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EFF Promotes Freenet-like System Tor

Posted by timothy on from the god-of-tunder dept.

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.

4 of 379 comments (clear)

  1. Double dipping by el+borak · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Tor was initially designed and developed as part of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory's Onion Routing program with support from ONR and DARPA.
    Gotta love this. Paid for by my tax dollars, then I also get to pay for the NSA to develop improved snooping technology to crack it. Still, good to know at least some of my tax dollars was well spent for a change.
    --
    An imperfect plan executed violently is far superior to a perfect plan. -- George Patton
  2. Right... by Kjella · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let me get this straight. As a TOR node, my computer will request information from regular web sites unencrypted. This means that when someone requests e.g. child porn on the network, and my node is chosen to retrieve it, my IP will be the one logged?

    You are in for a world of hurt if you run a TOR node. Since you are perfectly aware of all plain HTTP requests your node makes, you are likely to stand trial for contributory copyright infringement, import/export/distribution of child porn, conspiracy to [whatever] and so on. Since I assume by default it doesn't log anything to give you someone to blame it on, they pin it on you.

    I would honestly never run a TOR node. If I did, I would firewall it to only allow connections to other TOR nodes, i.e. be a pure leech on the network. Anything else is to expose yourself for a wide range of legal disasters. Freenet had this right. You must not know what you are transmitting. This idea is fundamentally flawed and I'm amazed that the EFF would support it.

    And beyond that, from the brief techincal discussion, you have a single point of failure in the directory server. Gather a small botnet, compromise the server and present the botnet as the routing nodes. You control all the keys, you decrypt everything. Or just a simple DDoS attack, so you don't find any nodes to route through. Overall, I'm not impressed.

    Kjella

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  3. Re:the problem with Freenet by RyanFenton · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's a method for the transportation of data - it in no way encourages any specific type of traffic. I could mention several straw-men arguments about telephones and vehicles that also could be used for horrible child crimes...

    Relative anonymity isn't inherently destructive - nor is the anonymity offered here absolute. Conventional methods of online social investigation will still catch the people you imagine, as there is still a source and destination. With child crimes in particular, the investigation should move offline as soon as possible anyway as soon as suspicions arise.

    People who attack and cruelly manipulate children deserve punishment - the rest of the world does not need to close entire realms of technology down for the sake of that punishment. The nerds of the world shouldn't be forced to think about punishing criminals when they make their tools any more than car manufacturers.

    Ryan Fenton

  4. Re:the problem with Freenet by soupdevil · · Score: 5, Insightful

    By this argument, you could never own an apartment, rental house or hotel, because child abuse could be committed on your property.