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Tor Usage More Than Doubles In August
hypnosec writes that the Tor network has witnessed a massive rise in the number of users connecting to it for the month of August.
"The privacy-enhancing network is known for providing an anonymous browsing experience through the use of a series of encrypted relays, and has had as many as 500k users throughout this year so far. But if we check the latest statistics available through Tor Metrics Portal there has been a whopping 100 percent increase in the number of Tor clients and as many as 1,200,000 users are connecting to the network. The previous peak for the network was in January 2012, when it saw as many as 950,000 users."
More Tor exit nodes is better. The NSA surely has many honeypot nodes, we need to drown them out with more legitimate exit nodes.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
(d) some entity (NSA or otherwise) is trying to compromise the network by owning a majority of nodes
I'm a US citizen that's strongly opposed to all of this bullshit. I've lost my own patience for my government.
What should people like me do to show people like you that we're just as fed up as you are, if not more? Protest? Rebel? Sign some pledge? Comment on Slashdot?
What more do you want to see from the people of the United States?
The NSA removed your mod points for security reasons
If the entirety of human history is any indicator, the governed won't see any changes in a situation like this until they're willing to use lethal force against those who govern them.
When enough of the key positions of political and economic power in a society are filled with sociopaths, the only way you can stop them is to kill them. You can't vote a replacement or try to replace them by running for office yourself because they have the power to corrupt the voting process and to filter out those who attempt to run for office who pose any real challenge to their own power. You can't stop them with protests because they have the force the police to crush any serious protests and they have the force of the media to destroy the message of such protests. The only thing that works when corruption gets really, really bad is lethal force by the governed.
So, unless you're willing to take up arms against your fellow man, you'll just have to bend down and take it. We all know this is true, and we all try to dance around this fact because we like to think we're civilized and above the use of violence, but the fact of the matter is that a small portion of the population is extremely selfish and has no compunction against using violence against you. When enough of these sorts of people get into the place where they have most of the money, power, and weapons, they *will* use those things against everyone else in order to retain their position.
Yes, violence sucks. Yes, it's bad. Yes, we should avoid it if at all possible. But there comes a point when that's all you can do, and that's when the sociopaths hold *all* the cards. How far off do we all think that is? There comes a time when violence is necessary because there are evil, selfish people in the world.
To quote one of The Founding Fathers of the USA, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
So, to answer your question of "What more do you want to see from the people of the United States?", here's an answer that will work: gather together a million like-minded, armed citizens and take the White House and Capitol Hill. Depose all the corrupt leaders by killing or imprisoning them and seizing all their assets. It won't be pretty, and you'll probably end up splitting the US into smaller nation-states, and you'll likely have to do it all again in a few generations, but it's the only way to keep the boot of the government from stepping on the face of humanity forever.
But, good luck with all that, because I hear Miley Cyrus is twerking again or something.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
I'm a US citizen that has lost patience with the American people. Anonymous Coward is exactly right. Where were the riots over this? The outrage just wasn't there. But then there are riots all over the U.S. over the Trayvon Martin verdict. Stupidest fucking thing I've ever seen. And the media trying to make this a white vs black thing, even though George Zimmerman is hispanic. Zimmerman should probably go in the witness protection program and change his identity......and there you have it right there. The U.S. government really *is* a reflection of the American people. The American people do not respect rights and due process. So neither does the government. The American people are uninformed on The Constitution, so, like the American people, the government ignores it too.
What do I want to see from the people of the United States? idk, it seems like a lost cause. How many are even aware of the NSA spying? Do they care? They probably care more about Miley Cyrus 'twerking'.
A minority of Americans have woken up (Libertarians/Ron Paul crowd -- which is growing). Will it be enough to change the direction of the country? I hope so. Julian Assange is right about libertarianism being America's last hope.
(e) botnets that use TOR for command and control stuff.
Just tell your opinion to anyone who asks you, like you have done with this post. Some widespread protest would be nice, but to be fair it doesn't seem to happen in other countries either.
This, I do cheerfully. It's pretty easy these days to convince even non techies of the need for privacy. I send them to eff.org as a start then over to torproject.org
(posting anon due to my mod status)
I've been telling my opinion on things such as this for years, and most people have just always looked at me as extremist, paranoid, or unpatriotic when I point out government overstep on constitutional freedoms of its citizens...
Maybe the climate is changing so that people will be more susceptible to opinions, but the truth is that the average person can't be convinced that anything is true unless the talking heads tell them its true too.
Tor is great to stop your neighbor from spying on your people-dressed-as-cows porn fetish, since it's trivial for someone who lives close to you to sniff your packets (a fact confirmed to me by my ISP btw). SO it's great for privacy from nosy ./ curious / thrill seeking neighbors or defending yourself against common cyber criminals. If you're hoping to position yourself AS a criminal using Tor, for-gheeda-bow-tit.
Just saying this so no one makes the youthful mistake of thinking they can, for instance, order molly from the silkroad and never have that fact traced back to them. Criminals are going to do what they do and Tor isn't going to protect them and that's between those people and law enforcement. What we don't want is young people whose brains and judgement aren't fully developed yet , but whose taste for adventure is, being caught in the meat-grinder of an incarceration-for-profit system complete with mandatory minimum sentences because they were severely misled on technical matters.
Do you know what the cost of owning (statistically , virtually) ALL of the exit nodes and most of the intermediate nodes of Tor is? It's effectively zero to the collective financial and technical resources of the "five eyes", that's what it is.
Oh but WoofyGoofy I use a VPN and encrypt everything !!!! And therefore what do you think follows? When you also own both ends of the connections and every major ISP etc etc How hard is it to attach unique identifying packets to your packets as they pass back into the network and then track them through it? Or a little Bayesian analysis based on just the time and size of your packets? Tor is based on the idea that most nodes are not pwned. That assumption is almost certainly false. Remember this also- law enforcement only needs a subpoena for your online activities and email if it's recent- 18 months. When the information you generated is older than that- and Google et.al. keep it FOR-EVAH-AH - that's forever to the phonically challenged- law enforcement can look at it without even so much as a warrant- just ask and ye shall receive, and yes, that includes the CONTENT of your emails etc. Look it up.
There are a lot of dangers to the total information awareness that's been set up. The one people focus in on is J Edgar Hoover style political repression.
Another one is that we're creating a generation of people who get caught for *absolutely* *every* transgression. Call them "generation busted".
People didn't evolve to be either perfectly compliant nor perfectly spied on all the time, everywhere and and norms of society didn't evolve with that as a fact either. Young people whose judgment is not in effect are a potential gold mine for people who make money off things like parole and incarceration and they will push to increase their revenue flow just like any other corporation would.
After all, who do you THINK lobbied for mandatory minimum sentencing? Who do you think pushes for three strike laws for what are basically non-violent offenders- stealing pizza, shit like that? This is a real danger.
I know one friend's son who is constantly in trouble with the law over shit like smoking ladies soap bubbles and petty shoplifting and such shit. Basically, it's like watching a lamb being fed to the wolves piece by piece. Soon enough he'll have enough of a record that they'll lock him up, making him permanently unemployable and then wait for him to commit a robbery or suchlike. It's sickening. The kid has severe mental health issues, probably was born that way and should be on some form of permanent public assistance. There exist people like that. It's cheaper than locking him up. Let him smoke dope, watch TV play games and just exist in whatever way makes sense to him. People are born who are just like this for reasons we don't understand, it's not anyone's fault, least of all his.
Just as bad is kids who are transgressive as a kind of experimentation, like, oh I don't know our coke snorting (he admits to it) President. Go to a