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Comments

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An Idea..

07.02.2009 11:16

Here we are, The Filth have given us an opportunity lets look at this as a positive, there was problems with Indymedia and its direction, the advent of blogging since the formation, more easy to set up forums etc, no doubt The Police and its agents have posted and continue to post missinformation.

Centralised collectives are open to attack, it menas on server removed problems for the whole network, one act of MISINFORMATION problems for the collectives.

Why not go down the path of local servers, i run one from under the stairs in the home of a relative, it backs up all of my data, we run a blog at wordpress, underclassrising comes by a big web host, but is backed up by the local server, we are not paranoid but understand when you ask questions of the state you are going to get attention.

It makes no sense to us, why indymedia keeps up with the centralsied way of doing things, when smaller collectives more local are more easy to run, less prone to acts of MISSINFORMATION, there is no doubt since the removal of said server more MISSINFORMATION has been posted to Indy, why contine to act in a way that is a detriment not a positive?

I have now asked for a feature article on this

http://projectsheffield.wordpress.com/2009/02/05/and-its-yet-more-disgusting-voyeurism/ it has direct implications for Indy along with the way indy refuse to understand that cells are a better means of action, collectivisation has and will always be proven to be a detriment, not a positive way forward.

http://underclassrising.net/
mail e-mail: http://underclassrising.net/
home Homepage: http://underclassrising.net/

On the one hand

08.02.2009 00:42

Criticizing indymedia for putting too many eggs in one basket is unfair as centralization is often unintentional and simply the result of not enough help. On the other hand, Indymedia has bought a lot of this on itself. For example, a few years ago the global indymedia infrastructure was decimated, not by the authorities doing their thing but rather the disillusionment of one person who had been providing a substantial proportion of the global bandwidth and server capacity. He pulled out on being pissed off that IMC UK had sat for several years on £5,000 of donations solicited for 'urgent' new server capacity. That server now exists, it's the one sitting in a police station somewhere.

@nnoyed

Not money - people

08.02.2009 13:54

If you feel indymedia still has relevance to the movement and you want to support it then more important than money would be your time and involvement in one of the collectives. There are only a hand full of people around the country actively involved in admin duties and a huge backlog in tech issues and improvement to be implemented and only a few people with the necessary abilities.

indymedia needs you

job ad

08.02.2009 14:33

Even if it is an unpaid job, the job ad should specify the necessary abilities.
Please do not ask for a 'positive attitude' if you are also listing a technical skill.

Is it possible for you to make up a wish-list of volunteer roles?

Lazy

Jobs for the boys

08.02.2009 15:44

Yeah, who's going to make indymedia do auto resizing like any half modern CMS? How hard can it be?

Some way to flag posts would be good to - they have it on the london site.

David

IP Logging

10.02.2009 14:14

Well I would have had more faith in the often repeated mantra that "imc doesn't log IP's" if Ben during his recent little spat with Chris hadn't let the cat out of the bag when he confirmned that the IP log is turned on and off at times !!!!!

Interested bystander

One more time....

10.02.2009 17:11

Since somebody has referenced me here and none of my fellow admins have seen fit to remove the comment, I'll clarify for those that need it.

INDYMEDIA DOES NOT KEEP IP LOGS!!! NEVER!!!

So why the reference to IP logs in the mailing list? Well, while IP data is not stored, admins are able to view the IP address of incoming publish requests and do this sometimes to act against persistent spammers and disinformation trolls. That info is held temporarily in memory and wiped when overwritten by subsequent data or when the feature or the server itself is switched off.

I will be raked over the coals now for revealing this open secret but isn't indymedia all about transparency anyway? You can read all about it in the documentation for the MIR code base if you are vaguely interested.

So, from the horses mouth - "Indymedia has in the past attracted the attention of authorities, that have occasionally tried to request logs of whom is accessing the web site and have in one occasion seized without any explanation our server. We believe in the right to anonymous political speech and therefore we do not keep logs that could provide any such information." -

https://publish.indymedia.org.uk/en/static/security.html

ben (ex admin and now filtered off of the transparent mailing lists)

indymedia does not keep IP logs!!

"I would have had more faith in the often repeated mantra ... "

11.02.2009 21:22

... and I would have more faith in the police if they didn't lie, falsify evidence, commit perjury and generally go around trying to intimidate people to fall in line with laws that aren't in anyone's best interest.

Unbeliever

Hidden Comment

This posting has been hidden because it breaches the Indymedia UK (IMC UK) Editorial Guidelines.

IMC UK is an interactive site offering inclusive participation. All postings to the open publishing newswire are the responsibility of the individual authors and not of IMC UK. Although IMC UK volunteers attempt to ensure accuracy of the newswire, they take no responsibility legal or otherwise for the contents of the open publishing site. Mention of external web sites or services is for information purposes only and constitutes neither an endorsement nor a recommendation.

@indymedia needs you

12.02.2009 19:16

On 22 January 2009 an Indymedia server was seized by the police in Manchester on the behest of Kent police who claimed to be investigating a post about the recent Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty trial. The police stated that they wanted the IP addresses relating to specific posters but Indymedia assured them and the sites readers that no such data was ever retained. The assurances did little to quell unease among some site users and it quickly became apparent that while such assurances were effectively correct there was pertinent information being kept secret.

The strap line on the top of this sites web pages asserts that Indymedia is a "network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues." The line used on the UK site leaves out part of the messaging included on some other sites in the Indymedia network which assures readers that indymedia is a "democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth."

That passion for the truth appears to be missing from the IMC UK 'united kollectives' as anymore following the various threads covering this story can attest. Repeatedly over the last few days, comments containing vital information, warnings and advice regarding security for the sites users have been hidden by the sites admins in a totally unaccountable fashion.

When an article is hidden from the UK newswire, the act is meant to be reported to a publicly archived mailing list called imc-uk-moderation. If you visit the archive you can in theory see what has been hidden and why but recently at least one admin admitted he'd not been bothering to do this and it was also revealed that automatic filters set up by admins were responsible for over 800 hidden articles last year alone with no notification to the list.

According to documentation on site policy on the docs.indymedia.org site, moderation of comments is also meant to be reported to the list but there is a kind of "unwritten consensus on some types of comment which probably don't need notification". Such exclusions include "mindless abuse, e.g. one-liners with "Kill all the ***", or "Indymedia sucks" and "spam comments unrelated to the actual content of the article". However when you check the comments that are being hidden without notification (the vast majority by a long shot) many certainly don't fall into those categories.

The policy document goes on to give the following advice to admins, "It's important you don't give in to the temptation of hiding comments that you violently disagree with, but don't really breach the editorial guidelines. Before hiding a comment, it's a good idea to ask yourself 'is this really against the guidelines, or am I just angry at the author for saying something so stupid?' We don't have the right to censor comments simply because we disagree with them."

IMC UK claims the following among the principles in its mission statement: a focus on grassroots politics, actions and campaigns; to reject all systems of domination and discrimination; and to work on a non-hierarchical basis. However among the posts the current admins have been hiding were call outs to the users to get involved in re-domocrasising the project by attending what should be open meetings of the collectives. And how open are these meetings, if you can even find information on where and when they met? Another (hidden) post revealed that the London collective was closing ranks and making it's meeting even more private.

What is this dark secret that must be hidden at any costs? Apparently it is nothing more than the fact that the admin interface provides a feature that allows IP addresses of recent posts to captured for the purpose of creating filters against unwanted posters. Is it so important that this should be hidden even if it means sacrificing transparency and the trust of the site users? So important that it is worth the astonishingly extreme of purging information from indymedias public archives going back almost six years in a futile attempt at a coverup?

That such a facility exists is no surprise, it's pretty much essential to maintaining the integrity of publishing platform, especially one which operates without user registration. What is surprising is that an organisation proporting to care about user security would go to such lengths to keep their users in the dark, especially surprising from an organsation which aspires to openness and horizontality.

We need to trust indymedia, not to be infallible but at least to tell the truth. We can cope with security risks when we are aware of them but to be placated with half truths and be cut down from discussing the issues, that's just not on.

Quoting a hidden comment, "Lets defend indymedia, defend ourselves - against not just the intimidation and threats of the state against our infrastructure but also against those among us who are bring shame down on all of us. We urgently need to hold these people to account as our enemies are having a field day and the long it festers the longer it will take to heal the rifts."

Born on the streets of Seattle in 1999, the indymedia project is approaching it's tenth anniversary. It would seem that this year would be a good time to assess its strengths and weaknesses, before either reinvigorating the project or building something stronger and better in its ashes as we move into what premisses to be the most significant period of social struggle this planet has ever seen.

Man arrested in Indymedia animal extremism probe:

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/02/421703.html?c=all

Police bail sysadmin in animal rights extremism probe :

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/02/421827.html?c=all

Hosting Indymedia Servers is Illegal? :

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/02/421839.html?c=all

View all posts, visible or hidden :

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/viewallposts.html

a call to arms

its true

12.02.2009 19:50

yeah, i've had a lot of comments removed just because they don't "fit in". For instance, i'm not convinced that manmade global warming theory based on CO2 emissions is a problem compared to other environmental issues. But if I comment that, it is removed. I'm not abusive. I just open up discussion, but it is often moderated because the admins seem to disagree with it. Alternatively i get told by people that my comments are not fitting in with IndyMedia philosphies, and told abusively that what I can do with myself (these comments are left on even though their not not abide by the editorial guidelines).

If a site if meant to be completely open and democratic, then comments should be left on and only removed if they do not conform with the editorial guidelines. Otherwise the whole thing is a sham.

mike

open publishing, open editing, and its perils

12.02.2009 21:07

Mick complains of the hiding of his inaccurate posts asserting that climate change is due to water vapor, sun spots and nothing but the end of a mini ice age while the vast majority of the worlds scientists instead attribute it to man made causes. I think its legitimate to remove such climate change denial as its inaccurate and misleading however the issues raised above are not about the specifics of hiding, its the worrying behavior exhibited by those tasked with doing it.

Chris

Open and Democratic

12.02.2009 21:27

"If a site if meant to be completely open and democratic, then comments should be left on and only removed if they do not conform with the editorial guidelines. Otherwise the whole thing is a sham."

Being 'completely open and democratic' while having 'editorial guidelines' is a contradiction in terms unless those editorial guidelines are set and enforced by the entire community (which they aren't).

If you want to see what a real open and democratic discussion looks like go to Usenet where there aren't any moderators, but where you'll struggle to move because of adverts for cheap pills.

Unbeliever

Getting the balance right

12.02.2009 22:04

Sure, there is a balance to be struck between heavy handed moderation and free speech but this website has a purpose and it's not about being an open platform for just anything to be posted. Parameters are set reflect the politics of the community that use the site or rather the community that the originators of the site hoped for. The internet is a wash with information and each successful and worthwhile site has a niche it fulfills and is known for. This site covers politics with a specific bias, one of grassroots struggle and action against the forces of oppression, imperialism and environmental destruction.

There is a understanding between the users and those behind the scenes who make decisions to keep the site running as intended. Part of the understanding is that those people pulling the levers behind the scenes undertake to do so in a open and accountable way. Identifying then blocking the IP addresses of spammers and trolls who mess up the site for others is not an unreasonable thing to do but to remain open and accountable then information about what is being hidden and why should still be available.

It's obvious that some people have reacted in a bit of a knee jerk and embarrassing manor recently but it's perhaps understandable given the seizure of the server and the arrest of the sysadmin whose name was one the hosting contract. It would be good if everyone could just calm down a bit and come back to addressing all these real and important concerns with more of a level head and spirit of camaraderie rather than accusations and hostility.

my 2cents

Campaign for Truth & Justice, support for unrepressed independent medias

14.02.2009 10:22

I have read the following comments from number 1-12 and would agree with the sentiment that ‘Criticizing Indy Media for putting too many eggs in one basket is unfair as centralization is often unintentional and simply the result of not enough help’.

I feel Indymedia has relevance and great task to stand up and allow alternative news information medium which the powers to be want to stifle and suppress from public consciousness and debates.
At this campaign we argue that it is not right, nor acceptable for people Unlawfully Imprisoned as a consequence of covert Judicial Corruption in the UK, to be blatantly denied Unlawfully redress provisioned for in law, (under Article 5 Section 5 ECHR and Article 13 of the same ECHR) by the same authorities which wants to enforce the same law to the letter on everyone else, with the exception of themselves, friends and corrupt colleagues within the establishment.

I for one is available to actively participate and contribute financially in my local area collectives, if as suggested by comment four and others, you make the process of joining and participating more easier to follow, with job ads, roles and skills as ‘even if it is an unpaid job, the job ad should specify the necessary abilities. So here I can committee publicly to £50.00 per calendar month from Campaign for Truth & Justice.

At this stage it is important that you do not begin to argue amongst yourselves, as that is what the real culprits want. Don’t blame yourselves, because the real matter of fact is that the corrupt establishment will always be looking to find a reason to justify anything it wants to do, legal or illegal. You must have your own definition of democracy and not the narrow scope version imposed by current undemocratic government authorities.

Ahmed Balogun
mail e-mail: info@ctjnet.co.uk
home Homepage: http://www.ctjnet.co.uk

If I could donate I would, when I can I will, IMC isnt perfect sometimes things

14.02.2009 21:31

write are taken off when it doesnt seem Ive broken any guidelines, but generally its av.useful info source for many people

Green Syn

UK = United Kollektives?

15.02.2009 02:14

I applaud IndyMedia as a voice opposing corporations, capitalism, governments, mainstream media etc. Having experienced first-hand the eight-year Bush nightmare and the resulting corruption and propoganda, the need for a counterbalance is paramount. An independent media watchdog is a vital component of that counterbalance. So why on earth would IMC UK (which we know really means IMC in the United Kingdom) state that the UK stands for United Kollectives? Do you really want to conjure up Soviet collectives? I know there are many kinds of collectives, but "collectives" is linked in many minds to "communism" and "communism", rightly or wrongly, is a huge bugaboo to hundreds of millions of people. I doubt that's the image you're going for and, on top of that, the contorted spelling seems a bit sophomoric.

I apologize for offending, but it's been bothering me and now I've got it off my chest. I really hope my criticism is taken for what it is: constructive.

Dave In Iowa

Hidden Comment

This posting has been hidden because it breaches the Indymedia UK (IMC UK) Editorial Guidelines.

UK = United Kollektives?

15.02.2009 02:20

Dave In Iowa

re: United Kollektives

15.02.2009 11:43

I don't think it really stand for "United Kollektives", that is just a jokey alternative meaning.

Also, maybe there is some cultural differences, because in the UK I don't think "collective" has any particular negative totalitarian-style communist connotations. The term is quite common for general alternative groups.

anon

Strengthen the Kollektives

15.02.2009 13:23

"It was obvious that a truly country wide indymedia center had to be based on a network of local imc groups. The first network meeting was in Manchester, 6 months later in Lancaster, drawing new groups in. IMC UK became IMC United Kollektives." - About IMC UK

Indymedia needs people not money if it is to move forward and stay relevant.

people not pounds

getting involved is not easy

15.02.2009 22:00

Where are the collectives advertising their meetings?

interested

Bristle

16.02.2009 10:20

http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/689537

geeker

thanks for the info but

16.02.2009 15:27

the problems relate to the imc uk collective not to Bristol (as far a i know) which is a completely independent and separate thing. there are a number of indymedia projects in the uk and ireland which operate as autonomous site and don't use the imc uk common database. those include bristol, scotland, york, ireland and most recently, london.

whether they suffer the same issues as the imc uk network is another mater but the issue at hand is the uk network and the unhealthy state of the collectives which form it and the apparent unaccountable and non transparent way in which the imc uk admins are acting.

imc uk

RFC: Reinvent IP (reposting myself at the risk of blindness)

16.02.2009 19:57

I think IM internal security procedures are best left to IM, but I would like to highlight the flaw that one malicious admin from an unrelated collective can operate with impunity under current procedures.
No IMC will investigate another even when that compromises their own posters, and no one who has been betrayed by an admin from one collective can trust anyone from that collective to investigate impartially. That is a huge hole that has yet to be filled. Once an infiltrator is identified then what?

My main post is wider than that though so I've decided to repost it to a wider audience. Sorry, but.

If onion routing is currently compromised then what way forward? As an engineer I feel there are a myriad of anonymity solutions yet to be tried that are just crying out for implementation and yet currently my best advice is any public internet access, such as a cafe without webcams, submitted using gloves and a disguise. If you don't understand what I've been talking about then 'Turn Back Now', this post isn't aimed at you.

One solution could be to expand the number of onion routers exponentially. Let's face it, Tor etc are pretty unusable now and that would cure that problem.

I feel the answer lies in encryption though. Activists have won the battle for the desktop for the forseeable future. There is no excuse not to have every computer drive made impregnable to outside surveillance. I feel this is also the future of anonymous posting.

I have been thinking about this for months now and still don't have a 'magic bullet'. I have considered whether setting up a safe ISP or hosting site is the answer but these will become 'single points of failure'. Myabe encrypted P2P distributed messaging is more resilient. My best solution so far which I have passed to decent coders for consideration is encrypted tunneling networks within the net, where each computer creates a pseudonymn for each individual communication and accepts a pseudonominous request for communication.

I really don't know if TCP/IP is up to the job. It is a set of protocols developed by business and the military which relies on ID. Most surveillance software relies on this. Some of you will understand the protocol in depth and will know it is perfectly possible to connect computers using any other protocol that you care to invent as long as both computers understand the same protocol. For example, if one IM webserver understood my own protocol then I could communicate with it over the Internet without any IP connection, ISPs permitting.

Just now every protocol I have read relies on some form of ID. A message is fragmented and reconstituted according to some unique identifier. There are good reasons for that. But, a communications system could operate without unique identifiers when there is human intervention. If I posted this message here in fragments then an experienced operator would be able to reassemble them in the correct order fairly easily, and the worst case would be the odd message fragment would have to be dropped and resent.

It should be easy for a smart young kid to develop a routable P2P anonymous internet messaging protocol ideally suited to sites like IM and wikileaks. We have a vast amount of well-motivated and technically able people who could contribute. Because so much of the infrastructure of the internet is expectant of IP ( thanks Cisco) then it may have to be a new protocol encapsulated within IP.

Basically the world needs a way of communicating without any machine address, any thoughts?

xMCSE

re: RFC: Reinvent IP (reposting myself at the risk of blindness

16.02.2009 20:58

> If onion routing is currently compromised then what way forward?

By this I assume you mean Tor? (

http://torproject.org) How is it compromised at the moment?
I find it fairly usable. It can be slow at some times of the day, but it works.

The main bottleneck with Tor is with the small number of nodes that allow traffic out onto the regular internet, since that is the most common usage of Tor. People often forget that Tor can also host anonymous websites, called .onion sites.

> I feel the answer lies in encryption though.

That definitely has to be a part of it!

The solution is to use decentralised networks where traffic is encrypted and routed randomly through other peers. In effect, we are all mini-ISPs for each other. To compromise this network, an attacker has to either control a large proportion of the users, or block users from talking to each other i.e. no single point of failure.

Tor is a good example of this. Freenet is another (

http://freenetproject.org) and so is I2P (

http://www.i2p2.de/)

IMHO these kind of networks will become more important in the future.

g33k

Boring, irrelevant, techie stuff

17.02.2009 01:05

[ I'd still agree with IM that Tor is 'best practice' that should be employed regularly whenever posting sensitive information, this post is simply a request to improve upon even that level of security and is aimed at anyone geeky enough to want to call themselves a Geek, or even a G33k, which is tres geeky non clementure. If Indymedia have published any of your posts then you should either send them some cash or donate some time but what I am about to say is wider than IM to the point of irrelevance ].

"By this I assume you mean Tor? (

http://torproject.org) How is it compromised at the moment? "-g33k

Tor is just the most well known onion router. Reports that Tor has compromised are easy to find, impossible to verify from my techie point of view. Same goes for the alternatives, impossible for me to verify but a lot of negative chat fom better qulaified folk than me. I was originally responding to this post:

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/02/422017.html?c=on#c215837
which linked to this article:

http://cryptogon.com/?p=624

I dunno about the various claims of Tor being compromised. While I am an informed expert compared to the average user, I acknowledge I am an uninformed user compared to the average expert.

Decades ago I had Israeli military encryption explained to me in basic terms that I could understand 'step by step'. Maths isn't my strong point so I am not on 'home-ground' here. I know how to test software but I still don't know how to test encryption so when I hear of 12 year olds cracking 2048 bit encryption using a rubiks cube and two old Ataris then I just have to shrug and spout cliches like 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating'. Except that is more than a cliche, that does imply 'black box testing' methodology. I expect most encryption to work as advertised mainly due to the lack of any prosecutions based on broken encryption so far - if they can bust us they will bust us seems a certain rule, as does the fact they won't advertise their succcesses.

Anyway G33k, ta for the response but back to my main problem. You have a building-full / world-full of computers. You need to send messages between them without identifying the sender. The veracity of the messages is less important than the anonymity of the user. To complicate matters there may be a black box inbetween that only permits IP communication.
So do you
a) design a new TCP/IP OSI protocol that circumvents the addressing/id issues?
or
b) design a new protocol that is outside the OSI model why still being able to 'pass through the gates'?
or
c) Use the existing infrastructure in a more intelligent way ? (please elaborate a little since I have no idea on this)

Like I said I've been thinking about this before this current case came to light. I have a good knowledge of protocols, less so encryption, but any solution I come up with seems eventually vunerable because of the protocols. It is a classic Sword vs Shield dilemma. If I do x as an activist then I would do y as a state administrator. This is genuine fundamentals here but the eventual root cause of technical failure of any communications system seems to be the unique identifier in-built into every protocol. Network architects use UI's because their main aim is usability, functionality, but if your main aim is security then is it really necessary? What other ways can fragmented messages be reconstructed, even at the risk of losing messages requiring them to be reposted?

Or put the problem in different language. When i was a kid I designed an alternative internet protocol but I still used a UI, in retrospect UIs were mainly for ease of programming. My problem was just to communicate succesfully, not to communicate safely. After some police attention I am now focussed on the safety aspect, and I now question why two computers have to identify each other to communicate when an admistrator is present. IP is by design unreliable, UDP is reliable. Yet we all rely on basic IP all the time. My wee idea is that less technically reliable protocols could be just as reliable with far less (zero) identifiable information.

This isn't about reliable file transfer, it is about untraceable human to human communications. I want to assume that there are coders and designers I don't know of who are already pursuing this aim. The unrelated computer movements that brought us safe P2P sharing and safe encryption are so dazzingly successful that I, blinded, expect the solution to safe political posting to come from a hybrid of those two techs.
Maybe not but I am convinced there is an unbeatable solution staring us in the face. That is a horrible technical itch to me. It really pisses me off that I can't tell my friends a perfectly safe way to post anywhere. Safety has to be possible in theory if not in current implementations. That is not intuitive, but then it isn't intuitive that I could lock a drive beyond the reach of the law.

My best guess is that the Plausable Deniability aspect of TrueCrypt is transferable to email through imaging. I honestly don't understand enough about that to know if it is also transferable to messaging.

xMCSE

My support to IMC-UK

19.02.2009 04:52

Well, I'm broke (being a political cartoonist for social and political causes never made me rich) but if anything I can make with my art to assist you in this difficult moment, please, contact me. My art is at your service.

My solidarity with all the activists of Indymedia UK.

Latuff
mail e-mail: latuff@uninet.com.br
home Homepage: http://tales-of-iraq-war.blogspot.com/

A couple of ideas full of holes for you to pick apart

24.02.2009 13:15

"I dunno about the various claims of Tor being compromised. While I am an informed expert compared to the average user, I acknowledge I am an uninformed user compared to the average expert."

Well I'm like a rabbit in the headlights when it comes to all the techie stuff, but I follow you so far.

Just an idea I had, which wouldn't mean much for anonymity, but might mean something for plausible deniability: would it be possible to develop a system whereby even if the outgoing packets from a machine were intercepted, they wouldn't mean anything to the interceptor? And I don't just mean encrypted and stuff. Like, what if to submit a message to IMC you used a form that didn't use the typical input method of keyboard characters, but used an interface whereby it loaded common words and had a mouse click-based word composer?

Sorry, that's a mess, I'll give an example.

The form uses one of those new-fangled (javascript?) input fields that has a drop-down menu with predicted words that updates when you input one letter or number at a time. So you type 'tr' for 'trace', then click down a couple of times to select it. But the provided word list is randomised so that even if somebody cottoned on to the fact that you were posting a message to IMC, it wouldn't mean much because as well as being encrypted they wouldn't know which word 'tr' stood for, nor which word the down clicks had selected, because 'trace', 'track', 'true', etc, were switched all the time. And for the extra-paranoid, they could use a mouse-based character/word composer so keyloggers etc. wouldn't work.

And I'm getting even more out of my depth here, but what if the message-posting server was different from the publishing server? Would submitting a message to a non-publishing server (which posts the message for you on the publishing server) circumvent any possibility that you could be held liable for published comments? Probably not I'm guessing...?

TTD

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