So... The IRC room has been abuzz about chaff and our darknet ideas.
Netzapper said he wants to work on chaff, and RK said he and I know a pro who could probably contribute significantly. That's great. I've been pushing the darknet stuff, so I went over to #freenet and did some research. Copypasta below.

WARNING: UNEDITED CHATROOM PASTE BELOW

(02:03:34 AM) Me: wanna swap refs?
(02:03:35 AM) Me: :)
(02:03:47 AM) tigerle: nope thx
(02:05:27 AM) Me: is the opennet insecure?
(02:05:42 AM) Me: is it rsa encrypted?
(02:05:57 AM) tigerle: puh too technical questions for me *g*
(02:06:04 AM) tigerle: but most people here use opennet
(02:06:39 AM) tigerle: sure there will be people here who can explain that better - later i guess
(02:07:32 AM) kryptos23: ScreaminIke : Exxhange refs with friends you know and trust if you dont want to use opennet
(02:10:17 AM) Me: kryptos23: is the opennet secure?
(02:10:23 AM) Me: i mean... rsa and all that?
(02:11:40 AM) kryptos23: ScreaminIke : The only thing about opennet different in terms of connection from darknet is the node automatically finds peers from a set of seed-nodes... so harvesting is a possibility
(02:12:13 AM) kryptos23: The link layer encryption is pretty much the same if thats what you are asking
(02:12:17 AM) Drizzel: ok well after testing out freenet and all the software it takes to use it i've decided its not for me. I cant find a single app that will actually work with out crashing all the time. Thaw is soooo unstable. Thx for all your help evanbd and Anon.
(02:12:31 AM) Drizzel: maybe i'll try it out again in another year or so
(02:13:37 AM) Me: ... ok... so... it's stil freenet. encrypted filespace, encrypted connections...
(02:13:58 AM) Me: but it speeds up the noderef exchange by eliminating it and registering YOU with the network, allowing for faster connections.
(02:14:00 AM) Me: right?
(02:14:15 AM) kryptos23: yes..
(02:14:20 AM) Me: ok
(02:14:27 AM) Me: how is that any less secure?
(02:14:54 AM) kryptos23: You are not *choosing* your peers as in darknet
(02:16:00 AM) Me: if, once the data leaves your box, it is NEVER in cleartext... how is that... dangerous?
(02:18:50 AM) kryptos23: Meaning in opennet, an attacker map out an entire network by monitoring the response he has seen to requests relayed by him and thus block your node.. such a compromise is possible theoritically. otherwise there is no vulnerability
(02:19:17 AM) Me: ok
(02:19:30 AM) Me: so they can say "i know you've been participating in freenet"
(02:19:44 AM) Me: but they still can't say who said what to whom
(02:20:05 AM) Me: and if you're under suspicion from a gv't... they could know that you're using freenet anyway
(02:20:37 AM) kryptos23: Yes.. something like that... but one can identify that a system is running freenet even by sniffing all packets in an interface since Freenet packets have a unique format
(02:21:00 AM) Me: and piping freenet through tor would be impossible because it's udp, right?
(02:21:32 AM) Me: no. wait
(02:21:34 AM) Me: i'm a retard
(02:21:38 AM) Me: that's not quite right
(02:21:44 AM) Me: but it's still kind of useless
(02:21:57 AM) kryptos23: I have not tried...
(02:22:03 AM) Me: are you a dev?
(02:22:50 AM) kryptos23: I interned for Freenet a few months ago
(02:22:57 AM) Me: orly?
(02:23:07 AM) Me: can i ask... what you're doing now?
(02:23:17 AM) Me: i mean generally. not like creepy "what are you wearing"
(02:23:36 AM) sky66 left the room (quit: "KVIrc 3.4.0 Virgo http://www.kvirc.net/").
(02:24:23 AM) kryptos23: Currently, i have a day job in my hometown; but u meant if i was doing anything freenet related, not much
(02:25:44 AM) Me: uhm... i'm kind of running some research for a new linux distro... and if you have any time... even just to answer some questions from our devs... we could really use all the help we can get
(02:25:49 AM) Me: www.paranoidlinux.org
(02:28:36 AM) kryptos23: oh... fine... i am reading the wiki page
(02:28:55 AM) Me: :)