Viral Campaign - How to anonymize yourself online

[funkydiscoman]

I have been for the last few weeks asking people (from my own social demographic), if they know about the Digital Economy Bill, and if they download copyrighted material. Most had no idea what the bill was about, and did download (mainly torrents). In nearly every case I was asked how they could hide their online activity.

I propose that as a party we should start a viral campaign, how to share material in a way which is (nearly) anonymous.

I'm sure that most of you will have heard of the 'Six Degrees of Separation', which states that social networks are not as deep as we are led to believe. I think that if we could create a comprehensive how-to, and pass this information onto everyone we think 'may find this useful' and ask them to forward it to anyone that 'they think may find it useful'. We could get it around the country pretty quickly. And get much needed publicity.

I have no previous experience in creating virals or advertising so I am asking for as much input here as people can give. Some points which should be discussed are:

Which media?
Website (here)
Facebook page
Email
Youtube
Or a combination

which technologies?
Tor
I2p
Vpn's
Other?

How much information should we actually include about the Pirate Party and the Digital Economy Bill in the how-to?

[scuzzmonkey]

personally i think we should differentiate between us and any sort of privacy viral - because frankly, if we teach people how to be hidden online it doesn't take a genius (read: arseh*le) reporter to twist it to the fact that "we condone paedophilia" or some such bollocks.

[glambert]

personally i think we should differentiate between us and any sort of privacy viral - because frankly, if we teach people how to be hidden online it doesn't take a genius (read: arseh*le) reporter to twist it to the fact that "we condone paedophilia" or some such bollocks.

Agreed, but one of our policies is the right to remain anonymous, it is in our manifesto.

Considering proxies will release the IP address of users who do commit some kind of internet crime, defacement for example, people who misuse their right to anonymity will be punished regardless.

So why not?

[scuzzmonkey]

true - i think we have to be careful about it though, while be believe people have a right to online privacy I think we will probably have to categorically state that we do not condone X or Y action.

[glambert]

true - i think we have to be careful about it though, while be believe people have a right to online privacy I think we will probably have to categorically state that we do not condone X or Y action.

Agreed. Suggest it to committee.

[funkydiscoman]

Swedish Pirate Party just got slashdotted - http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/12/19/0059221/Google-Open-Sources-Etherpad-Piratepad-Launches

They have set up a tor server to help with anonymous internet use.

[cabalamat]

I have been for the last few weeks asking people (from my own social demographic),

Which is?

if they know about the Digital Economy Bill, and if they download copyrighted material. Most had no idea what the bill was about, and did download (mainly torrents). In nearly every case I was asked how they could hide their online activity.

I propose that as a party we should start a viral campaign, how to share material in a way which is (nearly) anonymous.

Actually if lots of people want to know this information, getting it out to them probably won't be that difficult, and probably wouldn't require viral marketing. (One needs to distinguish between the information delivered (which probably isn't viral), and the way that people are made aware of it (which might be)).

Putting out a web page that Google can find would probably do most of the work.

I'm sure that most of you will have heard of the 'Six Degrees of Separation', which states that social networks are not as deep as we are led to believe. I think that if we could create a comprehensive how-to, and pass this information onto everyone we think 'may find this useful' and ask them to forward it to anyone that 'they think may find it useful'. We could get it around the country pretty quickly. And get much needed publicity.

Hmmm. The 6 degrees of separation thing reminds me of F2F filesharing. None of the F2F filesharing clients is big (i.e. used by lots of people) right now, but if one became big, that software would be a solution to anonymity on the net.

Note that I'm sayihg that the solution to anonymity on the net probably involves software rather than information; people are on the whole more prepared to download and run a program (if they can see an advantagfe in doing so) than learn stuff.

If one of the F2F clients also did IRC, VoIP (with optional pictures), and maybe something like Google Wave's collaboration facilities, and if it also could mimic other protocols (e.g. email, SIP, https, ssh), thn it would have a good chance of becoming big.

[cabalamat]

personally i think we should differentiate between us and any sort of privacy viral - because frankly, if we teach people how to be hidden online it doesn't take a genius (read: arseh*le) reporter to twist it to the fact that "we condone paedophilia" or some such bollocks.

Yes, that's a potential problem.

[cabalamat]

true - i think we have to be careful about it though, while be believe people have a right to online privacy I think we will probably have to categorically state that we do not condone X or Y action.

Should political parties condone illegal activity?

A large part of the purpose of political parties is to propose changes to the law and try to get those changes enacted. Those changes generally invlove (i) making things that are currently legal illegal, or (ii) making things that are currently illegal legal. Whenever a party does (ii), they are implicitly saying that stuff that's currently illegal is basically OK to do, i.e. condoning it.

So unless a party takes a principled decision that no activity which is ever illegal should ever become legal, they in principle support condoning illegal activity.

I'm a member of the Pirate Party. I believe in principle that people are entitled to security of communications, including technical means for ensuring such security, i.e. encryption, and to receive and send communications to anyone who wants to communicate with them. I note that the ECHR and the EU's charter of fundamental rights echo these freedoms. I also believe that the single most effective way for the West to promote its long-term foreign policy objectives is to ensure that there is widespread computer hardware and software that enables those freedoms, both in the West and throughout the world.

Incidently, encryption is perfectly legal in the UK as is P2P and F2F filesharing.

[scuzzmonkey]

I'm a member of the Pirate Party. I believe in principle that people are entitled to security of communications, including technical means for ensuring such security, i.e. encryption, and to receive and send communications to anyone who wants to communicate with them. I note that the ECHR and the EU's charter of fundamental rights echo these freedoms. I also believe that the single most effective way for the West to promote its long-term foreign policy objectives is to ensure that there is widespread computer hardware and software that enables those freedoms, both in the West and throughout the world.

as am I.

my point however is that so far we have been lucky - we can sit here and say pretty much anything and the major parties wouldn't even be bothered to look, let alone spin/smear us.

However when we get larger, and gain support, and start to become an actual force the mainstream parties will attempt to discredit us and generally screw us over and I believe that it is this point that they can fiddle with the most and make us look as bad as possible.

People having the ability to be completely anonymous online is great, and I'm sure that >99% of people will never even think of using the info we supply for anything truly immoral and messed up - such as paedophilia/fraud/etc - but there will always be that small section of society that would.

I think our major problem is that we have too much insight into how the Internet and the WWW work/operate - my parents for example don't even understand the point in making sure AVG is updated regularly - and as such know that people that engage in the aforementioned nasties (most likely) already know how to cover their arses - even if they don't understand the theory, they know it works (see: able to drive vs how an internal combustion engine operates)

As a result it would be easy for that very, very, very small percentage of people to screw the rest of us - and the spin doctors will run with that forever and ever - the old adage of "well if they have nothing to hide...?" comes to mind all too easily. A lot of people I know - including some delusional house mates - don't understand why its a bad thing for your ISP to log your history, or why phorm is bad, or why net neutrality is a must for the future.

There are a few things I'm pretty damn sure the Pirate Party does not stand for - things like credit card fraud and paedophilia I'd hope with my life are at least 2 of those things - and so if/when(?) we make this campaign, imho we need to say that something like;

PPUK is not responsible for the activities end-users participate in, however PPUK do not encourage or condone the use of this information for illegal activities including but not limited to; X, Y, Z.

[Icanhas]

When disclaiming responsibility for users' actions, I believe we'll need to be as unspecific as possible. We'll need to let people know that it's their right to privacy & anonymity that we're fighting for, and their actions under that right are their responsibility.

This information is provided for the benefit of the general public. PPUK is not responsible for the actions of end-users.

Something like that seems fine.

Saying we don't condone specific actions is a dangerous trap to fall into. Let's focus on what we do condone.

[funkydiscoman]

I have been considering the implications of media organisations implying that anonymous internet usage will be used for serious criminal offences, (read child pornography, terrorism, etc. )

I have some ideas which I think may be wise to add to any campaign:
1. People committing these type of offences can already, and probably are using technology like this.
2. You will never truly be anonymous.
3. It is possible to track down these serious offenders.

Some other points:
1. Using software to hide your IP address from peers and Encrypting the traffic will make it much less financially viable to track down file sharers.
(Personally I think this is the best way to push decriminalisation)
2. Why should your internet connection be throttled for downloading legal free torrents? If I was downloading from itunes store I very much doubt any ISP would limit my speed.
3. I can see the (future) possibility of the new Bill being used for claims of software patent infringement. Imagine Microsoft claiming you infringed on its patents for .Net when uploading a torrent of a Linux distribution bundled with mono. Or Fraunhofer complaining about a free Mp3 decoder.

If you have not already, please have a look at the I2P project, I think it fits in with the model we need.
The main thing that will put people off is setup and a possibly unfamiliar interface. Hence the need for a how-to, taking people from download to setup, and then onto finding and downloading torrents.

[cc]

Let me give a warning against encrypted proxies, and why the D.E. Bill pushing technologically ignorant people underground is en extremely bad side-effect:

Using a VPN means all your outbound internet traffic first gets encrypted, sent to the VPN provider, decrypted and then sent over the internet as if they were you (and the other way round for inbound traffic).

The danger is that the VPN provider will have access to everything that comes and goes over your connection, which makes it possible for the VPN provider to steal all your passwords and other sensitive information.

All the usual man-in-the-middle attacks can be done very easily this way -- and the users' IP addresses aren't even their own any more, which makes it so much easier!

I strongly suggest for the pirate party to raise awareness of this problem, and to warn both the people and the government where Internet snooping could lead.
At the very least, don't recommend to people to use untrusted proxies!

[AndrewTindall]

Let me give a warning against encrypted proxies, and why the D.E. Bill pushing technologically ignorant people underground is en extremely bad side-effect:

Using a VPN means all your outbound internet traffic first gets encrypted, sent to the VPN provider, decrypted and then sent over the internet as if they were you (and the other way round for inbound traffic).

The danger is that the VPN provider will have access to everything that comes and goes over your connection, which makes it possible for the VPN provider to steal all your passwords and other sensitive information.

All the usual man-in-the-middle attacks can be done very easily this way -- and the users' IP addresses aren't even their own any more, which makes it so much easier!

I strongly suggest for the pirate party to raise awareness of this problem, and to warn both the people and the government where Internet snooping could lead.
At the very least, don't recommend to people to use untrusted proxies!

which is why we should promote the use of secure and trusted VPNs.

[scuzzmonkey]

which is why we should promote the use of secure and trusted VPNs.

exactly - tbh, warning the government that people that try to get around legislation might get "f'd in the a" will just prompt them to say "well, don't try to circumvent us then"

[azrael]

PPUK has decided to endorse a potential VPN service. See http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=4266

[borgs8472]

The danger is that the VPN provider will have access to everything that comes and goes over your connection, which makes it possible for the VPN provider to steal all your passwords and other sensitive information.

Everything not already encrypted, SSL over SSL remains secure AFAIK.