EFF Promotes Freenet-like System Tor

An anonymous reader writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) just announced that it has become a financial sponsor of Tor, an open-source project to help people 'engage in anonymous communication online.' It sounds like a simpler version of Freenet, e.g. 'a network-within-a-network that protects communication from ... traffic analysis.' Like Freenet, the source-code is freely available and binaries exist for Windows, Linux, etc." Read on for more details.

The submitter continues "It also allows you to install Tor-aware apps, such as an HTTP proxy (for private browsing), or maybe private P2P? Unlike Freenet, it doesn't use massive encryption (as far as I can tell) and relies more on something called onion routing to randomly bounce requests between other Tor proxies, thus obfuscating the IP of the original client. So it allows you to browse regular Internet sites! Maybe it should be considered more of an 'open-source' Anonymizer? But I don't know if it's actually Open Source - you can download the source (and compile it yourself) but I don't know if the developers are letting anyone else touch their code. They are, however, looking for contributors and other forms of help. And, finally, they're hoping people will start running Tor servers!" It's open source, however contributions are handled.

Comments

Fuck you

[theantix]

You have systematically misrepresented everything I have said. Asshole.

As Voltaire said, and I paraphrase here, "I may not like what you say, but I'll support unto my death your right to say it." Ideally, in a truly anonymous system, you DON'T KNOW what traffic is routing through your system. Just as your neighbor can't hear your conversations at the dinner table, you can't hear his.

Do you not know the difference between ideas and kiddie porn? I am dedicated to supporting the free transmission of _ideas_, including the repugnant idea that you should be able to distribute kiddie porn. But I am not in favour of facilitating child abuse, and that seems to be a logical primary use for this Tor system as the people involved in that are increasingly desperate to avoid detection.

Don't you get it? I am not interested in trying to control the flow of ideas, no matter how repugnant they are. That is spefically what I want to aid, and I would be willing to donate my bandwidth to support that. But a system to help pedophiles get more porn, I am not willing to donate to. It's not that complicated.

Your comments are strange - you want people to share (supposedly) copyrighted movies without fear of punishment, but you don't expect them to pay for the bandwidth

I think that people should be allowed to share movies via P2P, but *I* don't want to donate my money or bandwidth do *their* sharing.

but why do YOU get to dictate what is and isn't right?

I get to dictate nothing. I refuse to donate my bandwidth to support child pornography, but would be more than happy to donate bandwidth to support the dissemination of banned ideas. It's my fucking donation, so I can decide if I want to donate it or not. If this project doesn't suit what I am willing to support, I am not dictating to them... I'm simply not going to help them because they don't meet my terms.