No, no, not with me: I’m married, you know. Fling is a suite of internet protocols designed to make it impossible to track down either providers or users of information, and impossible to listen in. ‘I’m building Fling because of my passionate conviction that freedom is a good thing,’ says the system’s designer, Julian Morrison. He is coding the protocols to protect free speech, including what he calls

‘unpopular opinions’, political dissedents, and the porn industry. Fling works by preparing a ‘route ball’ - a system involving onion skin layers of cryptography in which each step in the information chain knows only the immediately preceding and following steps. This leaves no central server that can be coerced to drop names, the designer argues. ‘Each subtree can allocate ‘dependent names,’ he explains, ‘but anyone can start a new root subtree. Thus, subtrees can build a reputation for trust, and police it, while no-one can ultimately be censored completely.’ No, we don’t quite understand it, either, but Morrison certainly has high hopes for Fling. He wants it to ‘destroy forever the ability of anyone to force the content of the information you share,’ including online purchases, transfers, or stock holdings. ‘In a world that unequivocally respected rights there would be no need for Fling,’ he argues. ‘It would merely be a tool for money laundering and crime. But, in the world as it is, not even one country protects rights. Fling is the weapon of last resort. Since the law is has become a tool to commit armed crimes against disarmed victims, Fling will make online communication forever lawless.‘Meanwhile, discussion rages as to whether Morrison’s protocols will actually work, and whether they sufficiently address cryptography issues at their center. Watch the space over at the Fling sourceforge…So you *do* fancy a Fling…fling.sourceforge.net