[Freedombox-discuss] Rouge Freedomboxes and government intervention

[bertagaz at ptitcanardnoir.org]

On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 07:39:43PM +0800, Sandy Harris wrote:
> Jonas Smedegaard <dr at jones.dk> wrote:
>
> > I very much see the relevancy in separation of a "harmless FreedomBox" 
> > and an "activism FreedomBox".
 
> I do not. If the Box defeats censorship and tracking, that in
> itself is revolutionary.

+1
 
> > 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 ...
> >
> > 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!
> 
> Exactly.

Well, I guess it depends on what "central logging of the activities of the
masses" means. First, there is no real "central" logging, no unique big
brother that the freedombox might want to defeat, but a lot of different
(from size to content) logging databases out there, maintained by a lot of
different actors.

If avoiding a "central logging of activities" was that easy, it would have
been made since a long time. But it raises a lot of questions.

What often is more dangerous is not the content of a given database by
itself, but the relations you can get between the content of several of
them.

Often, interesting databases are the one maintained by ISPs. Even if a
hosting doesn't log anything and try to avoid the "central logging of
activities" this way, ISPs are at the right place to reveal a lot of
things about "activities of the masses" (i.e revealing who browsed a
website when posts were made).

I guess the easy answer to this other "central logging of activities"
threat is to use Tor when needed/possible. But then, wouldn't that be to
close to the "more complex problem of activists needing secrecy,
anonymity..."?

Or is this definition quite not that relevant to be able to split the
project's priorities or the different easy/hard parts?

Probably too generic to sum up the freedombox idea and design it anyway.

bert.