US Government Censors 70 Websites

[Broletariat]

http://www.osnews.com/story/24074/US_Government_Censors_70_Websites

A comment here helps more fully explain this

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ecgup/us_government_censors_70_websites_for_whole_world/

"We're not outraged enough. Maybe it's because most of you don't understand what just happened. A moment of your time, please. Every hostname, like "www.reddit.com" is really "www.reddit.com." See that dot at the end? Try typing that in, it'll work. If you leave the dot out, your browser (that is, via your system's resolver libraries) inserts the dot at the end when trying to resolve the IP address.


So, what is this dot all about? The dot is the root. Every single internet DNS query starts with contacting the root servers[1]. In this case it would ask the root servers where to find the servers responsible for "com", then the servers responsible for "com" are asked who is responsible for "reddit.com", etc. The system is distributed. Reddit runs nameservers that give out IPs for 'www', and com runs nameservers that give out delegations for reddit, and the root runs nameservers that give out delegations for com.
Here's the horrifying part.


The root servers are controlled by ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and this is literally a US Government entity. That means every single name that is looked up on the internet, from www.reddit.com. to cr.yp.to. and yes even the domains for North Korea (.kp) must pass through a system that is controlled completely by the US.
ICANN also happens to control ".com", ".net", and a few others, but theoretically ICANN can, since they control the root zone ".", kill resolutions for any hostname in the entire world, no matter what TLD they're under. In this story, they only killed domains under .com and .net, but the truth is they really can kill anything, and it while this kind of power has worried some policymakers the world over for a long time, the US has never used this power so it was nothing to write home about.


Well, today they used it. They crossed a line. This is no joke a declaration of war on freedom. The US is willing to tamper with the system on the behalf of special interests."

[ken6346]

...well shit. I don't even know what to say. We're running out of time.

[Q]

Freenet (http://freenetproject.org/) just became a whole lot more interesting.

[Sosa]

wtf is this? this is just ridiculous

[Broletariat]

Freenet (http://freenetproject.org/) just became a whole lot more interesting.
Is this very similar to the Tor network that's primarily used to trade illegal photographs of minors?

Also I just checked out that freenet thing further

It set up a cron job to start some process every time I start my computer, and it didn't ask me permission to do that or tell me that it was going to do so before it did it. Basically, the program decided that its going to start automatically, every time I turn on my computer, without asking my permission or telling me that it was going to do so. That is completely unacceptable behavior for ANY program.

[Q]

Is this very similar to the Tor network that's primarily used to trade illegal photographs of minors?

It goes much further than Tor. The latter is a proxy network, the former a complete network in its own right.

From the Tor FAQ:


Freenet

Tor and Freenet work on different levels: Tor is about transport, and Freenet is about storage/retrieval. So it would make perfect sense (assuming we become happy with the scalability and decentralization properties) to use Tor to get anonymous transport between Freenet nodes.

In fact, because Freenet aims to provide anonymity in the sense of the ability to deny ("you know I am the one who gave you that file, but you can't prove I am the original author"). Tor's notion of anonymity ("you can't find my location") is complementary.

Of course, for what purposes such technology is used is pretty irrelevant (not saying child ponography is not a problem).


It set up a cron job to start some process every time I start my computer, and it didn't ask me permission to do that or tell me that it was going to do so before it did it. Basically, the program decided that its going to start automatically, every time I turn on my computer, without asking my permission or telling me that it was going to do so. That is completely unacceptable behavior for ANY program.
Then you haven't paid much attention to what you were doing. The installer is pretty clear in what it is going to do.

[Broletariat]

Then you haven't paid much attention to what you were doing. The installer is pretty clear in what it is going to do.
Ahh alright, yea I just re-did it I see it now, my apologies.

[Sosa]

I downloaded freenet but uninstalled it because I don't know anyone else who uses it.

[Q]

I downloaded freenet but uninstalled it because I don't know anyone else who uses it.

While connecting-through-friends does increase your anonymity, it isn't strictly required to use Freenet.

You could for example use Freenet for a while, using "low" security settings (opennet). Once you have a reasonable amount of friends added, you switch over to "high" mode (darknet).

[Sosa]

While connecting-through-friends does increase your anonymity, it isn't strictly required to use Freenet.

You could for example use Freenet for a while, using "low" security settings (opennet). Once you have a reasonable amount of friends added, you switch over to "high" mode (darknet).

I might try that, though I am weary of viruses. That might not be much of a problem though because I have a mac, I guess I'm just paranoid

[Q]

I might try that, though I am weary of viruses. That might not be much of a problem though because I have a mac, I guess I'm just paranoid

Freenet doesn't just download stuff* and if you're downloading binaries, it gives you several warnings to make sure you really want to download it. Also, having up to date anti-virus software is always a good idea (is that applicable for OSX though?).

* The only exception to this, as far as I'm aware, is if you've opted for auto-downloading updates of Freenet in your settings.