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."
Re:Sure, go ahead. (Score:1, Interesting)
If only it was enough to stop the APK troll.
I guess it's an indicator of how low Slashdot has sunk. After months of the same overlong post, Slashcode hasn't been fixed to make "Read the rest of this comment..." work properly.
Time to pack up and sell the site to SEOs, I think. Or has that happened already?
Re:Japan (Score:2, Interesting)
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 down for a manhunt. WHAT HAS CHANGED!?
Re:Demon Killer Hacker (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]
Yeah - TSA (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
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.
Re:Sure, go ahead. (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.
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.
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].
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...
Re:Sure, go ahead. (Score:4, Interesting)
And if you kept people in their homes, street crime would plummet.