Anonymous or distributed web technologies

[genjix]

Say I wanted to make a website selling newspapers in a country where it's illegal to buy them. What technologies could I use?

Freenet only serves static pages AFAIK, so not sure if that would be appropriate since it only hands out content but doesn't provide a way for users to interact with the site (discreetly or publicly).

Would a tor service fit the job here? What other tools exist?

The aim is to provide some level of protection for buyers of newspapers on the site (enough to make the government go after easier fish) and make it difficult to attack the site owner.

[Tril]

In addition to tor, check out I2P.  http://i2p2.de

[Nefario]

i2p is a lot faster, especially if you have a decent server for it.

[Ryland R. Taylor-Almanza]

+1 for i2p. Tor services are so-o-o slow!

[grondilu]

+1 for i2p. Tor services are so-o-o slow!

They are not.  There is a bootstrapping stage which can take about a minute, but after that it's ok.

Also, one advantage of TOR is that it is extremely easy to install.  Basically one "apt-get install tor" on debian.

[Ryland R. Taylor-Almanza]

+1 for i2p. Tor services are so-o-o slow!

They are not.  There is a bootstrapping stage which can take about a minute, but after that it's ok.

Also, one advantage of TOR is that it is extremely easy to install.  Basically one "apt-get install tor" on debian.

I realize this, and that's what I meant. I guess I should have been more clear. But It's just annoying, because sometimes you'll have to reload the page multiple times and keep waiting and waiting until it finally connects. I do love tor, but the wait times can be very annoying. And yes, Tor is very easy to install, where as I2p can be a pain. If I really needed the anonymity, I think I would use both.

[Nefario]

Tor is better for anonyminity. That is it's primary goal.

However by design Tor is slower as requests must travel through more nodes to provide this greater anonyminity. But it's meant to be low bandwidth.

i2p is also for anonyminity, but it's meant to run more regular services over. You can use i2p for torrents, email, whatever. And as long as your server has a decent connection (over 1mbps) others should be able to connect very quick.

It's less anonymous and a little more work to install, but has a better user experience.

[TiagoTiago]

Say I wanted to make a website selling newspapers in a country where it's illegal to buy them. What technologies could I use?

Freenet only serves static pages AFAIK, so not sure if that would be appropriate since it only hands out content but doesn't provide a way for users to interact with the site (discreetly or publicly).

Would a tor service fit the job here? What other tools exist?

The aim is to provide some level of protection for buyers of newspapers on the site (enough to make the government go after easier fish) and make it difficult to attack the site owner.

Freenet got forums, wikis etc, and works quite well regarding anonimity if you take the required precautions (just like any other anonimity system, pretty much none of them are safe against user carelessness)

[Stephen Gornick]

Tor is better for anonyminity. That is it's primary goal.

I hadn't known that TorButton will also standardize" various browser charcteristics.  The EFF's Panopticlick will show why that is important:
  http://panopticlick.eff.org/index.php?action=log&js=yes
  http://panopticlick.eff.org/self-defense.php

  http://www.torproject.org/torbutton/

[TiagoTiago]

Those using Tor for anonimity shouldn't forget that anyone can run an endpoint, including the people you don't want to know who you are, and at an endpoint all the communication comes out as plaintext as at your modem if you weren't using Tor.