It's a ~20 year old P2P network that relies on traffic obfuscation for plausible deniability. But peers see each other's IP addresses. There's lots of child porn on it.
In recent years, investigators have been using customized clients to serve child porn, and track which peers receive it from them. For IPs in their jurisdiction, they get and execute search warrants.
Although there is arguably plausible deniability, most defendants lack the will and resources to fight. So they typically plea bargain.
Anyway, if you use Tor, they can't find you. But it's not as simple as that, really. Basically, you lease a VPS, working ~anonymously via Tor. You run a Freenet node on the VPS, and access the webGUI as a Tor onion service. They can take down the VPS, if they like, but won't know who was using it.
> It's a ~20 year old P2P network that relies on traffic obfuscation for plausible deniability. But peers see each other's IP addresses.
Traffic is not just obfuscated, it is encrypted. Sure, you see the IP of a peer which transfers stuff across your client - but you do not know what the stuff is as it is encrypted.
So the IP address is worthless unless you figure out a way to guess what the stuff is, and who requested is.
See my other reply in this thread for further details.
Sure, but some criminal investigators have figured out how to know "what the stuff is". They serve it themselves, and have hashes for the encrypted chunks.
As far as "who requested" the stuff, as you say in your other reply, they have some statistical arguments. I agree with the Freenet Project that they're very likely bullshit.
However, if you're facing criminal charges, you'd better have resources for expert testimony to discredit their arguments. And if you don't, accepting a plea bargain may be the best option. Even if you are truly innocent.
AFAIK in the cases of the convicted people, the Freenet stuff was only used to obtain warrants, at which points the cops captured computers and found accessible CP. I don't remember seeing anyone convicted based on the Freenet evidence alone.
Maybe so, but that ex Philly cop is still jailed on contempt, because he says that he's forgotten the disk password.
But generally, I'd rather avoid having a warrant served, and my stuff impounded. So advertising my IP address as a Freenet node seems like a dumb move.
