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Freedom Action of the Week
Email List Archive
Free-Market.Net's F r e e d o m A c t i o n o f t h e W e e k
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Edited by Thomas L. Knapp. To subscribe or unsubscribe to this and
other lists, click to: http://www.free-market.net/features/lists/
----- Featured Action of the Week -----
Third week of June, 2001:
Put your computer to work for privacy
The fact that you're reading this column -- whether on the web or via
email -- demonstrates that you have a computer. Wonderful devices,
computers. They've revolutionized the way we live and work, and they've
made it possible for us to do things. They've also introduced a new level
of complexity to the things we do.
One thing that computers have enabled us to do is communicate more quickly
and effectively. The tradeoff to that is that we generally do so through
the bottleneck of the internet, which is subject to surveillance. Our
communications are only as secure as we make them, and our public writings
are only as secure as the web server they're stored on.
In the past, we've talked about implementing PGP on your machine or using
Hushmail to accomplish the same thing in a web-based format. This week,
let's talk about (and do something about) distributed computing.
The concept is simple: There's no reason why a job, or a batch of data,
can't be "distributed" across more than one machine. And there are good
reasons for doing so. In the case of tasks, it allows us to bring more
power to bear on getting the job done. In the case of data, it makes it
less likely that the bad guys -- the state, in the case of dissident
political writings and such -- can eliminate the data, or even trace its
ultimate origin.
As a matter of fact, groups like Laissez Faire City and The Free Network
Project are developing and implementing schemes that implement distributed
solutions right now.
Another big player in distributed computing is distributed.net. Their focus
is doubly interesting from a privacy point of view: They use a distributed
client scheme to work on projects that test the strength of encryption. And
you can participate!
Of course, this week's action is to do just that. That you have a computer
is something we've already verified. Distributed.net's client is available
for just about any operating system. Even DOS. Even Amiga, for the love of
Pete.
When you download and install the client, it operates unobtrusively. It
uses the processing time that you aren't using. When you're away from your
computer, or sitting and staring idly at the screen, the client is working
in the background, testing keys for encryption algorithms and such. When
you do anything with your computer, the client lets go. It doesn't get in
your way. Every so often, it connects to distributed.net's server, forks
over the information it has generated, and gets more work to do.
I realize that this week's action -- downloading and installing the
distributed.net client -- may seem less than revolutionary. After all,
you're basically downloading a small program, installing it, and
forgetting about it. But it's really more important than it sounds. Every
day, those who would constrain our speech on the internet are working
overtime to perfect technologies for tracking, filtering and locating the
authors of whatever it is they don't want people to say. Encryption and
distributed networks are twin bulwarks against their ability to do so. I
don't expect you to work 40 hours a week on the issue, but why not let your
computer do that for you?
To spice things up a little bit, distributed.net participates in
encryption-breaking contests that offer prize money -- and they split it
with the computer owner whose client returns the "winning" solution. They
also donate a portion to the non-profit organization of the project
participants' choice. And they allow participants to combine themselves
into teams, which compete against each other on the basis of completed
work. Once you're set up, be sure to join "Free-Marketeers." I set the team
up just for us. (Note: It may be 24 hours or more before the team shows up
on distributed.net's site).
distributed.net's site is located at:
http://www.distributed.net
Laissez Faire City:
http://www.lfcity.com/
The Free Network Project:
http://freenet.sourceforge.net/
PGP:
http://www.pgp.com/
Hushmail:
http://www.hushmail.com/
Past Action of the Week columns are archived at:
http://www.free-market.net/features/list- archives/activism/maillist.html
----- Alternate Actions -----
The Freedom Action of the Week Club: Commit yourself to doing one
action per week. If the action above doesn't appeal to you, consider
one of the alternate actions at:
http://www.free-market.net/features/action/
If you know about another action or organize one of your own, e-mail
Tom at tlknapp@free-market.net so we can tell the rest of the group
next week.
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