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Anonym.OS a Boon for Privacy Geeks?
The Hosting Guy writes "Wired is running an article about a live CD that makes anonymous browsing easy enough for everyone. 'So easy to use you can hand it to your grandmother and send her off on her own to the local Starbucks.' Anonym.OS makes extensive use of Tor, the onion routing network that relies on an array of servers passing encrypted traffic to permit untraceable surfing."
Since Slashdot bans most Tor proxies from making comments. Perfect for geeks, eh?
Has the will to un-molestation finally passed out of mainstream?
There's a big difference between not wanting the government to tap your phone and not wanting web sites to put a cookie on your PC. The latter is a "privacy geek" thing, and yes, that level of privacy is fringe.
I don't respond to AC's.
You have the right to pamphlet anonymously. You have the right to use the internet to do it. You should be able to criticize the government without worrying about anyone getting revenge on you. I totally agree that the Patriot act goes way too far. By removing our basic freedoms, George W. has given the victory to the terrorists. We should be fighting to preserve our freedoms, not giving up our freedoms to fight the terrorists.
The fact that a bunch of sickos use this technology to be perverted does not mean that the rest of us should not use it. If you care about your freedom and you don't like what is going on then you can use it to safely make your complaints heard.
On the other hand, wandering the public internet is akin to strolling in the park...
(pretending that's not a troll...)
The Internet being "public" is your assumption. You infer it, but it's certainly not implied.
The Internet is designed as an end-to-end architecture. AKA point-to-point, which is exactly what the telephone system is. It's not inherently designed to be public or private, but the end-to-end architecture certainly enables truly private communication (assuming the continuing existence of encryption technologies not broken or illegal), and to me it strongly suggests that, given demand, it should be a feature of most Internet applications. Which it sort of is, if you don't count security (i.e., my email and IM and web surfing is private, but that privacy is usually not very secure.)
Ultimately, the Internet with private communication is ten times as useful as the one without it. Maybe a thousand times. Hell, given the cultural impact, you can't measure the difference at all. It leads to two very different worlds.
The fact that this score has an Insightful Moderation is scary...I've got Karma to burn, so let me speak my mind.
We should have a reasonable expectation of privacy in our everyday lives, even if the constitution doesn't have a "de facto" privacy clause in it. Remember that crazy court Case Roe v. Wade? The court didn't say that "abortion was legal," the Court declared that laws prohibiting abortion represented a violation of a women's right to privacy. While the right to privacy does to exist as such in the Constitution it has long been interpreted to exist as an umbrella created by the first 5 amendments in the Bill of Rights.
To be quite honest with you, I know cops who have problems with the way that today's society is going. They don't want to have to worry about carrying an ID when they're walking down the street to buy a gallon of milk. (HIIBEL V. SIXTH JUDICIAL DIST. COURT OF NEV.,HUMBOLDT CTY. (03-5554) 542 U.S. 177 (2004) 118 Nev. 868, 59 P.2d 1201, affirmed.)
It really bothers me in a multitude of ways that our civil liberties are being torn down under the guise of terrorism. It really bothers me that many people are letting their guards down and just allowing these rights to just be walked on like nothing matters. Is it just me or am I the only one who sees a problem here?
I disable sigs...do you?