Which companies have access to my web browsing habits? Will the government peek at my emails? Who’s using the data mined from my Facebook activity and what will they end up doing with it in future? Are there really people out there who can monitor my every online move?

Until recently these were the kinds of issues pondered by those with an interest in Internet security and the very paranoid. In the post Edward Snowden world, these are things that are starting to matter to everyone.

Security is a pretty big issue among file-sharers for a number of reasons. Obviously there are many who would like to keep their activities private, but it’s common for file-sharers to be tech-savvy users who are generally more aware of online privacy issues.

Public v Private

By now, those using public BitTorrent sites should be well aware that their activities are, to put it bluntly, extremely public. At any time spies of all kinds can jump into a torrent swarm and start gathering data. The most important pieces of data – times and IP addresses – can be scooped up in an instant and are often enough for trolls to start filing lawsuits.

Private torrent sites, on the other hand, offer a walled garden environment. They are often very hard to gain access to which means that generally speaking there are less spies and fewer chances of being monitored or busted – or so the anecdotes go. Truth is no one is sure how many undesirables may exist on these sites but it’s likely that very few sites will have a completely clean bill of health.

The public vs private security debate has been done to death over the years but what is not often discussed is how sites – private ones in particular – handle the data entrusted to them by their users.

When someone signs up to a site via invite they hand over both their email and IP addresses. Immediate checks are made – has this email or IP address been used on this site before? If so, in many cases the chances of getting account are already reduced to near zero. If there’s no match, the user making the application is in – congratulations.

This is where the fun starts and something less entertaining kicks in behind the scenes. You can buy a zero-logging VPN incredibly simply these days but the same cannot be said about private torrent sites. At every opportunity they log just about everything they can.

Private site logging

Obviously, a certain level logging is required for people to merely have an account. As a matter of course sites log their sign up date along with users’ email addresses, passwords and everything said in their forums. No surprises so far really.

However, sites also log every single torrent downloaded and every IP address used to do so. They log how much data was downloaded and how much was uploaded. Not only that, sites know which other users the downloads came from and to which users the uploads were sent and in what quantity.

Once this information is logged (often against hundreds of torrents per user), sites know all there is to know about their users, real-life identities aside. And the worrying thing is that in many cases the information is never deleted, even when users have left the site. So why is that the case?

The answer is simple – it’s all about keeping the site and its file-sharing ecosystem functioning in an optimal fashion.

Sites rely on users playing fair, such as sharing content in a way determined by the sites rules. When this breaks down so does the site, so site logs are used to weed out the bad players. These include those who damage the ecosystem by not doing their part or – heaven forbid – those evil users who try to cheat the ratio system.

Once these users are found (which is only possible by keeping detailed logs on the activities of all users) they are kicked out. However, their accounts are not usually deleted because they carry useful information which will be used to ensure that the same user doesn’t try to get back on the site in future. To combat these users many sites also ban the use of VPNs, which means that not even good users can enjoy the security they offer.

Logs can be used to keep the enemy out

Site logs are also used to hunt down the private tracker’s worst enemies – anti-piracy companies and those users who make a business out of buying and selling site invites. These two groups can be closely related, since when an invite seller offers his product in public, it’s possible that spies can pick them up for a few dollars and gain access to an otherwise private site in a matter of minutes.

So, as we can see, site logs are there to protect the health of the tracker. However, it would be an absolute nightmate if they fell into the wrong hands. While that doesn’t happen often, it does happen.

Just this week the UFC announced that it had targeted a site called BestFreeUFC and as a result has obtained the site’s database which includes email addresses, IP addresses, user names and chatlogs of individuals who have illegally accessed UFC events. UFC owners Zuffa say they will now go after the infringers.

The future – encryption?

So what can be done to increase site security? TorrentFreak spoke with a couple of admins who informed us that while they would prefer not to carry logs, they are essential for maintaining a healthy tracker and keeping undesirables out. Passwords on Gazelle trackers are encrypted, which is welcome, but currently no other data is encrypted as standard.

One admin told us he would like to add full encryption but from a technical perspective it would seriously complicate matters. Furthermore, much more grunt in both the software and hardware departments would be required, along with a fresh view of the entire situation.

So while email providers start adding encryption as standard and companies like Dotcom’s Mega have security built in from the ground up, the question now is whether private torrent sites will maintain their positions or continue as normal.

This might just be another case of citizens having to sacrifice some of their privacy in order to obtain a valuable service, or perhaps in the overall scheme of things, security is tight enough already…..

Source: Downloading: The Databases that Store Everything You Do

When The Pirate Bay was first launched in 2003 by the Swedish pro-culture organization Piratbyrån, no one imagined it would turn into an Internet icon.

The site has secured a spot in Internet history and on this celebratory weekend we invite several early Piratbyrån members to share their thoughts on the site’s accomplishments, their most memorable moments, and their ideas for the future.

Marcin De Kaminski, Rasmus Fleischer, Tobias Andersson and Sara Sajjad moved on to other projects following their days on The Pirate Bay but all have played an important role in turning the Pirate Bay idea into reality.

Marcin De Kaminski

Marcin was one of the early members of Piratbyrån. He also founded the net activist cluster Telecomix. Marcin is currently a PhD candidate at the Department of Sociology of Law at Lund University focusing on Internet communities including The Pirate Bay.

Accomplishments: I have most of all enjoyed seeing the diversity of stuff being shared on TPB, and now – being a researcher with P2P as one area of focus – also the diversity of incitements for using the site. Our studies among TPB users have shown a great spread within the user base, both in terms of geography and reasons for file sharing. Truly fascinating.

Memorable moments: Being a part of the TPB cluster for just a short part of the early beginning, I think what is most important to remember about TPB is the fact that it started on a crappy laptop sharing the really bad *DSL connection of the Mexican employer of Gottfrid Svartholm.

As the initial plan was to found a small BitTorrent tracker for an extended circle of friends, no one could predict what was coming.

The Future: Besides still being an infrastructure for exchanging files between internet users, most of the ideas and ideals of the early TPB have been lost.

I would have hoped that the internet community at this time would have replaced TPB with something new and more innovative instead of stagnating in some kind of passive mode where progress is hard to see.

Rasmus Fleischer

Rasmus was one of the early members of Piratbyrån. He is a writer, researcher, debater, musician and runs the CopyRiot blog. Rasmus finished his PhD thesis on “music’s political economy” last year.

Accomplishments: That’s a very hard question. Technically speaking, The Pirate Bay’s most significant contribution is of course the unbelievable amounts of peer-to-peer traffic that it has been aiding. Economically speaking, I think that the harm caused to Hollywood by file-sharing is not only real but also excellent.

On the other hand, it has helped catalyze so-called “new business models” but I would never feel the slightest bit of pride over that shit. In the end, I guess the most remarkable thing about The Pirate Bay is the insurrectionary spirit of its refusal to go down, which on a symbolic level became an extraordinarily powerful thing as it resurrected following the 2006 raid.

Memorable moments: When was it The Pirate Bay, when was it the internet, and when was it simply hanging out with friends (and strangers)? Honestly speaking, I don’t know where to draw the line. But the days immediately after the big raid, in the early summer of 2006, that was somehow magical.

The first week of the Spectrial in early 2009 was a very memorable time as well. In retrospect, these are moments in time which the anti-pirates might now celebrate as successful attacks against The Pirate Bay, but in real-time it was all intensely complex and most of all FUN.

The Future: I think that The Pirate Bay is in a process of slow decay, which has been obvious for the last three years. Its basic failure was that it become such an icon that people began to celebrate The Pirate Bay rather than to copy it, although being copied was the real goal – not to be the biggest, but to spawn a hydra.

Today the best thing would be to get rid of The Pirate Bay and start over with new solutions for free and decentralized file-sharing, not too dependent on web search engines. To me, such a quest would be in the spirit of the Bay.

Sara Sajjad

Sara was one of the early members of Piratbyrån.

Accomplishments: I love the educational parts. Most of all I adore the way ordinary people wanted more, and got more. Like kids from school emailing questionnaires, and getting answers, from day one.

It’s also nice to see all the curiosity from companies, journalists and organizations that could be “on the other side” but where clever enough to understand that TPB made something completely new, and that it made an outstandingly brave statement only by existing.

Memorable moments: The fact that TPB got to be on Fox News’ Strategy Room for 50 minutes in 2009 without a bad word is pretty cool to me. I consider it to be a sign of world domination.

The polar pirate prize gala we had early on, is also super-special since it was one of the first connections between afk and Internet for TPB.

All the memories of the emotions, from bad to good, from celebrations to condemning everyone in touch, I think that’s the most important thing. Making people think, feel, talk, getting involved, resisting and fighting over TPB.

The Future: If I could decide, the site would be shut down in all ways possible. It should never belong to someone or something else than itself, and I don’t want it to belong to the wrong people.

Tobias Andersson

Tobias served as an early spokesperson of both Piratbyrån and The Pirate Bay. He has been responsible for The Promo Bay project and regularly speaks on Internet freedom related topics at conferences all over the world. Tobias is currently studying at a local university in Sweden.

Accomplishments: Politically, I think The Pirate Bay came perfectly in time. Powerful forces try to establish the concept of intellectual property and suddenly we have a generation of people who question this concept. Partly because file sharing became mainstream, but also because of the rebellious attitude of The Pirate Bay. There are so many of us that have so much to win on society not accepting this concept. And very few that have a lot to lose. So it is indeed interesting times.

Memorable moments: The site taught me so much. Early on we were on a constant hubris, as almost everyone loved us and worldwide media published anything we did or said. The emails and messages we got from people from all over the world, thanking us for providing them with something different that they couldn’t get in their locked up regimes.

One of the funniest memories is (and I know this has happened to several of my friends) when I had participated in the local media about The Pirate Bay and I was stopped on the street by two huge cops. They asked if I was that guy from The Pirate Bay. Sure I said, looking around for an escape route, when they then asked me which torrent client was the best and what all these codes like XViD and TS meant. They just wanted to get the latest Fast & Furious movie…

The Future: It’s fantastic that The Pirate Bay made it to its 10th birthday, it really is an extraordinary achievement. But now it’s time for something new. The coming copy fights will be on a totally other level. I’m talking about the 3D printing revolution. In a few years, millions of blueprints of tools, car parts, clothing and weapons will be up for download. If there is a safe platform.

The Pirate Bay in its current form can withstand the pressure from quite harmless industries like the movie and music industries. But when car, oil, and weapons industries and all the countries that depend on them will start to feel threatened, we can’t depend on a few people to sacrifice themselves.

—

TorrentFreak also asked two of the current moderators of the site to share their thoughts. These can be found here.

Source: Pirate Bay ‘Founders’ Speak Out on the Site’s Past and Future

As the Edward Snowden fallout continues, yesterday Kim Dotcom revealed that if certain new surveillance laws are passed in New Zealand he will have little choice but to relocate some of Mega’s operations overseas.

Privacy and security have become a hot topics for Dotcom. He was a surveillance target not only for the United States but also for local security service GCSB. Dotcom is tied up in a legal battle with the latter after a court found they monitored him illegally.

With Mega billed as ‘The Privacy Company’, Dotcom has a vested interest in battling the level of spying that can be carried out by the New Zealand government. Speaking with TorrentFreak, Dotcom explains why he sees the powers granted by these proposed new laws as a threat.

“The US government and the other Five Eyes partners (UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) have an agreement to push for new spy legislation that will provide them with backdoors into all Internet infrastructure and services. The NZ government is currently aggressively looking to extend its powers with the GCSB and the TICS act, which will force service providers with encryption capabilities to give them secret decryption access,” Dotcom explains.

Immediately it’s clear why this is an issue for Dotcom. All files uploaded to Mega are encrypted to the point where not even the company knows the data it’s carrying. Should the new legislation be introduced all that would have to change, but Dotcom says that isn’t going to happen.

“Mega doesn’t have decryption keys by design and we never will. Privacy companies like Mega will have to look for jurisdictions that care about basic human rights like privacy and freedom of speech,” he says.

Dotcom doesn’t go into detail on a full list of good candidates but says that smaller nations, particularly those with few enemies that don’t need a large spy apparatus, could be a good choice. However, one in particular stands out.

“Iceland is a friendly small country without enemies. They don’t spy on the world and they don’t care. It’s countries like Iceland that will see a rise in Internet services. There is a huge opportunity for smaller nations because the business that is going to leave the US is looking for a new home,” he predicts.

But while the small flourish, Dotcom says that the approaches taken by the ‘Five Eyes’ countries will see them ruin the growth of their own IT industries. And it seems that the United States will suffer the most.

“I expect that more and more Internet businesses will find the hostile US environment unbearable and will move their business elsewhere. Who wants to store any sensitive data on US based servers anymore?

“Over the next 10 years you will see a decline of US Internet giants and the rise of non-US Internet companies that care about user privacy. We will not see a strong NSA like before the Snowden leaks again. The truth is out there and when politicians and laws can’t protect our basic human rights, innovation and friendly jurisdictions will save us,” he says.

But can a country like Iceland cope with such a large influx of technology companies given their current infrastructure?

“Iceland has limited connectivity,” Dotcom admits. “But for now it’s a great option. Others will arise. I am sure of that. We have already setup a company in Iceland.”

So with preparations already underway should the worst-case scenario present itself, does it follow that Mega will desert the land of the Kiwis entirely? Dotcom told TorrentFreak that eventuality is unlikely but if any of their services face government demands for backdoors they will relocate elsewhere. Rest assured though, that won’t be in the United States.

“The US is on a path of destroying its massive lead in the Internet economy. Mass surveillance and copyright extremism will cost the US economy more than any terrorist attack or piracy,” Dotcom says.

“Remember, move your Internet business to small nations that are free of conflict and therefore don’t have a massive spy agenda. Look for countries that have robust privacy and human rights laws. Stay out of the US. Don’t even host a single server there,” Dotcom concludes.

Source: Dotcom: Surveillance and Copyright Extremism Will Cost United States Dearly

The Pirate Bay is arguably the most censored website on the Internet.

Courts in the UK, the Netherlands, Italy and elsewhere have ordered Internet providers to block subscriber access to the torrent site, and more are expected to follow.

Up until now The Pirate Bay has encouraged users affected by the blackout to use proxy sites. However, on its 10th anniversary they are now releasing a special “PirateBrowser” which effectively bypasses any ISP blockade.

“It’s a simple one-click browser that circumvents censorship and blockades and makes the site instantly available and accessible. No bundled ad-ware, toolbars or other crap, just a Pre-configured Firefox browser,” The Pirate Bay explains.

The browser is based on Firefox 23 bundled with a Tor client and some proxy configurations to speed up loading. It is meant purely as a tool to circumvent censorship and unlike the Tor browser it doesn’t provide any anonymity for its users.

“This browser is just to circumvent censorship, to remove limits on accessing sites governments don’t want you to know about,” The Pirate Bay notes.

PirateBrowser works like any other web browser and comes pre-loaded with several bookmarks for blocked sites, which aside from The Pirate Bay includes EZTV, KickassTorrents, Bitsnoop and H33T.

The browser also lists the alternative .onion addresses for both TPB and EZTV as backups to access these sites.

The Pirate Bay is not alone in its efforts to keep the Internet open and accessible. The Obama administration has spent millions of dollars on similar projects allowing citizens of oppressed regimes to access blocked websites, albeit for different reasons.

The Pirate Bay team informs TorrentFreak that “PirateBrowser” is just the first step in their efforts to fight web censorship. They are also working on a special BitTorrent-powered browser, which lets users store and distribute The Pirate Bay and other websites on their own.

In theory, this will allow sites to exist and update even without having a public facing website. As a result, it will be virtually impossible to block or shut them down. The first version of this new software is currently being tested but there is currently no firm launch date. More on that later.

In the meantime, the development of PirateBrowser will also continue. The current release is only available for the Windows platform but Mac and Linux versions will follow in the future.

Source: Pirate Bay Releases ‘Pirate Browser’ to Thwart Censorship

During the summer of 2003 The Pirate Bay was founded by Swedish pro-culture organization Piratbyrån.

Piratbyrån, which translates to Bureau of Piracy, was formed by political activists and hackers in the early 2000s, many of whom had already launched other web projects challenging political, moral and power structures.

The group’s members were all friends of friends and in common with The Pirate Bay, there was virtually no structure.

One of the group’s unwritten goals was to offer a counterweight to the propaganda being spread by local anti-piracy outfit Antpiratbyrån. With BitTorrent as the up-and-coming file-sharing technology, they saw it fit to start their own file-sharing site to promote sharing of information.

“At the time there was one big torrent site, which was called Suprnova, but they mainly had international content. We and Piratbyrån wanted more Swedish and Scandinavian content. So we started a big library, and that is The Pirate Bay,” Peter Sunde later recalled.

The site first came online in Mexico where Gottfrid Svartholm, aka Anakata, hosted the site on a server owned by the company he was working for at the time.

After a few months the site moved to Sweden where it was hosted on a Pentium III 1GHz laptop with 256MB RAM. This one machine, which belonged to Fredrik Neij (TiAMO), kept the site online and included a fully operational tracker.

The Pirate Bay server

It didn’t take long before more server power was needed to keep the site and tracker from collapsing due to a growing number of visitors.

By the end of 2004, a year after the site launched, the tracker was coordinating a million peers and over 60,000 torrent files. Around the same time the founders also noticed that it was not only Scandinavians developing an interest in their site.

In fact, by then 80% of their users came from other parts of the world. Because of increasing worldwide popularity The Pirate Bay team completely redesigned the site, which became available in several languages during July 2005.

The Pirate Bay before the redesign

Due to these changes, The Pirate Bay grew even faster, and the number of peers tracked by the site grew to 2,500,000 by the end of 2005.

In the meantime, Piratbyrån had distanced itself from the site as a group, but continued to share the Kopimi lifestyle throughout the world until 2007. The Pirate Bay sailed on independently and continued to be operated by an unorganized collection of individuals.

Pirate Bay’s increase in traffic didn’t go unnoticed by the entertainment industries. Copyright holders started to send out takedown notices, which were often mocked by the site’s founders. Eventually, however, The Pirate Bay got raided following pressure from Hollywood and the USA.

May 31, 2006, less than three years after The Pirate Bay was founded, 65 Swedish police officers entered a datacenter in Stockholm. The officers were tasked with shutting down the Pirate Bay’s servers.