It’s a simple concept but I’m not sure that it’s an original one.  I seem to remember using something called “Infinity” a while ago that may have worked in a similar way.  Basically I could web to an Infinity web interface using my usual browser and from there the script on the web site would pull information from the Infinity web for me.  It was like a secret part of the Internet but I don’t remember finding much of any interest on it.  I liked the idea of it through.

Yesterday I came across Freenet.  Freenet works differently in that it doesn’t use Usenet servers to store the information.  Instead you run a local service that turns your computer in to a node that networks with other users running the software.  Each node reserves some disk space on the computer that is used to store Freenet information.  It’s all encrypted and the idea is that you don’t actually know what’s stored in this space on your own machine.  It could be anything.  From what I can gather, when you request a Freenet resource, such as a web page, your node asks the node network for the information and you receive it from them.  They don’t even know they had that information nor that they sent it to you, since it’s all encrypted.

If you want even more anonymity then you can form a “Darknet” with one or more trusted nodes.  This means that you’ll only receive information directly from those nodes, but those nodes can still give you full access to Freenet by finding resources on your behalf and relaying them to you.

I was telling my friend about Freenet yesterday and he said something along the lines of “I’m not even slightly interested since I’m not a pedophile or terrorist.”  Obviously I couldn’t help but be offended since the implication is that I must be a pedophile or terrorist since I am interested in Freenet.  However I don’t think he presented a fair argument.  There are many reasons why someone might want to deny authorities the ability to remove information from the public domain, or that governments might want to unfairly limit their citizens’ Internet access.  This is especially true in countries with poor human rights.  Here is an informative list of the top 10 countries censoring the Internet.  Of course, in all cases it’s content that the government doesn’t like so the end-user doesn’t get to make their own mind up.  In the most extreme cases, the Internet could be used as a propaganda tool.

Freedom of speech is important, as is freedom of the press.  You should only accept an uncensored Internet if you truly believe that politicians are selfless creatures that have only your best interests at heart, and that you’ll never need to know anything other than what they let you know.

In case you don’t want to check out Freenet for yourself but are still curious as to the contents here’s a list of some random sites I found.

• fniki: A wiki for use over freenet
• Esperanto: Information about the artificial international language Esperanto
• Iran News Index: Censored news from Iran
• Cats: Cute images of cats, with funny captions
• Greater Secret Toad Pictures Stash: Drawings and photos of toads.
• Hooters! Boobies!! Tits!!!: Pictures of birds – of the feathered variety!
• Time Cube: Crazy pseudoscience and conspiracy theories.

Not exactly what I would call ‘insidious’.  Mostly, Freenet is full of crap – just like the real web.  I’m not going to lie and say that there’s no dodgy content on it.  Nobody could claim that of the real web either of course.  I did find Muslim extremist material, something called The Terrorist’s Handbook, and The Jolly Roger Cookbook (which I originally read somewhere around 1990, about 5 years before I had Internet access).  I didn’t bother clicking on them as I have no doubt they are the real deal.

Apparently here in the UK, the government can demand private keys in order to decrypt data on your computer.  This would appear to apply to Freenet’s encrypted data.  Failure to supply the key can resort in 2-5 years imprisonment under Section 49.  This also makes technology like PGP not as safe as it otherwise would be.  Truecrypt can get around this problem with plausible deniability – i.e. you can provide the password to decrypt a volume but the volume can be decrypted differently depending on the password, with the real volume remaining hidden. It would be nice if Freenet could somehow implement something similar.