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Japanese Police Urge ISPs To Block Tor

Posted by timothy on from the with-a-name-like-demon-killer dept.

hypnosec writes "Authorities in Japan are presumably worried about their inability to tackle cybercrime and, in a bid to stem one of the sources of anonymous traffic, the National Police Agency (NPA) is asking ISPs to block Tor. The recommendation comes from the special panel formed by the NPA after a hacker going by the name Demon Killer was found to regularly use Tor to anonymize his online activities, like posting of death threats on public message boards."

73 of 242 comments (clear)

  1. Sure, go ahead. by juliohm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If only that was enough to stop illegal activities....

    --
    Julio Henrique Morimoto juliohm@gmail.com
    1. Re:Sure, go ahead. by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 5, Informative

      TOR is not the problem... Well, not the problem the Japanese police claim.

      It IS a problem for the corporate/government control of information. It probably bothers TEPCO greatly, that this is out there - and damned near impossible to filter.

      Cybercrime. The great Emmanuel Goldstein, needed to keep in place, proles and party members alike.

      --
      "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
      Never been known to fail..."
    2. Re:Sure, go ahead. by bcrowell · · Score: 5, Informative

      Two problems here.

      (1) The article has nothing to do with Fukushima or TEPCO. It's about someone who sent anonymous death threats.

      (2) Sherman and Mangano, the authors of the paper you linked to an article about, are kooks. Just google on their names together, and you'll find plenty of info discrediting their claims, e.g.: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2011/12/20/researchers-trumpet-another-flawed-fukushima-death-study/

      (3) The Open Journal of Pediatrics appears to be one of the many open-access journals these days that have no standards for publication. See http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/health/for-scientists-an-exploding-world-of-pseudo-academia.html for more about these journals. I support the concept of open-access journals, but many of them are junk journals.

      (4) Sherman and Mangano's junk science didn't get blocked by evil governments or evil corporations. They put it on the internet and nobody interfered with them.

      --
      Find free books.
    3. Re:Sure, go ahead. by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 5, Informative

      Just as an informative point, the headline on the TEPCO link is a gross mis-statement of the actual facts.

      One third of US born west coast babies are NOT suffering from hyperthyroidism.

      What happened is the RATE of hyperthyroidism, which is quite low, increased by 28% for a couple of months, and to a level 16% higher than normal for a period of 9 months.

      That corresponds to about 40 cases in 600,000 births. Still a problem but about 1/5,000th of what the headline claims.

    4. Re:Sure, go ahead. by gmanterry · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If only that was enough to stop illegal activities....

      That's the problem. The Lawmakers seem to feel that passing laws will accomplish what they want. They never seem to take into account that criminals, who by definition, are 'law breakers' will ignore laws. Therefore the laws they create only really effect law abiding citizens. I swear that the Senators (American House of Lords) believe they are so powerful that they could pass a law to outlaw tornadoes and expect that tornadoes would disappear as soon as the President signed it into law. For instance, correct me if I'm wrong, I believe it is already illegal to kill people with bombs made from pressure cookers. However I expect Congress to pass a law either outlawing pressure cookers or requiring that all people who purchase pressure cookers first pass a background check. Such is the state of knee jerk legislation in the U.S.

      --
      Since when is "public safety" the root password to the Constitution?
    5. Re:Sure, go ahead. by houstonbofh · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Two problems here.

      (1) The article has nothing to do with Fukushima or TEPCO. It's about someone who sent anonymous death threats.

      While the rest of your comments may or may not be true; The reason and the excuse can be mutually exclusive.

    6. Re:Sure, go ahead. by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      (1) The article has nothing to do with Fukushima or TEPCO. It's about someone who sent anonymous death threats.

      Death threats are already illegal.

      So no, it's not "about death threats". Someone can write a death threat on a piece of paper and send it in the mail, but paper, pen and mail are all still legal.

      (4) Sherman and Mangano's junk science didn't get blocked by evil governments or evil corporations. They put it on the internet and nobody interfered with them.

      Still has nothing to do with Tor.

      Blocking Tor is not going to stop death threats, nor will it stop junk science. Blocking Tor is about controlling the free flow of private information. Period.

      Yes, this is about protecting the elites. Blocking Tor is certainly not about keeping us safe, because blacking Tor does nothing to make any of us safer from threats that only exist because of Tor.

      Sometimes, figuring out right and wrong are really just about asking yourself: "Who benefits?"

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    7. Re:Sure, go ahead. by walshy007 · · Score: 2

      From the article linked.

      young children born on the US West Coast are 28 percent more likely to develop congenital hyperthyroidism.

      From the title of the article

      Almost third of US west coast newborns hit with thyroid problems.

      Is it just me or is this really irresponsible reporting, considering the article mentions it is a _really_ rare condition, so 30% more of a chance still isn't all that much.

      It is still noteworthy of course, but there are so many scare tactics at play in that article.

    8. Re:Sure, go ahead. by Runaway1956 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Should we just outlaw politics?

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    9. Re:Sure, go ahead. by lightknight · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Indeed. I'm just going to do the usual (I'm in a hurry):

      1.) This assumes that there are no legitimate usages of Tor. Nice to see Western countries are still holding the torch for freedom, liberty, and all that jazz; the people in various countries with tighter freedom of speech laws thank you for making it easier for their Thought Police to track them down and kill them.

      2.) Common carrier / safe harbor clauses / legality fun. Start blocking traffic...legal issues. Plus your customers aren't paying you to monitor their shit, they're paying you to provide a pipe. If you're watching their data, reading their emails, taking note of the websites they're visiting...well, that's a new level of creepy. And unwelcome.

      3.) Will not stop / deter illegal activities and / or Tor. Give it a rest guys...you've been fighting and losing non-stop for years. ISPs start blocking Tor, Tor implements some slight changes, hey look, Tor is back! You've solved nothing. And with or without Tor, illegal stuff is going to go on...and the vast majority of it is being done without Tor. The reality is that this focus on Tor is simply a diversion, a chance to talk about something 'safe,' because you can't do anything about the stuff that actually needs changing.

      --
      I am John Hurt.
    10. Re:Sure, go ahead. by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Blocking Tor would, in principle, make it easier to track people who send death threats, so that the existing law can be applied.

      And if you kept people in their homes, street crime would plummet.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    11. Re:Sure, go ahead. by Reschekle · · Score: 4, Informative

      They caught the guy who sent them so I'm not sure why Tor needs to be blocked.

    12. Re:Sure, go ahead. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      That corresponds to about 40 cases in 600,000 births.

      Assuming that you mean 40 cases against an expected number of 31.3 (which is a 28% increase) ... the sqrt variance in the number of cases should be sqrt(31.3) = 5.6. Approximating the Poisson distribution as a Gaussian, that means that the extra 8.7 cases constitute a 8.7/5.6 = 1.6-sigma excess, or a p-value of 0.06 (i.e. 94% confidence). Heck, that's practically nothing. You could pick twenty random diseases, look at them, and you'd *expect* that one of them would show that much of an excess. Relevant xkcd.

    13. Re:Sure, go ahead. by rastoboy29 · · Score: 2

      The link you provided was to RT, which publishes a lot of spurious information.  The paper they reference is not peer reviewed, and published on a trash website that looks credible at first.

      I'm not saying it's not true, but I am saying that if there were strong evidence for it, many enterprising young reporters would be publishing it far and wide.

      --
      expandfairuse.org
    14. Re:Sure, go ahead. by idontgno · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What part of "anonymous death threats" didn't you understand? Oh, right. Anonymous.

      Death threats being illegal doesn't help if you can't track who sent them. Blocking Tor would, in principle, make it easier to track people who send death threats, so that the existing law can be applied.

      And again. Death threats through the mail are anonymous. Since they're in an envelope in which source information is completely optional.

      So, while you're at it, ban envelopes. Everyone uses postcards.

      Not that I approve of blocking it, but you seem to have completely missed the point.

      Not that I approve of your last-moment and half-hearted disavowal of your obvious support for blocking TOR, but you seem to have completely missed the real point: outlawing encryption solves NO law enforcement problem but denies law-abiding citizens their rightful privacy.

      --
      Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
  2. Freedom is a two edged sword... by houstonbofh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yep... We want all people to be free. Unless we don't like them, then we have to know who they are. But if someone else we don't like does not like them, then THEY NEED TO BE FREE! Being a part of the ruling class would be so much easier if it were not for all these darned peasants...

    1. Re:Freedom is a two edged sword... by naff89 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Maybe that's why single-edged swords are more popular in Japan.

    2. Re:Freedom is a two edged sword... by fredprado · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sure you can. The correlation between freedom and responsibility exists only in your head. In a world where it is impossible to restrict the freedom of others, like a completely anonymous Internet, everybody would be completely free and nobody would be responsible for anything.

    3. Re:Freedom is a two edged sword... by Gaygirlie · · Score: 2

      Sure you can. The correlation between freedom and responsibility exists only in your head. In a world where it is impossible to restrict the freedom of others, like a completely anonymous Internet, everybody would be completely free and nobody would be responsible for anything.

      A completely anonymous and free Internet would be useless, though. Everyone would need to have randomly-generated identifiers, meaning that there would be no way of establishing communication with a party that you previously communicated with unless you went through them all, one by one, and exchanged previously-exchanged certificates to identify yourselves to one another -- as soon as you install any sort of an architecture to the thing, like e.g. DNS of some sort, web-services or anything like that you immediately introduce a "more equal than others" - class of netizens and therefore it would all have to be completely ad-hoc with no structure to it at all. Even with some sort of a peer-to-peer DNS-system the people with the most computers online would be the ones with the most power at their hands and could, indeed, restrict the freedom of others.

      Now, all of this would still entail that there would be these gatekeepers that maintain the actual physical construction and access to this virtual world and that, again, would in and of itself place restrictions on freedoms; these gatekeepers could allow themselves more bandwidth than others, more computers online than others, they could introduce tracking of the people they let through and so on. Basically, the idea you presented is an oxymoron and not possible in the physical world.

    4. Re:Freedom is a two edged sword... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Sure you can. The correlation between freedom and responsibility exists only in your head. In a world where it is impossible to restrict the freedom of others, like a completely anonymous Internet, everybody would be completely free and nobody would be responsible for anything.

      That only work in a system where there is no consequence, such as the Interwebs which is really a giant video game. Responsibility only begin once you take action base on information received from the web, at which point you become the responsible party. Anywhere else, it is inapplicable. This is why the Intertubes are so powerful and why states, nations and corporations are so afraid of it.

      INB4 Important stuff are on the internet. Such system are the responsibility of whoever hooked it to the internet. If a random cracker can take it down then, given enough time, random noise will take it down too. Just because you can't take your responsibility doesn't give you the right to take everyone else freedom. Such are the rules of the Internet, and if you don't like it, take your very important 'products' and 'services' back to a brick and mortar store where the state can taxes and protect you in exchange of your freedom.

    5. Re:Freedom is a two edged sword... by fredprado · · Score: 2

      Now, all of this would still entail that there would be these gatekeepers that maintain the actual physical construction and access to this virtual world and that, again, would in and of itself place restrictions on freedoms; these gatekeepers could allow themselves more bandwidth than others, more computers online than others, they could introduce tracking of the people they let through and so on. Basically, the idea you presented is an oxymoron and not possible in the physical world.

      Allowing more or less of those things is irrelevant regarding freedom. You seem to confuse communism with freedom. That is an oxymoron. The gatekeepers exist in the real world and are restricted to the real world laws. As long as those laws force net neutrality what exists within is free regardless of what they do. If those laws do not force neutrality, things like TOR come into play and try to compensate it.

      Regarding identity. Transmitting information regardless of identity is far from being useless. Information has value on its own. There are means to verify identity if you want to do real world stuff in the Internet. If you do not, identity is a secondary concept.

  3. Japan by tmosley · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Looks like Japan is now cruising down the road to a police state. Remember that in a police state, policies are implemented to make things easier on police. This means freedoms are crushed in favor of eliminating crime, real or imagined. You know, like shutting down the third most populous city while searching for a single person/evil terrorist.

    Absolutely disgusting.

    1. Re:Japan by rskbrkr · · Score: 2, Insightful

      ummm, Japan was always a police state...

    2. Re:Japan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Really? Having lived here for over a decade, you could have fooled me. It's not much different to any other country, and the authorities are arguably less intrusive in many areas than they are in the U.S.

      But let's be honest, throwing around this kind of ridiculous bullshit hyperbole has always been a popular sport for self-appointed internet experts who have no fucking idea or experience of what they're talking about.

    3. Re:Japan by erroneus · · Score: 2

      No. Just a ridiculously obedient state. They don't need police when they have this outrageous sense of shame and high levels of acceptance of just about anything thrown at them.

    4. Re:Japan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'd rather risk a terrorist bombing than allow the TSA to exist (and that hypothetical depends on a reality where the TSA is actually effective, and it is most certainly not). You, however, do not value your freedoms and would rather sacrifice everything to save some amount of people; foolish indeed.

    5. Re:Japan by flayzernax · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The funny thing is in most tyrannies people can say the same thing. You don't know what you've lost until you lose it or have it used against you or become one of the oppressed.

      This is the hardest concept to get across to people who say "this is no big deal" "I never was stopped from watching my official youtube video". Thats right you never were. But when you are because you happen to be one of those "other people" you read about.

      When your looking for a reliable source of journalism and that source gets shut down, bought out, shoved 25 pages back on google and replaced with shit. When you have to spend 20 hours researching something instead of 5 minutes to find real sources citing real incidents that matter. You will understand. Information is becoming MUCH harder to get without peeling through layers of government and corporate propaganda and advertisement. The next step is to make it even harder to go outside of regular plain web google.

      The saddest things is TOR is used for a lot of crap and very little good stuff, there still is better information outside of tor pertaining to real world events. So tor gets little love from the people that SHOULD be supporting it and all the attention of the people that hate it.

      Don't be all excited about loosing it before you had a chance to need it.

    6. Re:Japan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      On the other hand, they have an extremely low rate of violent crime, and the Japanese people seem to be satisfied with that.

      At least the ones who haven't thrown themselves onto one of Japan's many excellent train lines.

    7. Re:Japan by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 4, Informative

      You would be very wrong.

      Boston has the lowest rate of gun violence in the US at 3.6 / 100k each year.

      Since the population is about 600K, that's 22 per year.

      These people were killing at a rate of about 1 per day.

    8. Re:Japan by LVSlushdat · · Score: 2

      Perhaps you can tell us a country that is NOT "cruising down the road to a police state"... I'd sure LOVE to know, because, as much as I love America, I'm getting sick and tired of the destruction of it by BOTH sides of the political isle.. During my time in the Army in the 1970s, I went on RnR to Sydney Australia and was totally impressed with them, and in fact, considered emigrating there after I got out of the Army... Fast forward to 2013, and they're (along with ALL of the other "Commonwealth" countries) heading down that very same road to a police state.. Sure am glad I'm in my 60s, and likely won't live much more than maybe another 10 years, if that long... Its gonna MUCH worse before it gets better (if ever).....
       

      --
      THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
    9. Re:Japan by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 2

      Boston shuts down routinely for snow emergencies.

      Not a big deal.

    10. Re:Japan by Alex+Belits · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The funny thing is in most tyrannies people can say the same thing. You don't know what you've lost until you lose it or have it used against you or become one of the oppressed.

      It's the same in all countries. There are no "tyrannies" and "free countries", and never were. For most of the world/history (except some egregious things like Nazi and Somalia) it's just propaganda you grew up with vs. propaganda someone else grew up with. You just believe that whatever your own government considers unacceptable is something that no one would ever want to do.

      --
      Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
    11. Re:Japan by yet+another+SanTiago · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Well, the referred wikipedia article says a different story:

      In murder, U.S. police arrested 19,000 people for 26,000 murders, in which 75% were prosecuted and courts convicted 12,000 people. In Japan, 1,800 people were arrested for 1,300 murders, but prosecutors tried only 43%. Had the allegation that Japanese prosecutors use weak evidence mostly based on (forced) confessions to achieve convictions been true, the larger proportion of arrests would have resulted in prosecutions and eventual conviction. But the opposite is true. In fact, the data indicates that Japanese prosecutors bring charges only when the evidence is overwhelming and likelihood of conviction is near absolute, which gives a greater incentive for the accused to confess and aim for a lighter sentence, which, in turn, results in a high rate for confession.

    12. Re:Japan by Mashiki · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Really? Having lived here for over a decade, you could have fooled me.

      True it's not really a police state, though it does have exceptionally limited freedoms. It also doesn't help that the justice system is so inherently broken to the point that they started appointing lay judges for criminal cases, because the sentences handed out were so weak compared to the crimes committed. While it's not bad per-se, as compared to oh...the UK for instance, there are areas where what would pass in the west as a slap on the wrist will get you into those comfy 3x8' cells.

      And really jumping back to the topic at hand, it's not just TOR they're running afraid of but sneaker nets.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    13. Re:Japan by Culture20 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The amount of money that was lost because of the lockdown could have fed all the starving people in the world for a week.

      But it wouldn't have. Just like my brussels sprouts when I was 5 wouldn't have fed starving children in China.

    14. Re:Japan by Uberbah · · Score: 2, Informative

      ummm, Japan was always a police state...

      Which is why most of their cops don't even carry guns. Or, maybe, you're using that term "police state" but it doesn't mean whatever it is you think it means.....

    15. Re:Japan by Mr.+Slippery · · Score: 3, Informative

      Which is why most of their cops don't even carry guns.

      I believe you may have confused Japan with the U.K. Cops I saw on the street in my months in Osaka routinely carried revolvers. Not that it matters; a police state has nothing to do with whether police carry firearms, it has to do with totalitarian government -- which, when the population has been disarmed, can function quite well even with low-level functionaries not carrying firearms.

      --
      Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
      You cannot wash away blood with blood
    16. Re:Japan by viperidaenz · · Score: 4, Informative

      Wrong, as another person said gun death rate in Boston is 22 per year.

      These people who were caught/shot were throwing yet more bombs at the authorities as they were being chased. They had a whole house full of them as well.
      Do you think they stock piled them just for fun?

    17. Re:Japan by Runaway1956 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think GP's point might have been that Google would be a valuable tool to a police state, or something like that. And, in fact, Google is resisting government's attempt to turn it into such a tool. Google cooperates with some government requests, and denies others. It seems they actually look at those requests, individually, trying to weed out overbearing bullshit - unlike some other corporations that honor every request, no matter how plainly overbearing.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    18. Re:Japan by Bearhouse · · Score: 2

      Agree. But once you're in the system, you WILL be found guilty...

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_justice_system_of_Japan#Conviction_rate

      "In the matter relating to Japanese prosecutors being extremely cautious, the paper found ample evidence for it. In Japan, 99.7% of all the cases brought to court resulted in conviction, while in the U.S. the figure is 88%. "

    19. Re:Japan by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 2

      Oh and one other thing. The gun violence rate I quoted is FOR METRO BOSTON. Not just the core city.

      The central city is 1.7 per 100,000.

    20. Re:Japan by flayzernax · · Score: 2

      I wasn't griping about google they are just a tool to parse the information out there. But whatever floods that tool with bad results is not googles fault. Googles database is increasingly becoming cluttered with useless information. I don't think its a great conspiracy, but I think its being encouraged somehow maybe by certain parties with a lot of money, power, influence.

      For instance on freenet there was a documentary by a Russian on a motorbike about their drive through Chernobyl. Was the daughter of a nuclear physicist. It was a very blog like thing done before there were blogs. Its not easy to find on google and if you search around for it now you end up with a lot of results from mainstream blogs who plagiarized and edited the content. Nothing about it was very politically controversial except that it slammed down hard on how the Soviets handled the situation. Tidbits like that are becoming increasingly rare and you end up with 25 results for either porn or MSN, CNN, or slashdot affiliates.

  4. Thank you by Weezul · · Score: 4, Informative

    Thank you for reminding us about TEPCO as well as posting that specific link.

    After Fukushima, the Japanese government lied about the radiation until a hacker space started building GPS radiation sensor devices. They gave an excellent talk from 29c3 :
    Safecast: DIY and citizen-sensing of radiation [29c3]

    Did I mention they used Open Street Map? Open Street Map rocks! It's basically the wikipedia of maps, blows away google maps.

    --
    The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
    1. Re:Thank you by Bearhouse · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Not so fast; I contribute to Open Street Maps because I like the idea, but where I live, for the moment, it still sucks. Does for a lot of Europe, in fact.
      Nowhere near as complete and useful as Google maps, and of course no 'Street View'.
      Still, if we all contribute, one day it will be better...

  5. Re:Demon Killer Hacker by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Somebody should suggest the police ban axes

    In Japan, it is already illegal to own an axe. You also need a permit from the public safety committee to own scissors with blades longer than 15cm (6 inches). Unless you can show a professional need, you will have to settle for smaller scissors with rounded points. It is also illegal to carry a knife with a blade more than 5 cm (2 in) long. Citation: Knife Legislation in Japan

  6. Re:Think of the children! by kpoole55 · · Score: 2

    That was the Canadian Conservative party's stand on their internet surveillance bill. If you didn't support their attempt to pass unwarranted internet surveillance in Canada then you must be a child pornographer. That didn't go well at all for poor old Vic Toews.

    Of course, I do wonder sometimes if these guys trying to pass these laws now realize what a tyranny they are setting up for their own children or grandchildren in the future. I imagine that they think that their families will be exempt from any such surveillance. If they somehow are then everyone else is well justified in their vigourous protests of such laws.

  7. idiotic by slashmydots · · Score: 4, Informative

    You can't "block tor." It's just 100% encrypted SSL web traffic. You'd have to block all SSL web traffic. Good luck with that.

    1. Re:idiotic by cultiv8 · · Score: 4, Informative

      You can block known exit nodes.

      --
      sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
    2. Re:idiotic by utkonos · · Score: 4, Interesting

      They can still block any traffic from the exit nodes. All the ISPs in Japan can null route all traffic from Tor exit node IP addresses. The list of addresses is published by Tor so people can do just this (it's not meant for the ISP level, rather, they publish it so people can block Tor from message boards and such). This would prevent all Tor traffic from entering Japan's networks directly

      Using a proxy immediately after Tor would be the only solution to this, but even this could be blocked since lists of public open proxies are maintained in a number of locations such as XRoxy.

  8. Iran and Syria Cannot Stop Tor by CodeBuster · · Score: 4, Informative

    If violent and repressive regimes, willing to kill without trial or mercy, cannot stop Tor then how much less will a western style constitution democracy be able to stop it? Unless the Japanese are prepared to cut off all electronic communications with the outside world, which would be tantamount to economic suicide, they will fail. Blocking known relay nodes will slow Tor down, it won't stop it because people will still be able to use bridges to get onto the network.

    1. Re:Iran and Syria Cannot Stop Tor by unix_core · · Score: 2

      Why don't they just ask China for help? http://www.technologyreview.com/view/427413/how-china-blocks-the-tor-anonymity-network/

    2. Re:Iran and Syria Cannot Stop Tor by CodeBuster · · Score: 4, Informative

      The TOR network is designed to make two things very difficult: tracking packets back to their source and shutting down the network itself. In addition to the well known relay nodes there's an ever changing list of bridge nodes, private operators who forward traffic to and from the well know relay nodes. It's these bridge nodes especially that make TOR difficult to stop completely. Even the Chinese, with their great firewall, haven't been able to stamp it out completely because it's a constant game of whack-a-mole with the bridge nodes on dynamic IPs.

    3. Re:Iran and Syria Cannot Stop Tor by CodeBuster · · Score: 2

      It's difficult to imagine the circumstances under which Japan would ask China for help and even more difficult to imagine China actually giving any, even if Japan asked.

    4. Re:Iran and Syria Cannot Stop Tor by Koutarou · · Score: 3, Informative

      FLET's is not filtered at NTT's level. It all gets passed off to the individual ISPs who have to handle transit and filtering themselves.

      au Hikari is a different situation.

      Disclaimer: I work for a japanese ISP.

  9. a freedom that's also a problem by bcrowell · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In the 18th century, privacy was a pretty straightforward thing. That's why, in the 18th-century US, it was straightforward to write the 4th amendment. As a result, the government can't open my snail mail without a warrant, and can't come into my house and search it without a warrant.

    The technological reality is very different in the 21st century. I support individuals' rights to use strong crypto and to control their own computer hardware and software. But it's undeniable that these rights carry collateral damage.

    In 2012, the University of Pittsburgh was basically shut down for several months by a series of 145 bomb threats that were sent by email, anonymized via Mixmaster. This is not a good outcome.

    If someone is using Tor to post death threats anonymously, that's not a good outcome.

    Despite these bad outcomes, I still support the individual freedoms that let them happen. But that doesn't mean that it's not a real problem. It's very much like gun violence in the US. I support the 2nd amendement, but I recognize that that comes at a cost.

    --
    Find free books.
    1. Re:a freedom that's also a problem by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > But it's undeniable that these rights carry collateral damage.

      In the 17th century, bad people could hide stolen stuff in houses, hide in houses, and send crime-oriented information by snail mail.

      The reason to forbid the government from peeking has nothing to do with legitimate crimes, nor misusing government power investigating legitimate crimes.

      The reason is to stop the slippery slope before it begins, when the government officials end up abusing power to maintain their power.

      That's why a lot of this Patriot Act stuff is disturbing -- it lacks even cursory oversight in hindsight. It could indeed be being misused to spy on political opponents. How would you know? You wouldn't, and that is the problem.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    2. Re:a freedom that's also a problem by starcraftsicko · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The technological reality is very different in the 21st century. I support individuals' rights to use strong crypto and to control their own computer hardware and software. But it's undeniable that these rights carry collateral damage.

      The approach of law enforcers in the 21st century is to assert that nothing a person might do with digital technologies is protected by the need for reasonable searches. We see this with dragnet monitoring of cellular networks, with casual roadside searches of personal electronics, with the FBI attaching a f***ing tracking device to a car and asserting that this should be allowed without oversight, and so much more.

      Law enforcers assert that theu need these powers to enforce the laws and to catch the law breakers... and they're right. Bad police behavior is simply more efficient. It allows the Bushes and the Obamas and Merkels (and Camerons and Blairs and Assads and Ahmadinejads too, but there's another place for that discussion.) to make more laws that would take more money to enforce reasonably and constitutionally. Since the money isn't there, the enforcers must get more efficient, which means rights and ethical behavior must go by the wayside.

      I've moved beyond which laws we need or don't need when considering civil rights. I firmly believe that every time Congress passes a law or Obama signs an order, no matter how well meaning, civil rights are violated. It's just like the kitten meme - http://static.portent.com/images/2007/08/God-kills-kitten.png . This applies to state legislatures, governors, mayors, HOAs...

      If we ban or regulate or protect less, our rights will be violated less. Think about it. Think of the children. Think of... the kittens. lol

  10. Re:Japan, a new Iran ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yes, so is the US, UK and every other country.

    Hint: They're ALL ruled by the elites.

  11. Freedom is not a free-for-all ... by MacTO · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm not sure what kids are learning these days, but freedom and responsibility went hand-in-hand when I grew up. That is to say, you have freedom but you have to be responsible in your actions and take responsibility for your actions. Unfortunately, anonymity is frequently used to "exercise freedoms" while avoiding responsibility for your actions. I stuck exercise freedoms in quotes because some people are using that as an excuse to commit crimes or impinge upon the freedoms of others.

    Of course I realise that equating crime to anonymity is only sometimes true. I also realise that anonymity is necessary in a free society. On the other hand, I do see why law enforcement agencies are deeply concerned by anonymity and encryption. I understand why judicial systems and governments have similar concerns. I understand why many ordinary citizens are concerned.

    1. Re:Freedom is not a free-for-all ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      On the other hand, I do see why law enforcement agencies are deeply concerned by anonymity and encryption. I understand why judicial systems and governments have similar concerns.

      Yes, I too understand why they have these concerns. But the propositions they make because of these concerns are ridiculous!

      To use an IMO appropriate analogy: I understand why police have concerns about criminals using gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints -- but I think we'd all agree it was ridiculous for police to try to dissuade stores from selling gloves!

  12. Re:Japan, a new Iran ? by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 2

    Yes, so is the US, UK and every other country.

    Not US, nor UK, nor most other countries, TOR are not officially blocked, at the ISP level

    At least, not yet

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
  13. Re:Japan, a new Iran ? by houstonbofh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, so is the US, UK and every other country.

    Not US, nor UK, nor most other countries, TOR are not officially blocked, at the ISP level

    At least, not yet

    Maybe not blocked, but people are being arrested or sued for what others do via their exit node. "Yeah, we know you didn't do it, but it came from your house. Guilty."

  14. Re:Japan, a new Iran ? by elashish14 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yes, but Japan makes the US copyright industry happy, so they're not terrists.

    --
    I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
  15. Re:Slashdot blocks TOR by green1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The good thing about TOR is that anyone can use it, and your traffic can come from the same node as someone else, so you can't identify people based on IP
    The bad thing about TOR is that anyone can use it, and your traffic can come from the same node as someone else, so when someone else does something stupid, you pay the price of the ban...

    Of course it's interesting that you see "BANNED" where as my work IP just get's an error saying that I'm "not allowed to use this resource" when I try to post a comment... I had always figured that what I saw at work was Slashdot's ban method, apparently it's something completely different.

  16. pay attention, this will happen here by davydagger · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Pay attention, right now the US tollerates tor because its used by dissidents in countries we don't like. If it wasn't for western intellegence agencies. Europe would have banned TOR a long time ago.

    In fact, if it wasn't for those agencies, the US would have shut down exit nodes, by simply arresting the owners for whatever illegal content poured through them.

    It doesn't take much for press/mainstream media to start attacking the internet and everyone on it, and especially the unmonied, unwashed, unconnected 99%

    If you think I am exageraterating.

    This is the TOR project's official blog:
    https://blog.torproject.org/

    some excerpts:
    https://blog.torproject.org/blog/trip-report-tor-trainings-dutch-and-belgian-police
    "In January I did Tor talks for the Dutch regional police, the Dutch national police, and the Belgian national police. Jake and I also did a brief inspirational talk at Bits of Freedom, as well as the closing keynote for the Dutch National Cyber Security Centre's yearly conference.

    You may recall that one of my side hobbies lately has been teaching law enforcement about Tor â€" see my previous entries about teaching the FBI about Tor in 2012 and visiting the Stuttgart detectives in 2008 back when we were discussing data retention in Germany. Before this blog started I also did several Tor talks for the US DoJ, and even one for the Norwegian Kripos."

    "One regional Dutch police woman told us that they know how to check if it's a Tor exit IP, but sometimes they do the raid anyway "to discourage people from helping Tor.""

    Its the only reason its not banned, and all users rounded up and thrown in jail on suspicion of hacking, child porn, and terrorism, or whatever other bad shit ever happened to float out one exit node.

    1. Re:pay attention, this will happen here by ruir · · Score: 2

      How long till we find a zombie network of tor exit nodes?

    2. Re:pay attention, this will happen here by Linsaran · · Score: 2

      Well, there's certainly worse things that a zombie network can do. Hell, I'm downright in favor of some greyhat hacker putting Tor exit nodes into a botnet. I mean ideally we'd shut down every bot net out there, but since that's not realistically going to happen this would at least be a nice consolation prize while they go about their business DDoSing bitcoin or whatever else happens to be in vogue for a botnet to do these days.

      --
      In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
  17. Re:Japan, a new Iran ? by silviuc · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "How do they know they didn't do it?"

    It's the point of "innocent until proven guilty". The burden of providing proof of guilt rests on those that accuse not the ones that defend themselves against accusations.

  18. Re:Japan, a new Iran ? by Errol+backfiring · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "innocent until proven guilty" is replaced by the "content industry" with "guilty even if proved innocent". For quite some time already.

    --
    Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
  19. Re:Japan, a new Iran ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Not US, nor UK, nor most other countries, TOR are not officially blocked, at the ISP level

    You better check out this http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2009/06/features/the-hidden-censors-of-the-internet

    Yes, this IS the UK we're talking about, now go cry a river to your representatives.

  20. Re:Demon Killer Hacker by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    I live in Japan. There's 3 hardware stores within 5 kilometers of me. All of them carry axes. Of multiple varieties. You're full of bullshit.

  21. Re:Japan, a new Iran ? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

    It's the point of "innocent until proven guilty". The burden of providing proof of guilt rests on those that accuse not the ones that defend themselves against accusations.

    I wasn't talking about justifying a prosecution - only an arrest.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  22. Tor is being blocked in China and Iran by thelukester · · Score: 2

    During the year I lived in China, I ran into several people whose only means of free and open Internet access was through Tor. While everyone I met only used it for Facebook and Youtube, if there ever is a democratic revolution in Iran or China, Tor will be there to help to make it possible.

    If you want to help people in China, Iran, and possibility Japan, where Tor is being blocked, you can run a obfsproxy bridge to circumvent the block. There is currently a shortage of these bridges,
    http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/04/tor-calls-for-help-as-its-supply-of-bridges-falters/
    so every little bit helps now. The quickest and easiest way is to setup your free Amazon EC2 account with the Instructions at the Tor Cloud Project page
    https://cloud.torproject.org/
    Or for a general Linux setup, [detailed instructions can be found at:
    https://www.torproject.org/projects/obfsproxy-debian-instructions.html.en

    NOTE: A bridge is NOT the same as an exit node. If you are just running a bridge, you are only helping people join the Tor network and are only routing a small amount of internal encrypted tor traffic, so there is no risk of getting into trouble with the authorities.