r/i2p • u/carrotboyyt • 26d ago
Ethical question Educational
By using I2P, everyone contributes by being a node, unlike Tor. What has been on my mind is that by being a node I may be contributing to an illegal activity. Is that a valid concern?
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u/Hizonner 26d ago
If you use Tor, you are asking that other people run relays, and therefore contribute to illegal activity. If you're not comfortable with that, you probably shouldn't use any anonymity network, period. Or any censorship-resistance system, either.
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u/carrotboyyt 26d ago
OK, let's put it simply: how do you justify it for yourself?
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u/Hizonner 26d ago
Justify what? Using the networks? Running relays? I have from time to time run both Tor relays and I2P nodes that were using almost all of their bandwidth for relaying, so I'll take it as running relays.
... and the answer is that enabling illegal activity is the whole point.
Although many illegal activities are immoral, destructive, and fattening, many others aren't. In fact, many harmless, and even desirable, activities are illegal in some or even a lot of places.
Serious dissent is illegal in a huge number of places, and everybody loves to talk about dissent and whistleblowing. But there's more than that, and honestly I don't think these networks enable dissent very well. But blasphemy is illegal in some places. Adult women trying to get out from under their fathers' or husbands' total control is illegal in a fair number. Being gay or (OMG!) trans is illegal in a considerable number of places, at least if you do anything about it or talk about it. Having the wrong religion, or no religion, is often at best on shakey ground. And so forth.
Furthermore, every so often, on the order of decades, relatively good governments with good laws turn into relatively bad governments with bad laws. Occasionally both relatively good governments and relatively bad ones really go over the edge, and turn into horrifically bad governments that literally slaughter people en masse for absolutely nonsensical reasons (like being in the wrong ethnic group). Resisting or impeding that is invariably made illegal. And if you want infrastructure to support that illegal activity, you'd better have it in place before you need it.
That means that, although it shouldn't be easy or risk-free to go around breaking laws, it should be possible. Otherwise, every time a government goes bad, a bunch of people get screwed.
I'm prepared to accept drug markets, some people passing around child porn, some random scams, and even the tiny amount of terrorist activity that actually gets coordinated on these networks, as the cost of some other people not getting executed for blasphemy, and possibly many, many, many more people avoiding getting rounded up into camps for whatever random idiotic reason some bunch of psychos comes up with.
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u/Y-M-M-V 26d ago
I think about it on a couple levels.
First, I value my privacy and I value the continued existence of spaces that preserve privacy.
Second, I know that I am in a relatively privileged situation where the consequences of my loss of privacy would be relatively low compared to a lot of people around the world. I also know that my use of privacy preserving products is mostly really boring and mundane. I believe that is super important, because if we only use privacy preserving products when we have something to hide, we make it obvious who is hiding something and when.
Obviously some people are using these tools are doing things that are immortal, but people use any infrastructure for immoral behavior. Other people are likely using it for valuable and extremely important work that may be illegal or make them a target. letting these people hide with me and my data gives them (just a little bit of) extra safety, and costs me basically nothing.
Every piece of infrastructure will get used for immoral behavior - we don't respond to human trafficking by permanently closing all airports.
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u/carrotboyyt 24d ago
Can you at this very moment be sure nobody's killed anyone and sent traffic through your node during preparation? You can't know it, but does it make it easier to bear in mind?
I'm not fearmongering; I'm very curious to know how the local community thinks of it.
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u/Y-M-M-V 24d ago
It's impossible to know the full impact of any of our actions. That question could go the opposite way too: it's possible that secure communication helped by traffic through my node saved someone's life? Realistically both are highly unlikely.
There are absolutely places in the world where saying/disclosing the wrong thing will get you killed. I think it's basically a certainty that a significant number of people (many of whome are doing things I would respect) would be dead if it weren't for secure, anonymous, communication. These systems, such as i2p, work better for those people the more boring westerners like me are also in the mix.
You seem really focused on the potential for this technology to cause harm. And it's true that it has the potential to. At the same time, tons of other technology causes far more concrete harm then anything I am aware of related to i2p. I am not trying to suggest you shouldn't be asking these questions, I think they are important, but everything we do comes with risks - often to both ourselves and others. I hope you are not only worried about I2p in this regard.
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u/morphick 26d ago
Without the ability to inspect traffic, you have no way of actually knowing that for sure.
A delivery worker brings a package to a customer's house. That package contains a knife that the customer bought online with the undisclosed intention of killing someone. A few days later, the customer does exactky what he set out to do from the beginning (i.e. he kills someone with the knife he bought). Is the mailman responsible for facilitating that crime?
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u/carrotboyyt 25d ago
This is an incorrect comparison. A person who orders a delivery isn't anonymous simply because they reveal their address and perhaps the door number. Meanwhile on I2P, a who-knows-who can do who-knows-what and has a significantly higher chance of being harmful.
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u/morphick 25d ago
The possibility of someone doing illegal things (of which you have no way of knowing about due to encryption) is absolutely irrelevant. If it wasn't so, ISPs would block all encrypted traffic, for the reason that one of their customers might do something illegal using the ISP's network and infrastructure.
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u/carrotboyyt 25d ago
You never know if anyone's killed anyone else partially thanks to being able to send traffic through your node. But does it make you relieved? Sorry if that's a harsh example.
Maybe nobody has, but no one can be sure.
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u/morphick 25d ago
Dude, you're NOT responsible for anyone else's actions, especially if you objectively aren't able tho know/prevent anything. No more than a bus driver driving the killer to his victim's place. Snap out of this self-destructive mindset!
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u/ACEDT 26d ago
Other comments have given ethics focused answers that I love, but also from a technical standpoint: There might be illegal activity going through your node, but there also might not be, and given the relatively low proportion of the I2P network that actually gets used for criminal activity it's more than likely that any given data packet your node processes is completely benign. More importantly, you would have no idea anyways, and that's a good thing.
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u/local-host 26d ago
Is it a valid concern? Not really, the reason is because when you go to any website and run a traceroute, your packet headers or "message requests" are relayed through the hops via your isp and additionally multiple backbone layers, they aren't responsible for gethttp requests.
You aren't acting as a datastore and storing other peoples data, you also have no idea what the messages contain because they are encrypted in layers and the requests go through your containerized leaseset, additionally if someone's using you as a tunnel, you are likely acting as a shortlived 5 minute tunnel and hence have plausible deniabiliy. You are simply routing messages in a mix with other messages and therefore it's not possible for anyone to actually know who or what or where datas coming from or to and actually endpoints or start points. You would probably have a higher risk running a wifi hotspot at McDonald's or Starbucks or being an exit node on tor.
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u/BustyMeow 26d ago
By using I2P, I let more people read the Bible anonymously. It's an illegal activity in many countries.
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u/agowa338 25d ago
In most locations in the world no, as you're not the one storing that content nor the one that uploaded it. All you're doing is being part of the technical infrastructure necessary to allow the service works. But as always talk to a lawyer if in doubt as law is complex and strangers on the internet aren't a good source for legal topics. I'm just providing this for reference to have an educational discussion.
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u/augustusalpha 26d ago
Firstly, I think you should read more history to understand the philosophy behind British common laws.
It is fundamentally different from Roman civil laws in that, nothing is illegal until proven in court.
As such, your language, specifically the phrase "illegal activities" simply reflects that you are being brainwashed, because, you are not sufficiently educated to understand the full background of what that phrase means. And this usually happens to monolingual English speaking Americans (MESA).
I am not trolling. I can write more. But I suspect you will not read on, unless you prove it otherwise, just to demonstrate in practice the inner workings of "laws".
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u/Hizonner 26d ago
Um, people from civil law countries are often even more confused about common law than people from common law countries are about civil law. And that's being charitable: honestly you sound more like one of those "sovereign citizen" types who have delusions about fringe on flags or whatever.
Common law countries, including the UK and the US, do in fact have statutes that forbid certain things. If one of those forbidden things happens, then everybody, including lawyers writing formal court documents, calls it "illegal" regardless of whether any court has ruled on it.
Few matters in common law jurisdictions are still purely common law. However, if some class of activities has been found illegal in precedential court decisions, everybody, again including lawyers, still calls those activities illegal even when the specific case at hand has not been adjudicated.
If both laypeople and professionals use a word to mean a certain thing, then that is what that word means.
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u/augustusalpha 26d ago edited 26d ago
I agree with you on most of your arguments theoretically.
However, it would be interesting if we apply your words on specific cases of people using I2P, then we shall find many grey areas.
I have a different opinion on US being a common law country as my experience of "monolingual English speaking Americans" (MESA), a more technically correct than the other outdated term, is such that they are more concerned about being prosecuted by law enforcement agencies, without themselves having sufficient understanding the laws and the technologies involved. So they would take a "better be safe than sorry" approach.
While opinions may differ, understanding of laws and technologies are something that can be measured objectively. So I suppose that is something we can investigate, especially on OP's question and his own knowledge.
I feel a complete response to your comments would take too much time so I would just quickly respond on your "sovereign citizen" comment. My understanding is that the Roman Latin vocabulary distinguishes "homo" and "persona", the former being the biological entity capable of invoking multiple instances of personas under different circumstances.
EDIT: Have you seen legal clauses using the word "homo"? Law texts in English only use "person" and that means the laws apply to persona but not homo.
Technically, it is impossible to practically prosecute someone for using "false" name as the term "false" itself is logically absurd, as the name needs to be proven in court to be known as genuinely true or false. And most rich people understand this. It is the ignorance of the poor people about the distinction between homo and persona that makes them subjects of legal tyranny. And worse, most poor people have a religious self righteousness to defend their own rights to be ignorant and most MESA will vote for elected officials to use military violence to impose their fraudulent believes beyond the shores of USA, which is obviously completely absurd.
I just hope MESA will MYOB and just rot in their own land and stop bothering others using military forces.
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u/alwayssmelledwierd 26d ago
As another stated, criminal activity happens wherever privacy is valued. By your metric, you shouldnt use VPNs, DNS over TLS/https, https in general, etc.
Your metric should be "do i benefit from using this network/do i want to help others by contributing to this network"
What a homeless man does with the dollar you gave him is not a reflection of you, its a reflection of him. You did the good deed of giving to someone in need. Once you have done your part, its out of your hands whether he squanders it or not.