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Comment by mirimir | Hacker News Reader

Investigators run modified Freenet nodes that serve illegal content. They log connections with peers, and track chunks of illegal files, based on hashes. So if your node peers with one or more of their nodes, they can see if it requests any of those illegal chunks. If it does, you are "downloading illegal material".

Freenet is a pure P2P system. Your peers know your IP address, and vice versa. So your only defense is that your node was just relaying those illegal chunks to some other node. But that requires expert testimony, and a jury that's capable of understanding that expert testimony.

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I enjoyed this nugget of info. But a few questions (if you can answer them)

> They log connections with peers Of course (I'm assuming via just IPs)

> and track chunks of illegal files meaning what exactly? How could they track a 5KB chunk being sharded across say 10 different nodes? (further, flexible nets like freenet adjust the location of data over time based on the use of said data)

> they can see if it requests any of those illegal chunks My understanding is that yea you can see who's talking to who (via IPs), but I guess traffic analysis is the way to see the chunks (i.e., Peer A sent Peer B 100 bytes at 5:65 PM PST)? Even then, the payloads are encrypted, so I'm not seeing how you could infer that the content is "illegal"

Again. I enjoyed that little nugget of insight you shared. Hoping you can share more :)

Missouri Law Enforcement's Freenet Attack Now Public Record[0]

Levine et al. (2017) Statistical Detection of Downloaders in Freenet.[1]

0) https://www.reddit.com/r/Freenet/comments/66f0n3/missouri_la...

1) http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1873/IWPE17_paper_12.pdf

I'm going to assume Ontario is using the same method that the Missouri police are using above. Here's a response from Freenet outlining an 83% false-positive rate.

https://freenetproject.org/police-departments-tracking-effor...

Yes, that's the Freenet Project response that I was thinking of. Thanks for citing it.

But the problem now is that there's technical backup for both sides. So defense counsel will likely need a credentialed expert to submit a report, be deposed, and testify. Although I haven't followed any of these cases, I'm guessing that many defendants have accepted plea bargains. Because battles of experts can get expensive fast.

And then you've got the challenge of explaining this stuff to a jury. And countering the emotional "evil child molester" rhetoric. I wonder if the Freenet Project would provide such an expert?

There is one. If you’ve been falsely accused and you need one, contact press@freenetproject.org

Awesome, thanks so much

If that is the case, I would imagine it's like prosecuting a lobbyist for the bribe they're relaying.

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