Slashdot Mirror
University Professor Chastised For Using Tor
Irongeek_ADC writes with a first-person account from the The Chronicle of Higher Education by a university professor who was asked to stop using Tor. University IT and campus security staffers came knocking on Paul Cesarini's door asking why he was using the anonymizing network. They requested that he stop and also that he not teach his students about it. The visitors said it was likely against university policy (a policy they probably were not aware that Cesarini had helped to draft). The professor seems genuinely to appreciate the problems that a campus IT department faces; but in the end he took a stand for academic freedom.
--"The other men were not familiar, but a quick glance at their cards told me they were detectives on our campus police force."
_Detectives_ of the campus police force. What's next? Agents of the Campus Intelligence Agency?
the Department of Campus Security?
This is really ridiculous.
How does Tor enable those things, and how would more people using Tor make those things worse than they already are?
I attended said university, I know Paul very well. I still run into him in town occasionally, and I will be sure to shake his hand for this.
I could say a lot of BAD things about *university* ITS, but I'd probably get me in far more trouble than it is worth to say them out loud. I am not there anymore, they don't effect me. I will just be happy that Paul is still the fine individual I have always looked up to.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
No they don't. Its a public university.
Do you think they have the right to say "Whites Only" or "No visiting Republican Websites"?
Now, that is not to say that the University is not allowed to draft up a reasonable set of rules. Perhaps it could even be argued that the right to anonymous communications and encryption fall under the 1st amendment, but thats not really my point here.
Lord High Crapflooder The Right Honourable Vlad Craig Esther McDavenpherson III
Destroyer of Mercatur.Net
He did not say that he had the right to and no one else did. He said that he could understand that it was a nightmare to administer. I understand that driving a car is very hazardous, I want to continue driving, that does not mean I am telling other people not to drive. Acknowledging that it is difficult to scale does not imply not scaling up, it means that they should find a solution. By saying that he should be allowed to continue using tor, he is making the statement that asking everyone to stop using it is not the best solution.
Why is this someone elses network? It is a network that has been provided for his use. It may not be his exclusive network, but it is his network. Please clarify who you think owns it? The university? As a member of the university staff, wouldn't that make it his? or is it the exclusive network of the IT department of said university. Or maybe it is the sutdents who pay the money for said network. I am getting tired of people using the phrase "not their network" to imply that you have to take whatever is handed you. Can only call who Ma Bell wants because it's not your network, can't do anything about warrentless phone taps because it's not your network. If I have been given use of a network, then the part of the network I have been given use of is mine for the duration of that use. There might be contracts or agreements that stipulate what is or is not allowed, but when they add one sided rules after the agreement has been reached, then "it is not your network" is not an acceptable answer.
Just because you don't need tor to browse the web anonymously, does not make it a valid application for doing just that. I don't need to have firefox installed to access the web, that does not automatically exlude firefox as a legitimate application for doing just that.
I guess the thing to do is to stop Tor spewing out the plaintext: "TOR 1.0 Proxy Connection Attempt" which any half-assed network admin could detect. Run wireshark and watch how Tor gives itself away. I suppose that they could then block people trying to get to known Tor entry nodes, but with enough of them then that becomes foolish.
Its possible that I'm simply missing the point, but if Tor is so effective then how exactly did a university IT guy and two campus cops find out it was in use and trace it so easily to the professor in question? Isn't anonymity the whole point?
I'm curious about the problems that Tor creates. I was talking with someone who runs a Tor node, and he was dismayed that he was banned from most EFNet IRC servers. My guess was that people had abused Tor and used it to escape bans on IRC. It seemed perfectly reasonable to ban all Tor nodes if it created those problems.
So my question is, what problems does Tor create for us all? I'm all for people being able to escape governments that want to control what they do.. but I can't imagine that this doesn't create other problems, so of which might not be immediately apparent.
AccountKiller
I don't follow you, care to explain your thought? I can't think of any way in which that is true (speaking as a programmer who understands networks down to the protocol and up to the application level and is familiar, at a distance, with how universities typically install, maintain, and use their networks).
Civil liberties and government funding have little to do with it.
Its about academic freedom, and freedom of inquery.
Realise I worked in IT at a major university. I was there when we decided to impliment virus scanning, not even spam filtering (I was there for that too) but just virus scanning.
It was debated because well... what if someone had a legitimate acedemic need to recieve viruses in email?
Seriously! We gave unfettered internet access. Porn? Well... guess what... someone may be doing acedemic research into porn and needs to access porn sites. These are legitimate debates that come up in that environment because... they take the persuit of intellectual inquery as serious buisness... because it IS their buisness.
No firewalls, no filtering... unfettered access, because if someone needs it, they need it.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
The school still has every right to direct what he teaches at thier institution. If they don't want him teaching that, he should stop. After all, he works for them.
"The school" has that right to some degree, but a network manager is not "the school" and does not have the right to set school policy. At best, the network manager can make a temporary decision (arguing that this was necessary to protect the university), which the faculty and university administration can overturn. And if faculty and the university administration don't like what the network manager did, they can fire him.
First: please stop using Tor on our network. Not very objectionable, they do own it and can request that sort of thing. Kind of like saying "please don't seed torrents of 20 Linux CD images on our network."
Second: please do not tell your class about Tor even though you believe it is relevant to what they are learning about. This is highly objectionable, and undermines the purpose of the university as a place for free exchange of ideas. Even assuming the university is private and can tell him to do this, they shouldn't tell him to do this. It makes them a worse university. Can do and should do are different questions.
This sig has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not designed to diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure any disease.
I used to work for a large Midwestern University, and we blocked outgoing connections to some services, such as VPNs and some proxies. The reason we did this was during the outbreak of the virus (can't remember the name), that hammered Windows on Port 135, we blocked incoming Port 135 connections at the University border. It was hypothesized that if users VPNed to other networks, they would circumvent the port block and become a vector.
I know everyone worth their weight in IT realizes that a secure border isn't enough. We had virus protection available for free for every seat on campus, however, in a huge distributed environment (where departments and colleges were "islands" in a network ocean, with their own IT staff) we couldn't gaurantee the integrity of these machines. But we were sure going to be the ones to take the hit when their "nice kid that they liked to much to see them move on after graduation system admin" didn't bother to CHECK to see if the definitions his AD-out-the-box for dummies was pushing those defs.
We also disallowed some of these services because it became harder to effectively monitor our network. When some s5r1pt k1dd13 in CIS 201 decides that he is now a UNIX god is and is going to put "Bush Sucks - $college_name is #1, fark $rival" on whitehouse.gov to impress his pink haired, pot smoking, PETA member across the hall in the dorms who only talks to him when he removes the spyware she got trying to download off KaZaa, we look like complete dickheads when the Feds show up (or the **AA) and the best we can do is say "I don't know... what goes on in them there tubes" the suits tend to get pretty agrivated.
On the other hand, even if they are SSHing into an intermediary (which we strongly encouraged over telnet), we can at least say "Well, we had an outgoing SSH connection from 4 machines on campus at that time going to these 4 addresses, do any of those ring a bell? We happened to have authenticated WPA, so we can tell you who these folks are even if the machine name is PoPPySeeD420 and done from the student union.
Privacy is wonderful, but when the shit hits the proverbal fan, IT would like to know who is pulling shenanagins on the network. The rest of the time, 99.9999% of the time, we'd rather NOT know what you're up to, and every one of us in the office (except for that one windows fanboi MS office specialist who we used to throw beanbags at) had our open source/linux/free as in beer and freedom/crypto-privacy street cred.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
I guess you missed the sarcasm. I'm from Canada, and I think universal health care is one of the most important things that differentiates us from our... famous neighbor.
However, the original poster lives (I assume) in a place where capitalism is revered, including in health care. It's not how I'd want to live, and what you said in your post is an excellent summary of why.
Even gold-plated health coverage shouldn't cost 6k for everybody if it was done right.
I mean, most people are not usually sick. And I'm sick of people pointing to Canada or Britain and saying: "see, universal coverage doesn't work". We're the USA, goddammit, and we can spit farther, screw longer and piss farther than any other country on the planet, so you'd think we could figure this thing out so we don't have to have kids going without being able to see a doctor when they get sick. The fact that we have such a high infant mortality rate should cause every one of us to be ashamed. Once and for all, can we just build a good health-care system for every American and maybe put gay marriage, protecting the children from video games, and flag-burning amendments on the back burner for just a little while?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Admins should be more concerned about Tor's Hidden Service feature. It's handy to avoid censorship and all, but it allows you to connect to hosts behind a NAT or firewall (the node keeps a circuit open). Not only that, the person using the service remotely is unrelated to the host that shows up in the logs... It's a drop-in backdoor tool. Instant access to the internal network.
"Strangers have the best candy" -Me
I missed the sarcasm too. I guess too dry for me.
Here's the deal-- you cannot have unlimited medical coverage.
Period.
1) there are too many diseases that can be cured IF you have unlimited resources... well really about $2,000,000 to $10,000,000 or so. The point is- we can't afford to cure everyone's $350,000 bypass surgery so we let people pay for it themselves or die. You do it in canada too- you just do it via rationing and delays instead of via money. "Sure you can get your surgery-- in 17 months" vs "Sure you can get your surgery- for $350,000".
2) If we could get the legal $ystem out of it, the costs would be much lower but there would be more malpractice. We currently say "no mistakes and no malpractice" but that decision probably doubles or triples every thing we do medically. Which in some cases means that the procedure that could be done cheaply- is now too expensive.
3) Even in socialist countries- you are paying. Sure- you may rip off the doctors (with a resulting shortage of doctors and hence long wait periods) but the drug company executives are still flying around in jets and vacationing in maui.
So the point is not curing every illness known regardless of price- but setting a reasonable amount of tax dollars aside to cover a reasonable amount of medical expenses for the most people possible. No open heart surgery for 98 year olds on the tax dollar but if they want to pay for it themselves- okay. Yes to vaccinations for everyone and broken limbs (tho perhaps a limit on the number of times to reign in the reckless types).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I remember some time back a comparison of a number of universities by their computer-access and use policies. Some were very open and permissive for students, others were severely limiting. This sort of thing could be one more factor in helping prospective students determine which school is right for them.
I think this also sends a message about what students may expect on the network. At many universities, students will expect (and have) almost total freedom as long as their actions are benign. Included in this is a recognition that they may largely utilize the Internet without unnecessary restriction or undue scrutiny. I suspect at this university, they can't assume a right to privacy on their transactions, or even a presumption of anonymity should they desire it. Some universities provide this - as long as students don't interfere with the basic function of the network, or necessary operations don't require inspection of their network traffic.
I also think this uniersity might be taking the easist approach. A thoughtful approach to network security incorporating network sensors and intrusion detection packages could very well largely mitigate risks they are concerned about, especially with an appropriate overall security architecture - which their campus may - or may very well not - have in place.
Free market means a place where the strong take advantage of the weak. Rich of the poor. Employers of employees. Developed nations of less developed nations. On ever level the story is the same, and the people praising free markets are typically those that are with the strong directly benefiting. Don't believe the hype.
I'm truly sorry if my comment offended anybody. But when I hear some bright boy who's probably still dodging his college loans say that he hates having to "pay for all the uninsured waifs" it makes me so angry that my usually calm demeanor abandons me. Knowing that smug pricks like that actually think that because their uncle got them a job doing tech support at an insurance company that they're suddenly better than some laid-off factory worker with three kids really puts a snag in my merkin. This country is so frigging wealthy that a one-bedroom condo on Manhattan now averages about a million bucks, and it's still a seller's market. You'd think the least we could do is work out something so that everybody here can have their kids' tonsils taken out (do they still do that?) or get decent care for their elderly parents without having it destroy them economically.
I let it get to me sometimes, and it makes me lose my cool. I start making typos and going through keyboards every other week. Then when I lay my head down at night I get headaches from grinding my teeth. It's why my wife doesn't let me listen to talk radio any more. And hearing about a half-dozen helicopters in two weeks, full of 20 year-olds who should be listening to bad rock music and getting laid, going down half a world away in a war that every single military expert now says was a loser from the beginning (see today's National Intelligence Estimate), can make me downright unpleasant.
So I'm sorry. Next time some arrogant c-sucker wants to complain about all those icky poor people who are getting in the way of his new 3-series, I'll go walk the dog instead of telling him what I think. There are other people around here who do it better anyway.
You are welcome on my lawn.
1) Every american should be able to pay the negotiated rate for items. If all blue cross pays the hospital is $1,375 for a gall bladder operation- why should an uninsured person have to pay $18,325 for the same exact operation? If you can show that the hospital is charging anyone a certain price, you should be able to pay that same price for the same service.
I would question this statement. WHY should every American get the same price? Is it a matter of fairness, that there's some moral wrong being done to you if you have to pay more than me for the same item? Or is it just a plausible-on-the-surface argument that happens to support your case, but has no real basis?
Consider that many different grocery stores offer the same red delicious apples for different prices. In Los Angeles, Ralph's carries them for TWO DIFFERENT prices: a lower price if you're a "club member", and a higher price if you're not. Pavillion's has them for a totally different price. Is this all somehow wrong? I mean, they're all selling the exact same apples: they are grown in the same fields, picked by the same hands, and transported by the same trucks. Since wholesale produce pricing is determined by auction, all of the grocers have the exact same wholesale cost, too. If this is unjust or wrong, somehow, explain it to me, because I don't get it.
What if I own a grocery store (I'm the sole owner, to simplify things), and I let the local boy scout troop have a discount when they're stocking up for camping trips. They pay 1/2 price, barely enough over the wholesale cost of goods to cover my overhead, because I believe in encouraging kids to get outdoors. Sure, I won't sell YOU anything at that price, but that's because I feel no obligation to encourage you to do anything. Where's the harm, here? What have I done wrong, in your world?
What about when prices change, over time? If a movie theater decides to have a promotion, where it sells the first 100 tickets on any given night at 1/2 price, and I'm the 101st person in line, have the somehow wronged me? What exactly did they do to me?
Seriously, I can't think of a single reason why your point, above, could be true. Help a brother out, here.
Sure, in the US there are some people actually making minimum wage who barely get by.
Then there are the other people who drive cars when they could be bicycling everywhere. Have a McMansion instead of renting a room. Buy frozen food or worse, fast food, instead of learning to cook. Have cable, internet and go to the movies on the weekend because those are minimum 'necessities'.
Take a look at Ben Franklin, stranded in England, penniless. He got a job and saw all his co-workers spending their daily pay on beer and a hot supper. What did he do? Ate practically nothing more than bread and water for almost two years so he could invest his money.
Sure, there are some people, people who have backed themselves into corners by having kids they can't afford or financing everything they own to the hilt. And there are people I actually feel bad for who need a break who had a kid they thought they could afford but then ended up requiring huge medical bills, or they themselves have huge medical bills. That can't be helped.
But that's a small minority of the financially oppressed. The rest just don't know how to hold onto a buck.
Work two jobs. Don't buy shit. Get rid of the internet at home, use the library. Don't buy what you can borrow. Get rid of the cell phone. Reconsider what you call a necessity. Stop eating meat and fresh milk. Downgrade your life, trade in the SUV for a sub-compact or the sub-compact for a bicycle or the bicyle for your legs. Get an apartment instead of a house. A studio instead of a one-bedroom. A room instead of a studio. Invest in your own job-training. Then instead of biting your tongue and living against your moral principles tell your boss to fuck off next time you really think you should since you're no longer banking on the next paycheck just to make rent.
Or consider an unused bedroom, a car, 5MB/s internet access and ready-made frozen food a necessity and continue to slave away. Let's just be clear though; it's your choice.
_
"Well, it's no trick to make a lot of money if what you want to do is make a lot of money." - Berstein in Citizen Kane
Here's a legit situation I can see coming up - if a faculty person was somehow using 90% of our internet bandwidth, we'd have to have a chat. Sure, it might be for their research, but that doesn't matter in that case. It's a shared resource, there's a limited (by the University) budget, and it's not an academic freedom issue. It might be convenient for one of the physics faculty to have a supercollider as well, but it's not in the University's budget. You have to partner with someone outside, or get grants, etc. Every instituation has limits and priorities.
But this? This is bizarre. The only awkward situation I can think of in some states is that state schools can fall under open records laws that require that the public can check on certain information (in some states, browser histories have come up in the past). In that case, as a state employee, they might be violating the open records law by going out of their way to hide their activity. Hell, even under a Patriot Act search, we'd have to give them whatever information we had about a user, but we're not obligated to keep information to track back every outbound internet connection - even under CALEA. We probably can't link a PAT assignment on the outside of our firewall to an inside machine for more than a couple of days, at best We just don't have the space to keep the logs.
I think he needs to add another country to his list. And find a better technology.
police forces are paid for by property taxes.
judges are paid for by property tax, fines, city-owned parking meters, and the mob.
politicians are paid for by lobbyists and big oil and Disney and other private donors with an interest
highways are paid for by gas taxes (of which a whopping 10% goes to road/highway maintenance in my country)
schools - property tax, again
and the gardener is your own responsibility.
Nobody quite knows where income taxes go.. it's like a big mystery. "Income Tax pays for the Deficit, stupid!" but nobody knows exactly who created it in the first place, or why.
$
The jobless "waifs" pay taxes, too. In the US, AFDC ended a decade ago. "Welfare as we know it" ended. In its place is Transitional Assistance to Needy Families. You can only be on TANF for two years at a time, five years lifetime maximum. People on TANF are paying their own way, either through income tax when they were working, or income tax when they regain employment.
The unemployed pay property tax (which is where most money for public school comes from), whether or not they own their own home. If you rent, your landlord's property tax is paid by the tenant's rent.
The unemployed pay sales tax whenever they buy anything. And since they're unemployed, a far greater portion of their income is taxed in sales than yours or mine, as we don't live hand to mouth.
The unemployed also pay excise taxes. The roads are paid for by state and federal gasoline taxes. If you drive a car, you're paying for the roads every time you buy gas. If you're a nicotine or alcohol addict you're spending a LOT of money on excise taxes.
The poor aren't getting a free ride on taxes. They're paying a far higher percentage of their earnings in taxes than you or I. And you and I are paying a far greater percentage of our taxes than the rich do. My income tax is far higher than the tax on capital gains. I don't have the deductions a rich man does. And Social Security tax, which has been "borrowed" for the general revinue funds for decades (leading to the current funding problems they want the middle class to pay for) is capped; a man making seventy five million dollars per year pays no more in absolute dollars (not percentages) than a man making seventy five thousand dollars per year. I and my employer pay a combined 15% of my salary in SS tax, while Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (and Apple and Microsoft) pay a tiny fraction of a percent of their salaries to the SS tax that has been raided for the general fund.
It's not the "jobless waifs" that aren't paying their fair share in taxes, it's the greedy, selfish rich who are not paying their share.
In short, you, sir, and the grandparent (rightly modded "troll") have been brainwashed by the neocons. As to insurance (whether private or government funded), my cousin (a university professor) had a heart infection that resulted in her needing a heart transplant. The bill was in the millions of dollars. You would rather have had her die? What kind of heartless bastards are you people, anyway?
Sorry, but the government is inefficient. I see no evidence that the US government is capable of providing health care for the entire population of the US at an adequate service level or cost. If you are aware of an American government agency of that scale that is not wasteful, please point me to it.
America's health care costs are high in part because of the government and in part because our unregulated market tends to subsidize pharmaceutical development for the whole world. I am not one of the right wing nuts that you think I am - I support some low level of government health care. I haven't heard a Rush Limbaugh program since the early 90's, and I haven't seen O'Reilly since he was on the Daily Show. I just think government involvement should be limited as much as possible. French-style health care is simply not possible to implement across the entire US, though it may be possible in some individual states.
Now, can you say that you are not a left wing nut? The anti-corporate, pro-government nature of your post kind of tags you as a Nader voter. Or, like you, am I assuming too much? Can we get along and have a discussion without name calling then?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I know personally of one case where this isn't true... my daughter.
Born 6 weeks early, she had "Apnea of Prematurity", where the nervous system controlling breathing wasn't quite mature enough, and so she'd very occasionally forget to breathe. Before she could come home, she had to go 5 days without forgetting to breathe.
She was in the NICU for 5 weeks 2 days, on a monitor to see when breathing stopped. This required 1/4 of a nurse, 24/7 during that time.
The hospital bill alone (not counting the occasional neonatologist) was $58000ish. BCBS-NC paid them $5400 and I paid $600 as my 10% coinsurance. The rest was written off. (This bothers me... were I uninsured, I'd be on the hook for the whole amount).
There's no possible way that the hospital broke even on that, even if you only consider the nursing salary.
A reply to a post about this in a discussion some weeks ago posited the theory that the insurance company found some reason to deny payment, and told the hospital, "take 10% or we'll pay nothing and you can take your chances appealing for years".
Can Tor successfully fight Google logging all your search queries? More than once now, Google -- who are reported to have a database of every query ever made to their search engine -- have given police lists of searches made from a given computer. Would Tor stop them from being able to do this? Would this destroy a valuable asset of Google if Tor became widely used?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."