[cgtzczykldpq]

Freenet does not give you the decryption keys to the data you host, you don't know what you're hosting, hence you're not responsible for what it could be decrypted to.

And even if law enforcement could successfully convince a court that you're doing something illegal by hosting data which you cannot look into:

They couldn't first acquire the necessary search warrant because they couldn't prove that you are the one who is hosting the particular piece of illegal data: Freenet's routing algorithm is anonymized, both the people who retrieve data and the people who store it are anonymous. (Disclaimer: The security of the anonymization depends on how you've configured Freenet. In the less secure modes a well-funded attacker can de-anonymize you.)

So if law enforcement knows a certain file is evil then they cannot easily find out the IP addresses of the people who store it, and the people who store it don't know that they are doing so.

Hence it is censorship-resistant :)

[lr4444lr]

...hence you're not responsible for what it could be decrypted to.

You do NOT want your defense in court to rest on convincing a judge or jury of this.

[cgtzczykldpq]

So we must shut down all hotels because they all unknowingly hosted some illegal activities in their rooms, e.g. if someone met a prostitute there?

In fact we cannot have people rent out condos or houses anymore either because illegal stuff will happen there and the owner is responsible even if they don't know!

Also we need to shut down all ISPs because at some point in time illegal data was cached on their machines during transit!?

[lr4444lr]

I don't think this deserves downvoting, because it gives an opportunity to point out 2 things I didn't.

1) The crime in question is not just that you acquired the content, but that you disseminated it. This is in sharp distinction from a hotel, in which the person renting the room is the perpetrator. It's not like there is some RICO statute that hotel owners routinely get pinned with when renting rooms out to shady people unless they are literally involved in RICO.

2) CASM is unique among crimes (in the USA) in that knowing of it and NOT reporting it is itself a crime. You cannot claim that you were frightened. So you now have to prove that you never decrypted it yourself, on top of evidence that you disseminated it.

This is not a position you want to be in legally.

[JohnWhigham]

That's just the reality of the world today. Anything regarding crimes on the Internet, it's almost always the defendant being guilty until proven innocent, especially against cops/DAs with a dearth of technical knowledge.

You may be innocent, but you'll be spending tens of thousands of dollars and a chunk of your life agonizing over it before "justice" is realized.

[gilrain]

> So we must shut down all hotels because they all unknowingly hosted some illegal activities in their rooms, e.g. if someone met a prostitute there?

No. What they said is that you don’t want to have to convince a jury that you aren’t responsible for stuff that is on your computer

I’m so tired of people arguing in bad faith. Debate what people believe, not a stupid version you made up to score points.

[notanzaiiswear]

But if somebody downloads the data, and they can track the source to your computer, do they even have to decrypt it on your computer? (I mean does law enforcement have to decrypt it on your computer, or could they just indirectly prove you hosted the data).

[cgtzczykldpq]

The anonymized routing prevents them from tracking the source to your computer.

If someone downloads something on Freenet they don't know where it is coming from.