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Japanese Police Urge ISPs To Block Tor
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."
If only that was enough to stop illegal activities....
Julio Henrique Morimoto juliohm@gmail.com
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."