Re: Standing Up Against German Laws - Project HayNeedle
On Nov 12, 2007, at 11:27 AM, Matt D. Harris wrote:
However some of these issues can be mitigated without too much
trouble. For example, one could have a dynamically growing
dictionary of words to search for based on random words in random
results pages that it grabs. At the very least, this would kill
any attempts to filter it out of the data mining system.
That'd be a significantly different approach. Even grabbing data from
the previously browsed cache would also work, as far as seeding
dictionary goes.
If the point of the system is primarily to create plausible
deniability for the end-user, that is, to allow them to say
"hayneedle hit the site, not me, so I am innocent", then I'd say it
could be effective in that regard barring some proviso in the law
that allow them to persecute someone who did not actually even
visit a site of their own volition. Beyond that, it's also
effective in terms of turning up the noise to signal ratio and
making this law that much less effective, while placing a greater
burden of ISPs who are then more likely to lobby against it ever
more vigorously.... all while remaining entirely 'white area' in
terms of functionality.
If I read the law correctly, it requires retention of "what IP
connected to another IP" and "which phone number called where." It
doesn't bother retaining the URL called (my German is rusty, so I may
be a little off in my interpretation). Connecting to a random IP on a
random open port (80 and 443, for example) would be a good start to
accomplish the goal creating chatter. The issue is that the search
terms to find those ports could lead to connecting to a site that
increases your profile against general background chatter, even as it
is raised with random connection traffic.
In that light, I'd regard use of something akin to TOR a slightly
better solution for protecting privacy and filling up logs.
I understand your post, but I don't think Mr. Ziegler was over-
selling his product's effectiveness beyond what it is really
capable of.
I wasn't saying there was overselling the effectiveness. I do think
the approach is innately flawed from a privacy standpoint.