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

Yay! Piracy!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure this network will be used to share protected speech and not copyrighted binaries.
</sarcasm>

Is that in England?

[worst_name_ever]

System Tor... I think that's in Devonshire, right?

Anonymity is a good thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure all this anonymity is a good thing with all the terrorism and unpatriotic sentiment floating around?

Besides, getting rid of anonymity would help with the spam crap.

In fact, I don't see anything positive in anonymity.

Re:Anonymity is a good thing?

[VistaBoy]

In fact, I don't see anything positive in anonymity.

by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 22, @04:11PM

You are the god of irony and paradox.

Yeah, right

[Anonymous Crowhead]

And wait for my traffic to pass through some hippy's 386 running linux? I sure hope this requires some minimum hardware and bandwith to allow participation.

So if this routes through Onion servers...

[Anonymous Coward]

... it must be intended primarily for satirical content.

Sounds pretty good to me

[caluml]

Freenet - but not in Java?! Sign me up. Keep that nasty java off my system. GRSec and PaX don't like it and keep killing it off anyway.

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that the EFF has become firmly pro-piracy (and therefore politically irrelevant), you can assume so.

But but but

[halcyon1234]

Terrorists might use this! Won't someone please think of the children? If my government can't hear what my neighbor is saying, how do I know he isn't planning on killing me in my sleep?

I mean, why do you even need something like this? If you don't have anything to hide, there shouldn't be a problem with your internet chats being monitored.

BTW, click here

Re:This actually works....

[Anonymous Coward]

"Heh. My mom always despairs of my conservatism. At my age, she was "enjoying group sex (lots of), and plentiful marijuana". No, I don't know how she manages to pronounce parentheses like that. Yes, I do have to point out that back in her day, group sex didn't lead to HIV or antibiotic resistant syphilis quite so readily."

Anonymous Coward, I AM your father

EFF makes me happy-GooD Lawyers?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The EFF is a light in a dark wilderness. "

Does that mean we like lawyers now?

Re:YRO = PIRACY

[sfjoe]

I swear to God that nearly every article filed under YRO is about some new hip flavor of software that will, inevitably, be used to unlawfully distribute intellectual property.

One man's pirate is another man's freedom fighter.

Re: Cars = Murder

[Anonymous Coward]

I swear to God that every automobile produced in a plant is some hip flavor of human body crushing device that will undoubtably be used to kill children.