A dead drop with bittorrent sync
written on Wednesday, April 24, 2013
A dead drop is a public location (usually hidden) for people to exchange information anonymously. Old school espionage tradecraft.
People have been creating digital dead drops for a while now. But the release of Bittorrent Sync yesterday is a really interesting development.
Each folder you designate to sync is created with two secrets. One for read only access the other for full access.
Below is the full access secret for a folder that I've started syncing called dead_drop.
CRG6XDW4ZPPAYEXOHXC6H3AVRWDZPRVV (full access to a folder called dead_drop)
Why don't you install bittorrent sync right now, start syncing the folder, and drop anything you want into it?
Having read only and full accesss secrets could enable a new kind of publishing or sharing. A small group of individuals could curate a file collection for a global audience. Anonymously. Or in this case a global audience can just do whatever they want.
Keeping 3 or 4 terrabytes of data in sync between some globally located computers for nothing but the price of bandwidth is certainly interesting. But Bittorrent Sync has loads of weird potential that will only be fully realised as it starts being adopted.