rns.recipes

I'm so sorey to be a bother but Ive been wondering what would happen if a message that contains illegal content is on a rectilium propogation node and wether the node becomes evidence?

Everything stored on a propagation node is encrypted for its ultimate destination, so just like with all Reticulum transport, no one but the recipient can read the messages. Legally speaking, both because of the encryption and because of their role as neutral intermediaries, they should generally fall under safe harbor provisions for services that handle user data.

Experience shows that LE probably doesn’t care about any of that in their investigations, so imagine if they were to target a prop node. Every prop node is just another destination hash on the mesh. For them to actually find a person or physical host to go after, they would have to do the work to actually investigate and surveil the mesh to deanonymize that destination. They would only easily be able to target the immediate prop node that the recipient was connected with. A message could be stored on many prop nodes across the entire propagation network and it could have traveled through many hops before it reached the proximal node. If they were to subpoena a prop node they would get no information that they didn’t already have. It all gets nonsensical very quickly and you have basically nothing to worry about.

Public internet transport nodes are a more interesting case, because they have an IP that can be easily targeted, and the IPs of connected clients are visible. Legally they are still neutral intermediaries but as governments push for and sometimes require service providers to do due diligence around content they handle, including moderation and maintaining audit trails or logs, there’s plausibly some risk for public nodes to be targeted. Again, though, Reticulum’s design means that transport nodes have no way to view the contents of encrypted packets as they traverse the mesh, and also have limited access to metadata beyond the ultimate destination.

Well, it should be encrypted and you should not have the key to the message, or anyone else other than the two parties communicating. So there is only pontential evidence, nothing usable. If your server gets raided you better have full disk encryption in any case :)

no one will know.

all messages are E2EE, only the sender and the receiver would know.

as a node operator, you have zero knowledge, therefore you shouldn't be liable in theory. it's like someone is secretly using a bush in your garden to hide some drugs, you are not accountable if you can prove you didn't know and you were not involved. having a bush in your garden is not a crime, if someone use your bush illegally it's their crime.

if the node becomes evidence is interpretable. as i've mentioned, the message is hidden, you don't know, you just host a public service that share reaources with other public services.
was your propagation node configured to prioritize the sender/receiver of the illegal content? if so then you may be in trouble as it looks like you somehow had the intent to keep their messages and you are somehow involved in how their communication works. if the propagation is default and keeps whatever, then likely the message is not an evidence of anything specific, it was just passing by randomly.
it may be evidence that the communication took place, or had the intent to, but it is not automatically an evidence that you are doing something illegal.

however, laws may differ from place to place tho, so who knows.

also want to point that theoretically only the sender should be considered as doing something illegal. someone can send you illegal things if they want, but this doesn not imply that you requested or had the intent to do something illegal, therefore you can be excused of this if you can prove that you just received it randomly. you may have legal obligations to report such illegal content tho.

If the message was sent to trusted individuals, then it's fine. Otherwise, anyone might get your exact geolocation or IP address, unless your only interface is i2p (which has it's own flaws). Also keep in mind that reticulum was never properly pen-tested, so I wouldn't try to send or host anything important there.

Mark wrote:

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i love your humor man