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How Tor Helps Both Dissidents and the Police
Al writes "Technology Review has a in-depth article about the anonymous networking software Tor and how it is helping dissidents spread information in oppressive regimes such as Syria, Zimbabwe and Mauritania, and opening up the unfiltered web for users in many more countries. In China, for instance, the computers found in some web cafes are configured to use Tor automatically. Interestingly, some police agencies even use the software to hide their activity from suspects. As filtering becomes ever more common in democratic countries such as the US, perhaps Tor (and similar tools such as I2P), will become even more valuable."
It cuts both ways.
You can use a knife for cooking, mugging or for police action.
But the more problematic criminals are also the ones that are most likely to be aware of this and be careful with what and who they trust.
And the most careful persons in organized crime have sometimes only been relying on trusted messengers that have been doing all their communication. That to avoid wiretaps.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Ok, where and when in the US did filtering become 'common'??
I'm hearing about it becoming common in other western countries...and am afraid it will happen here, but, I'm not aware of it being common here?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I'm starting to see less and less of a difference between the police and the criminals.
I would really like projects like Tor, and I2P to get more support. Even the United States has problems with net filtering and network shaping. The more the telcos and government try to regulate the internet, the more people will turn to projects like these. Like trying to firmly grasp water in your hands.
-Chris
I'd like to see a discussion of the legal ramifications of letting your system be used as a Tor relay. Suppose I volunteer some of my home network capacity to Tor.
Putting aside the fact that it's probably a violation of my broadband provider's agreement to share my connection in this way, what if someone uses Tor for kiddie porn and happens to make the final connection to the police honeypot (so to speak) from my IP address?
If anyone can point to a good discussion of this, it would be great. I'd like to let my system be a relay for Tor, but the risk seems large.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Policemen eat food, and so do criminals! In a shocking discovery today we learned that a completely ambivalent object such as food could be used for good and for evil. Some fringe elements speculate that food in fact has no innate bias towards good or evil, and in fact does not exert any influence over the person that uses it apart from keeping them alive. But we all know that since it's rumored that TERRORISTS (tm) have been known to occasionally eat, food is obviously evil and should be banned. The fact that law enforcement officers have been spotted eating once in a while (especially in the vicinity of doughnut shops) should not allow us to forget about this lurking evil we call food. In fact, the world would be a better place if it were banned entirely.
Warning! If you are sarcasm impaired, the above paragraph may cause you to become angry. Breathe slowly and try to relax. If you cannot relax after a few minutes, you might need professional help. Sarcasm may be the lowest form of wit, but it is wit nonetheless.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I know Tor and many other services that make your traffic anonymous require more bandwidth then normal network traffic. I find it interesting because one of the really pushes for packet inspection is to reduce bandwidth consumption.
I always wondered whether it is not possible to attack TOR with statistical analysis provided you can dedicate significant resources to it. Suppose you are a big brother-style government agency with many computers and bandwith pipes dedicated to your goals. Could you not register a significant amounts of output and intermediate nodes (like say 10% of all nodes) that are specially improved to cooperatively log output HTTP traffic along with various web services session cookies, headers and originating IP addresses in a centralized DB and then use statistical analysis to identify the candidate source IP addresses of suspicious HTTP traffic?
do you mean if you witness a crime you shouldn't report it?
please clarify your position, because "stop snitching" only guarantees your community is going to become a criminally infested hell, complete with brutal and corrupt police
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
how it is helping dissidents spread information in oppressive regimes such as Syria, Zimbabwe, Mauritania,
And California.
There's your problem. You can't by definition be censorship resistant and censor at the same time. So unfortunately or not, censorship is an all-or-nothing proposition.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
did your parents lock you in basement, and occasionally throw tablescraps down the stairs?
what dystopian asocial reality do you think this advice serves?
let's put it this way: say you are 100% correct in your assessment. then we agree that this reality is wrong, and needs to be corrected. then the question is, how do we correct it? and the answer is, citizens begin to hold the police accountable for their actions, so a regular and normal human sense of respnsibility and accountability can be upheld again
in this manner, we begin to realize that your attitude only serves to perpetuate and extend the evil police habits you despise
you're a victim, a codependent. stop using your retarded rationalizations as a crutch and start expecting some accountability and responsibility from your police, and you'll actually get it
which you mostly do get already, assuming you live a western democracy
where do you get this bullshit? hollywood movies? do you live in an egyptian or a brazilian favella?
most probably, you are some posturing upper middle class suburban poser
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As filtering becomes ever more common in democratic countries such as the US [...]
I'm wondering for a long time, if you really still can call the US and many other (eg European) states "democratic".
I mean, has the choice between two variants of the same shit still the right to call itself this?
I'm very lucky, that things like Tor, and research around it, still exist. It might soon be our only chance of freeing ourselves from a regime of total control.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Sorry, should have said it is terrible as a protocol and program.
I have thought for some time that privacy is the next killer app. The person who solves the privacy problem will make a stack of money.
"timidly put forth" uhm...I don't think that first word means what you think it means both sides foam at the mouth.
of idiots hyperfocused on western domestic "crimes" while the taliban takes over nuclear pakistan
but of course, this is no reason to focus your criticisms outside the west, right? because what goes on in pakistan is after all totally the west's fault
(smacks forehead)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"... there's no way in hell you could EVER know what the entire body of law"
This is where jury nullification comes in. But they don't like that much either!
let us imagine for a moment you live in a world where the police are completely reponsible and accountable. how are they supposed to successfully keep YOUR community free of crime with a citizen so mindlessly hostile to their basic function?
Then you live in a magical hippie fairyland and don't need to worry about crime in the fist place.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
Police aren't supposed to keep a community crime-free. That's not even in their job description. Their job is to clean up the mess afterward...
This is spot on. SCOTUS recognises that a police force has a limited amount of resources at its disposal. They have ruled that the police forces of this nation are under *no* obligation to either protect citizens from or prevent crime.
When you're a small company, you have limited resources. You can't easily build a vast network to come from different IPs every other second so a "smart" infector doesn't give you another sample to play with when you already came a moment ago.
TOR solves this by offering you a new IP every couple seconds. As a neat side effect, it means that anyone coming through that same TOR exit node won't be infected because the infector thinks its deed has already been done.
When you're talking with people, it's sometimes not too beneficial if they trace back and notice that your IP belongs to a very similar subnet as some company that pissed them off by nullifying their latest trojan before it got out.
TOR solves this too.
The alternative would cost a fair lot of money. And is anything but a surefire way to avoid the wrath of those whose business you disturb.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sounds painful.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Okay, so this thread is entirely off-topic, but I'll reply here. I am Catholic, and I do wish the government would prosecute these men as criminals. Money might give the alleged victims a sense that they are okay, but it doesn't take a dangerous person off the streets. I have found the Church's solution of simply moving the priests to another location in many of these cases to be disappointing to say the very, very least.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
admit some places have it a hell of whole lot worse off than western countries
So as long as we're better than the worst, we should never complain. So the person with the worst behavior in the world has set the bar for all of humanity--no one can work to change any behavior as long as it's not the absolute worst.
Looks like we have to work in serial, dealing with the one worst individual at a time, getting him to not be worst anymore then going to the next worst, until we get to everyone. What a GREAT PLAN!
a giant lake
what would al qaeda and its sympathizers do? celebrate and become pastoral sheep farmers?
no, they would go right on with their murderous agenda, because it is not centered on the usa. it is an agenda wholly of their own creation based on their own retarded interpretation of otherwise valuable and sacred texts, used to justify a fascist fanaticism not seen since nazi germany. is nazi germany chamberlain's fault? chamberlain certainly fucked up in his dealings with hitler, big time. and his share of the blame for nazi germany's existence?: 0%
furthermore, if the usa had handled their dealings with al qaeda 1,000x worse than it already has, it would not in any way mean the usa shares any culpability for al qaeda's actions. and if the usa had dealt with al qaeda 1,000x better, people like you would still be hyperfocused on the west, because your mind is ossified. all you know is obsessive kneejerk hypercriticism of the usa. its as if your mind can't even perceive of other players in the world capable of their own independent behavior. everyone in the world, in your mind, is some derivative of an american action. your thinking is more usa-centered and ethnocentric than that of a blatantly ultranationalist neocon!
when al qaeda or a sympathiser does something evil in the world, the blame falls to... drum roll please... al qaeda and its sympathizers. can you believe that! i know, really wacky far out thinking there, i'm really quite radical in my groundbreaking hypothesis (snicker)
you can't understand that your criticism should be pointed at them. maybe if you learned to udnerstand there are other players in the world than the usa, that don't take their orders via backdoor cia mind control devices a la a retarded b-grade hollywood movie, or via incredibly convoluted and creative thinking that harkens back to cold war crimes from a half a century ago, maybe then you'd actually be some of use to the subject matter you involve yourself in
you're kneejerk thinking is tired. give it up
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it