Japanese Police Urge ISPs To Block Tor 242
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."
Sure, go ahead. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sure, go ahead. (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, [rt.com] 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.
Thank you (Score:5, 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] [youtube.com]
Did I mention they used Open Street Map [openstreetmap.org]? Open Street Map rocks! It's basically the wikipedia of maps, blows away google maps.
Re:Thank you (Score:4, 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...
Japan, a new Iran ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Is Japan going the way of Iran, blocking the flow of information, for the sake of the ruling elites ?
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Yes, so is the US, UK and every other country.
Hint: They're ALL ruled by the elites.
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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
Re:Japan, a new Iran ? (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."
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"Yeah, we know you didn't do it, but it came from your house. Guilty."
How do they know they didn't do it?
Re:Japan, a new Iran ? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Japan, a new Iran ? (Score:4, Insightful)
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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.
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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 [wired.co.uk]
Yes, this IS the UK we're talking about, now go cry a river to your representatives.
Re:Japan, a new Iran ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but Japan makes the US copyright industry happy, so they're not terrists.
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The tighter they grasp, the easier the sand spills out from between their fingers.
Re:Sure, go ahead. (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/ [scientificamerican.com]
(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 [nytimes.com] 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.
Re:Sure, go ahead. (Score:4, 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.
Re:Sure, go ahead. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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?"
Re:Sure, go ahead. (Score:4, Interesting)
And if you kept people in their homes, street crime would plummet.
Re:Sure, go ahead. (Score:5, Informative)
They caught the guy who sent them so I'm not sure why Tor needs to be blocked.
Re:Sure, go ahead. (Score:4, 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.
Re:Sure, go ahead. (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.
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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.
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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.
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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, corre
Re:Sure, go ahead. (Score:5, Insightful)
Should we just outlaw politics?
Re:Sure, go ahead. (Score:4, 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.
Freedom is a two edged sword... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Freedom is a two edged sword... (Score:5, Funny)
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My freedom ends where yours begins. Full freedom means full responsibility for actions. No freedom means no responsibility.
But you can not have full freedom and no responsibility.
Re:Freedom is a two edged sword... (Score:5, Insightful)
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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. I
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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
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Sure you can! Go into politics!
Japan (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely disgusting.
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Re:Japan (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.
Re:Japan (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.
Re:Japan (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.
Re:Japan (Score:4, 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.
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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 n
Re:Japan (Score:4, 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.
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Does Japan still have an emperor?
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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 [wikipedia.org]
"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%. "
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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.
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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.....
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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.
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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.
Re:Japan (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.
wtf? (Score:2)
I assume these infringements include ridiculous infringements like the power to arrest people and... well pretty much any power any police agent or government has over that of a common citizen.
Now personally I have all manner of issues with powers granted by states, to states, and their enforcers - but I accept that in the main part they're trying to protect us, and have some perspective.
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No. That's you missing/ignoring the point.
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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
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But hey, it's worth it to kill those targeted by the media as evil, evil terrorists, right?
But seriously, there have been dozens of bombings and hundreds of mass murders over the years, and not ONCE was an entire city shut do
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Boston shuts down routinely for snow emergencies.
Not a big deal.
Re:Japan (Score:4, 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.
Re:Japan (Score:5, 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.
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Boston is an anomaly when determining statistics of metropolitan areas. Unlike many larger cities like LA and Chicago, Boston has a fairly small land area. New York City is more than six times the land area of Boston for example. Whereas many metro areas grew over time, annexing adjacent cities and and towns, many of the towns in the Boston area resisted this move and were never annexed - They operate ind
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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.
Re:Japan (Score:5, 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?
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You honestly believe that crap put out by the authorities? they were patsies set up as the fall guys
Re:Japan (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.
Yeah - TSA (Score:2, Interesting)
false. dichotomy. (Score:2)
I suppose you think our only two choices after capturing alleged Al Queda operatives was to either torture the shit out of them for months on end or just let them go.
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Well one of them was shot dead in a gun fight, the other shot himself in the neck before being captured and may yet die. I don't think there will be much of anything going on. There is also no evidence that links them to Al Qaeda either.
idiotic (Score:5, Informative)
Re:idiotic (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:idiotic (Score:5, 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 [xroxy.com].
Iran and Syria Cannot Stop Tor (Score:5, Informative)
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In Japan, there are only a few backbone providers. All the small providers basically resell NTT's FLETS system so all you need to do is get NTT to block it and you've basically blocked access for 80% of the country. After that, hit up au's (KDDI) fiber and you've got the other 20%.
Re:Iran and Syria Cannot Stop Tor (Score:5, Informative)
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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.
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a freedom that's also a problem (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.
Re:a freedom that's also a problem (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.
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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.
The problem is not the person who made the bomb threats, it is the person who said "shut down for several months." Home of the brave? Bah! Humbug!
Re:a freedom that's also a problem (Score:4, 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 [portent.com] . 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
Posting to undo accidental moderation . . . (Score:2)
Police are not supposed to have an opinion really (Score:2)
In Japan, don't they have separation of powers?
The real problem here is ... (Score:2)
... is that this is supporting a group of people that are unable to distinguish between real crimes and abuses by governments.
Freedom is not a free-for-all ... (Score:4, 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.
Re:Freedom is not a free-for-all ... (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!
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I understand why judicial systems and governments have similar concerns. I understand why many ordinary citizens are concerned.
Mainly because they're cowards who would rather punish the innocent and ban something entirely rather than accept that tools are sometimes abused? We have the TSA in the US for a similar reason: cowardice.
Rice and toilet paper (Score:2)
Would perceptions be different if this hacker when by the name Kitten Lover rather than Demon Killer? Should we encourage people who apparently kill Demons?
pay attention, this will happen here (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Fine, switch to I2P (Score:2)
The solution to this problem is to setup an group of I2P outproxies [i2p2.de] inside of Japan's networks. It will take some time for Japan to catch up to current technologies, if they're only getting around to targeting Tor as late as now.
Also, is Japan trying to copy China, or something?
Tor is being blocked in China and Iran (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/ [arstechnica.com]
Re: (Score:3, 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 [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
In Japan, it is already illegal to own an axe.
What if you're a rural farmer who needs the axe for legitimate farming activities or other rural chores?
Re: (Score:2)
There are similar knife laws in all countries - they just vary by local flavor. [wikipedia.org]
From the same wiki page as the link above, only regarding USA:
City, county, and local jurisdictions (to include sovereign Indian nations located within a state boundary) may enact their own criminal laws or ordinances in addition to the restrictions contained in state laws, which may be more restrictive than state law.[78] Virtually all states and local jurisdictions have laws that restrict or prohibit the possession or carrying of knives in some form or manner in certain defined areas or places such as schools, public buildings, courthouses, police stations, jails, power plant facilities, airports, or public events.
Re: (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.
Re: (Score:3)
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 s
Re:Slashdot blocks TOR (Score:4, 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.