Mastodawn

internetarchive Jun 17, 2024

More than 500,000 books have been removed from the Internet Archive's lending library due to the Hachette v. Internet Archive lawsuit, including more than 1,300 banned and challenged titles. 📚 Our patrons have shared powerful stories about how this loss has impacted them, and we need your help to make a change.

Sign our open letter to the publishers urging them to restore access to these books. 📖✍️ #LetReadersRead

👉 https://blog.archive.org/2024/06/17/let-readers-read/

Let Readers Read | Internet Archive Blogs

Mitex Leo Jun 25, 2024

@internetarchive Torrenting is the only way.

d@nny disc@ mc² Jun 25, 2024

@ml @internetarchive bittorrent (and all other current alternatives afaik) don't have any sort of anonymization, so ISPs can surveil torrent peers and cut off your access. it's not clear to me yet how to apply the consistent hashing used in most DHTs to tor's model yet, but tor may expose a sort of internal node ID that could be similarly used to achieve consistent hashing? @torproject has there been work to anonymize DHTs via tor or other alternatives?

Irenes (many)Jun 25, 2024

@hipsterelectron Tor actually has a FAQ asking people to not use Tor for bittorrent because it stresses the network

IPFS has done some work in this space, we're not sure how far along that aspect is

d@nny disc@ mc² Jun 25, 2024

@ireneista their website says ipfs is not private and to use something else if you want privacy i was checking it out yesterday

Irenes (many)Jun 25, 2024

@hipsterelectron oh. drat.

I2p is an overlay network that does support bittorrent, although that falls significantly short of true anonymization, for reasons you can probably already see

d@nny disc@ mc² Jun 25, 2024

@ireneista tor's anonymity via noise addition is less interesting to me anyway; VPNs can be used to interface but i recall hearing that some VPNs don't like being used for seedboxes. the level of privacy sufficient to mask participation in a particular swarm to an ISP seems less stringent than tor's guarantees and the consistent hashing needed for a DHT seems like something that could be achieved with any other identifier, but masking identity to all other participants in the swarm seems necessary as well and may be more difficult than i'm hoping :(

Cassandrich Jun 26, 2024

@hipsterelectron @ireneista Getting a VPS anonymously in a jurisdiction that you DGAF about to run your torrents and logging into it over Tor seems like the safest option that's currently practical.

LisPi Jun 26, 2024

@dalias @ireneista @hipsterelectron Anonymous payment to those has kept getting more complicated.

It also puts a hard limit on participation for those that can't justify the overhead of anonymous payments.

2¢Jun 26, 2024

@lispi314 @ireneista @hipsterelectron @dalias recommendations?

LisPi Jun 26, 2024

@Qbitzerre @dalias @ireneista For anonymous payment?

Zcash (which practically no one takes nor uses, so even just acquiring it will be a flag), Monero (I'm doubtful its security won't be compromised in the long term, I don't think anything is backed by proofs) or GNU Taler (which last I checked no one supports, but it otherwise also benefits from sound mathematical background like Zcash's zk-snark and doesn't have any of the cryptocurrency environment concerns).

So in practical terms you're basically left with money in a security enveloppe or Monero.

Privately acquiring Monero is itself a shitshow, and the best option at this point is peer-to-peer exchanges and a few intermediate transfers thereafter for obfuscation (which is subject to Monero's eventual failure, of course).

You certainly could say the situation is disappointing.

Howard Chu @ Symas Jun 26, 2024

@lispi314 @ireneista @dalias @Qbitzerre re: Monero you're speaking from absolute ignorance. Monero's underlying technologies are all established, proven crypto primitives. Monero stealth addresses are built on Diffie-Hellman key exchange, no one is breaking those. Monero RingCT has been peer reviewed in a number of journals.

https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1098
https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/321

To say its security lacks formal proofs is simply false, although you could accurately make that assertion about Zcash.

Ring Signature Confidential Transactions for Monero

This article introduces a method of hiding transaction amounts in the strongly decentralized anonymous cryptocurrency Monero. Similar to Bitcoin, Monero is a cryptocurrency which is distributed through a proof of work ``mining'' process. The original Monero protocol was based on CryptoNote, which uses ring signatures and one-time keys to hide the destination and origin of transactions. Recently the technique of using a commitment scheme to hide the amount of a transaction has been discussed and implemented by Bitcoin Core Developer Gregory Maxwell. In this article, a new type of ring signature, A Multi-layered Linkable Spontaneous Anonymous Group signature is described which allows for hidden amounts, origins and destinations of transactions with reasonable efficiency and verifiable, trustless coin generation. The author would like to note that early drafts of this were publicized in the Monero Community and on the bitcoin research irc channel. Blockchain hashed drafts are available in \cite{Snoe}.

IACR Cryptology ePrint Archive

Irenes (many)Jun 26, 2024

@hyc @lispi314 @dalias @Qbitzerre so like, full disclosure here, we have never looked into Monero in particular

but we did sit through a whole talk at PEPR 2023 from someone whose consulting firm specializes in building know-your-customer compliance features for cryptocurrency exchanges

Irenes (many)Jun 26, 2024

@hyc @lispi314 @dalias @Qbitzerre there is an entire parallel set of metadata about cryptocurrency purchases, not stored on the blockchain, for the purpose of complying with KYC laws.

Irenes (many)Jun 26, 2024

@hyc @lispi314 @dalias @Qbitzerre any KYC-compliant entity has to not only collect this data when people exchange fiat currency for cryptocurrency, but give it to downstream entities when it's spent

Irenes (many)Jun 26, 2024

@hyc @lispi314 @dalias @Qbitzerre since we haven't messed with any of this in quite some years, we have no idea what the current state of play is in terms of where this stuff applies and where it doesn't

Irenes (many)Jun 26, 2024

@hyc @lispi314 @dalias @Qbitzerre and perhaps Monero itself has some specific properties that other cryptocurrencies don't, which make this all irrelevant; we're not in a position to say

@hyc @lispi314 @dalias @Qbitzerre anyway, we're not here to criticize that in particular, but we do think it's important to always be aware that a mere technology will succeed in doing an end-run around the law forever.

Irenes (many)Jun 26, 2024

@hyc @lispi314 @dalias @Qbitzerre the answer to whatever social goals we might have around non-surveillance of finance needs to have a policy dimension, or it will fail

Howard Chu @ Symas Jun 26, 2024

@ireneista @lispi314 @dalias @Qbitzerre in most cases I agree with this point. But re: Monero, govts themselves have sealed their own fates. By pushing to ban Monero from the regulated centralized crypto exchanges, they've encouraged the community to develop decentralized exchanges, thus losing any chance at maintaining insight or control on its usage. The IRS tried and failed to break Monero's privacy https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/z9j62d/the_irs_bounty_the_full_story/

Now all they can do is pretend it doesn't exist.

Irenes (many)Jun 26, 2024

@hyc @lispi314 @dalias @Qbitzerre oh that's quite interesting, we didn't realize

LisPi Jun 26, 2024

@ireneista @Qbitzerre @dalias @hyc Selling the end of financial censorship and mass surveillance is going to be pretty difficult considering it's rooted in other oppression dynamics that are the real motivation for any of it.