[Freedombox-discuss] Rouge Freedomboxes and government intervention

[bertagaz at ptitcanardnoir.org]

On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 09:37:35PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> On 11-06-21 at 08:37pm, bertagaz at ptitcanardnoir.org wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 07:43:43PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> > > On 11-06-21 at 11:56am, Anthony Papillion wrote:
> > > > Hi Everyone,
> > > > 
> > > > I've been following the discussion here on the list and one thing 
> > > > I've not seen a lot of discussion about is government 
> > > > intervention. Since the Freedombox will be open source and use a 
> > > > peer to peer methodology, what's stopping a hostile government 
> > > > from running their own 'Freedombox Honeypots' and 
> > > > targeting/locating users for arrest?
> > > 
> > > "FreedomBox for Freedom Fighters" certainly need more thought in 
> > > that area.  Not realistic for a first release of FreedomBox IMO.
> > > 
> > > "FreedomBox for consumers" need no special anti-government design, 
> > > just the core implicit anti-centralized-logging design.
> > 
> > Hmm, I'm not sure both use cases can be splitted that easily.
> > 
> > Or I'd like to see it from another point of view:
> > 
> > Most of the times "Freedom fighters" ARE "consumers". I mean the 
> > separation isn't that clear. Your life isn't being a "Freedom 
> > fighters".
> > And they aren't the only one being watched or needing some of their 
> > data or communication being kept private.
> 
> There are people in this world who never ever go to jail, and never ever 
> fear that their government is hostile to their actions on internet.
> 
> Those I label "consumers".
> 
> 
> Then there are people in this world that consume just as much as the 
> so-called "consumers" but in addition to that fear their government.  
> Maybe because theyt are paranoid, maybe because their government truly 
> is hostile to them.
> 
> Those I label "Freedom Fighters".
>
>
> I very much see the relevancy in separation of a "harmless FreedomBox" 
> and an "activism FreedomBox".
> 
> My point is that one point (out of several!) in the vision of FreedomBox 
> is that the world becomes a better place even if not directly addressing 
> then needs of activists in circumventing being hunted down or whatever 
> is their concrete needs.  The world becomes a better place *both* for 
> non-activit consumers *and* for paranoid freaks *and* for true genuine 
> heroes when the masses create a silverlining of the cloud.
> 
> 
> I want to address the problem of central logging of the activities of 
> the masses _separately_ from the more complex problem of activists 
> needing secrecy, anonymity and other powerful features.  Because the 
> first is easier and quicker solved than the second.  And because the 
> first helps solve the second!

And my point was to say that this separation (even explained again like
this, which was the way I understood your first mail), isn't this obvious.
Users are not so clearly divided in "the one who cares", and "the one who
don't" and helping "the one who don't" won't just so obviously helps the
others.  At least it isn't a reason not to think and prepare all use
cases.

> 
> 
> 
> > There are maybe other ways to consider the problem:
> 
> [cut]
> 
> Yes, there are many many possible ways to segment, depending on what 
> problem you want to solve.  You seem to segment public and private.  
> What problem does that help solve? What is your point of segmenting like 
> that?

Not really a public/private separation, you can have several public or
private identities.

Separate activities in identities helps not to mix them, avoid leaks
between them that might at the end helps to identify you. Apart from the
"freedom fighters vs consumers" debate, even "consumers" could have
benefits of its, like separating work related identity from other circles.
That would have helped a lot of people to learn to think its identities
activities this way first before existing on the internet ;) (is also an
example why separating use cases isn't that easy).

bert.