Tor Named One of the Year's Best Products

Iorek writes "PC World lauds Tor, an anonymous Internet communication system, as better than its paid competitors, and one of the best 100 products of 2005. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is supporting Tor development, has a press release as well."

Comments

Publicity a good thing or not?

[Critical_]

I have been a Tor users for a very long time and, to a certain extent, the fact that it is not very well publicized has kept the system relatively free of the possibilty abuse. When I say possibility of abuse, I am talking about the media saying that Tor is a way to do anonymous torrents of copyrighted material, transferring child porn, etc. As Tor becomes more publicized, will I have to deal with articles from self-proclaimed experts accusing Tor of being a vehicle for such activity? Will I then see some politician try to pass legislation against anonymizer type software? Maybe I'm being alarmist, but these days anything is possible.

Re:Hmm

[kingofalaska]

Scroll down, read the articles about the so-called "Patriot Act", or censorship, or...

There are many reasons. Yes, it can be abused, just as a stick or a rock can be abused.

KOA

Giant Missile Defense Radar Sails

Re:Hmm

[stevey]

I don't get why so many people put letters in envelopes, what have they got to hide?

Why not write on the back of postcards so everybody can make sure they're not hiding illegal words..

It's a slippery slope. Encryption is useful.

Re:Hmm

[Dr Damage I]

The fact that one does not wish the state or ones ISP to know ones secrets does not imply that those secrets are illicit in nature. A person could be transmitting commercially sensitive material which if released could be used by ones competitors, or one could simply be averse to having people know that one uses ordinary, legal porn.

It's a simple fact that People like privacy and place a non zero value on it. The phrase "what are you trying to hide" is the last refuge of the voyeur.

Re:Hmm

[Motherfucking Shit]

The thing I don't get with Tor is why someone would need that much encryption, unless they were transferring something illegal like copyrighted material.

In some places, discussing things like "democracy" and "freedom" is illegal. In some places, it's verboten for women to bare their necks or ankles (much less anything else) in public. In some places, it's illegal to read books that involve sexual behavior, or criticize the government, or any number of other things.

Are you still convinced that a network of potential "illegal" uses is such a bad thing?

Re:Such hypocrisy.

[Tim C]

If they allowed 100% of the Tor connections, the comments would be flooded with more ascii goatse pics, GNAA Postings, tubgirl links, and all kinds of wonderful trollish crap.

That's what the moderation system is designed in part to deal with. (Of course, with the addition of friends and freaks, and score modifiers for them, it's turned into more of a way of ensuring that your world view is never disturbed by reading things you don't agree with, but I digress...)

There's also nothing stopping the editors from deleting such crap. The ASCII pics and GNAA posts are easily seen at a glance, and it'd be trivial to produce a private interface that had a "delete this shite" button against each comment (or checkbox and single "Delete the shite" button, or whatever)

I'm all for internet anonymity and free speech, but there are very few reasons why someone would need to visit the slashdot comments section with a proxy.

Corporate whistle blowers, people in countries with oppresive regimes commenting on stories about some aspect of that regime (eg net censorship in China), people discussing first-hand experience of illegal activities, etc. No, it doesn't happen very often, but when it does it could potentially lead to very interesting comments.

All of that is beside the point, however. It most certainly does seem rather odd that the Slashdot editors praise Tor while simultaneously seeking to prevent access to the site with it. It's effectively saying "Yes, annonymous internet access is necessary and good, but not to *my* site!"

So, what, other sites should allow it, but not /.? "Do as I say, not as I do"? If you want to convince people that something is good, allowing it yourself is generally seen as a necessary first step.

Re:How about...

[caluml]

Slashdot either eliminate "Anonymous Coward" posting

No - it should leave the ability to post anonymously, but only if you are logged in to an actual account.