.  Tim has always pointed out that
Usenet already exists as a persistent uncensorable repository of
virtually everything, and that applications (eg BlackNet) needing
such a facility should simply use the existing one.

 > By virtual, I mean by posting to USENET, probably encrypted,
 > with the decryption key following a couple days later.

 > It involves considerable development for either a newsreader
 > or preprocessor, but then, the work is implied. A
 > "gathering" design is necessary.

Conceptually, seamlessly extending the Web over Usenet is not
complicated.  Each document could be posted as a single PGP
conventionally encrypted article, with some reasonable convention
for encryption keys and message ids that would enable links to be
followed. Browsers could be modified to maintain a open
connection to an NNTP server, and to fetch and decrypt articles
specified by an nntp:<message-id> link in lieu of using http.

Suppose I post my favorite banned Web pages to
alt.anonymous.messages on a weekly basis, and distribute browser
plug-ins and patches to enable Usenet to host Web content.

I forsee the following glitches.

First, as anyone who has posted a large number of articles to
Usenet knows, many servers will only get a subset of them.

Second, policy for article expiration is site-specific, and can
be made to depend on a number of parameters.  Posting once a week
may be fine for some servers, and not for others.

Third, it is only practical to employ Usenet to host static Web
content.  This rules out Web-based chat boards, and other such
politically interesting content, as well as anything that is
cgi-bin based.

Fourth, Web content on Usenet will be in an easily identified
format and trivial to filter out at local sites.

 > Because you are exactly right: the ISPs can be attacked,
 > regardless of the fault-tolerant design of the Internet.

 > Some version of the above tool WILL route around "damage"
 > attempts.

 > Interesting, that this would in part require cryptography.

 > Would the government go so far as to try and outlaw crypto
 > posts to USENET? Good luck.

Odder things have happened.

 > Someone should make a complete list of all the
 > contacts/emails involved in contacting ISPs to get them to
 > censor. There may be something to learn. (sort of a traffic
 > analysis deal)

It's the "usual suspects." We know who they are, and they are
making no attempt to keep their activities secret.

--
     Mike Duvos         $    PGP 2.6 Public Key available     $
     enoch@zipcon.com   $    via Finger                       $
         {Free Cypherpunk Political Prisoner Jim Bell}