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Japan Communications Crime Encryption Government Privacy

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."
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Japanese Police Urge ISPs To Block Tor

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  • Sure, go ahead. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by juliohm ( 665784 ) on Sunday April 21, 2013 @06:04PM (#43512093)
    If only that was enough to stop illegal activities....
    • Re:Sure, go ahead. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jeremiah Cornelius ( 137 ) on Sunday April 21, 2013 @06:21PM (#43512183) Homepage Journal

      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)

        by Weezul ( 52464 ) on Sunday April 21, 2013 @06:35PM (#43512233)

        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)

          by Bearhouse ( 1034238 ) on Monday April 22, 2013 @05:26AM (#43514039)

          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...

      • by Taco Cowboy ( 5327 )

        Is Japan going the way of Iran, blocking the flow of information, for the sake of the ruling elites ?

      • Re:Sure, go ahead. (Score:5, Informative)

        by bcrowell ( 177657 ) on Sunday April 21, 2013 @07:36PM (#43512477) Homepage

        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)

          by houstonbofh ( 602064 ) on Sunday April 21, 2013 @08:49PM (#43512711)

          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)

          by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Sunday April 21, 2013 @10:29PM (#43513001) Journal

          (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?"

      • Re:Sure, go ahead. (Score:5, Informative)

        by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Sunday April 21, 2013 @07:40PM (#43512497)

        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.

      • 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.

      • 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.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by gmanterry ( 1141623 )

      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:4, Insightful)

      by lightknight ( 213164 ) on Monday April 22, 2013 @05:54AM (#43514121) Homepage

      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.

  • by houstonbofh ( 602064 ) on Sunday April 21, 2013 @06:07PM (#43512105)
    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...
    • by naff89 ( 716141 ) on Sunday April 21, 2013 @06:56PM (#43512315)
      Maybe that's why single-edged swords are more popular in Japan.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      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.

      • by fredprado ( 2569351 ) on Sunday April 21, 2013 @08:00PM (#43512563)
        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.
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • 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

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          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

          • That works in any system where physical violence can't be used to impose one's will over another. Hacking is just an inconvenience in comparison and can't really take the freedom of anybody in the Internet at long term. Again "responsibility" has nothing to do with freedom. It is a means of arbitrarily limiting freedom in systems where it is impossible to achieve it completely accordingly to someone's sense of right and wrong, which is far from being an absolute concept.
      • Sure you can! Go into politics!

  • Japan (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tmosley ( 996283 ) on Sunday April 21, 2013 @06:11PM (#43512129)
    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.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by rskbrkr ( 824653 )
      ummm, Japan was always a police state...
      • Re:Japan (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 21, 2013 @06:26PM (#43512201)

        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)

          by flayzernax ( 1060680 ) on Sunday April 21, 2013 @06:52PM (#43512301)

          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)

            by Alex Belits ( 437 ) * on Sunday April 21, 2013 @07:39PM (#43512491) Homepage

            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, Interesting)

          by Mashiki ( 184564 ) <mashiki@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Sunday April 21, 2013 @07:42PM (#43512511) Homepage

          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.

        • Does Japan still have an emperor?

        • 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%. "

      • 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.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Uberbah ( 647458 )

        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.....

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Mr. Slippery ( 47854 )

          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.

    • by goldcd ( 587052 )
      "Remember that in a police state, policies are implemented to make things easier on police"
      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.
      • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

        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.

        No. That's you missing/ignoring the point.

    • 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

  • idiotic (Score:5, Informative)

    by slashmydots ( 2189826 ) on Sunday April 21, 2013 @07:03PM (#43512335)
    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.
    • Re:idiotic (Score:5, Informative)

      by cultiv8 ( 1660093 ) on Sunday April 21, 2013 @08:46PM (#43512703) Homepage
      You can block known exit nodes.
      • The exit nodes aren't located in countries that block requests.
        • Re:idiotic (Score:5, Interesting)

          by utkonos ( 2104836 ) on Monday April 22, 2013 @01:42AM (#43513535)

          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].

  • by CodeBuster ( 516420 ) on Sunday April 21, 2013 @07:09PM (#43512371)
    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.
    • by Pikoro ( 844299 )

      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%.

      • by CodeBuster ( 516420 ) on Sunday April 21, 2013 @11:37PM (#43513219)
        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.
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Koutarou ( 38114 )

        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.

    • Why don't they just ask China for help? http://www.technologyreview.com/view/427413/how-china-blocks-the-tor-anonymity-network/ [technologyreview.com]
      • 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.
  • by bcrowell ( 177657 ) on Sunday April 21, 2013 @07:10PM (#43512375) Homepage

    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.

    • by Impy the Impiuos Imp ( 442658 ) on Sunday April 21, 2013 @07:54PM (#43512545) Journal

      > 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.

    • 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!

    • by starcraftsicko ( 647070 ) on Sunday April 21, 2013 @10:58PM (#43513111)

      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

  • Looking forward to when there is a better way to undo accidental mods . . .
  • In Japan, don't they have separation of powers?

  • ... is that this is supporting a group of people that are unable to distinguish between real crimes and abuses by governments.

  • by MacTO ( 1161105 ) on Sunday April 21, 2013 @08:30PM (#43512635)

    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.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22, 2013 @12:21AM (#43513353)

      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!

    • 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.

  • I bet that devilish hacker ate rice sometimes and probably used toilet paper on a regular basis, so why not push to ban those things, too? Surely no one uses those things, or Tor, for legitimate reasons. We have got to stop allowing comfort for the wicked.

    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?
  • by davydagger ( 2566757 ) on Sunday April 21, 2013 @10:35PM (#43513027)
    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 &#226;&#8364;" 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.
    • by ruir ( 2709173 )
      How long till we find a zombie network of tor exit nodes?
      • 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.
  • 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?

  • 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]

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