How Tor Helps Both Dissidents and the Police 122
Al writes "Technology Review has a in-depth article about the anonymous networking software Tor and how it is helping dissidents spread information in oppressive regimes such as Syria, Zimbabwe and Mauritania, and opening up the unfiltered web for users in many more countries. In China, for instance, the computers found in some web cafes are configured to use Tor automatically. Interestingly, some police agencies even use the software to hide their activity from suspects. As filtering becomes ever more common in democratic countries such as the US, perhaps Tor (and similar tools such as I2P), will become even more valuable."
As with most technology (Score:5, Insightful)
It cuts both ways.
You can use a knife for cooking, mugging or for police action.
But the more problematic criminals are also the ones that are most likely to be aware of this and be careful with what and who they trust.
And the most careful persons in organized crime have sometimes only been relying on trusted messengers that have been doing all their communication. That to avoid wiretaps.
Re:As with most technology (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not a fan of "sticking it to the man" in general, but when I hear about Tor and similar programs being used for "the wrong purposes" (whether that be organized crime, terrorism, etc), I feel better knowing that the software exists.
The day when no secure methods exist for organized crime to communicate with each other is likely the day when one is guilty until proven innocent. The broad curtailing of freedoms should give us pause every time it comes up; that doesn't seem to necessarily be the case anymore.
Re:As with most technology (Score:5, Informative)
Basic things to remember:
#1 - You should never talk to the cops [youtube.com]. Seriously. This is not about your being a "bad citizen" or something else. It is because what you say to the cops can be used AGAINST you, but not FOR you. It is because while the cops have one job, the prosecutors' job is to get convictions, and the prosecutor is perfectly allowed to take some little snippet out of context, ask the cop "did he say that", and you have no recourse.
#2 - Even the federal government can't tell you how many possible "federal crimes" exist on the books any more. And that's just at the federal level. "Ignorance of the law is no excuse" is one tenet of our justice system which might as well read instead, "fuck the people", because there's no way in hell you could EVER know what the entire body of law (and accompanying precedents, "or in violation of some bullshit treaty the US signed that you didn't get to vote on" clauses, "or in violation of some 'regulation' that Congress didn't vote on but was instead put forth by some unelected government bureaucrats" clauses, etc) says even if you eat, breathed, slept, and shit the stuff for your entire lifetime.
This doesn't mean you should go out of your way to ignore the law. And much of the law is pretty basic (don't park when there's a NO PARKING sign, don't be a dick while driving, etc). Still, you can NEVER be completely sure you're not breaking some law.
Re:As with most technology (Score:5, Insightful)
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What? No, it's trivially easy to rule innocent men.
Lock them up, and remove them from the population.
Problem solved.
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Fake evidence.
Make an activity which those men engage in illegal and they will not be innocent.
Or just go the traditional "Do it or we'll stomp you!" route.
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Re:As with most technology (Score:5, Funny)
You should never talk to the cops ... "fuck the people" ... violation of some bullshit treaty the US signed ... shit the stuff ... ignore the law ... be a dick while driving
It's a surprise that you posted that with an account, rather than AC. Now that you've been flagged as a deranged government-hating terrorist, there's plenty of evidence against you now.
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By the way, WTF does "shit the stuff" mean?
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Re:As with most technology (Score:4, Funny)
don't be a dick while driving
Unfortunately this isn't law.
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Usually it is. Its often called "aggressive driving" - laws about it are rarely enforced because its a lot easier to write tickets for speeders that trigger a radar gun to beep above a certain threshold than it is to actively monitor driver behaviour.
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Also Known As/Peripherally Related To:
- Driving too fast for conditions (supposed to override "speed limits" with a "sanity check" - for example, if the cop sees you doing 75 MPH but it's icy/snowy/rain-slick roads, he can charge you with this, but it's entirely subjective)
- "Reckless Endangerment"
- "Reckless Driving" (as opposed to Wreckless Driving, which we much prefer).
- Failure to Yield Right-Of-Way
- Following Too Close
what do you mean? (Score:2)
do you mean if you witness a crime you shouldn't report it?
please clarify your position, because "stop snitching" only guarantees your community is going to become a criminally infested hell, complete with brutal and corrupt police
Re:what do you mean? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you do choose to report it, be sure to report it in an anonymous manner. The reporter will be the first suspect, and the easiest mark for a conviction.
you honestly believe that? (Score:2)
did your parents lock you in basement, and occasionally throw tablescraps down the stairs?
what dystopian asocial reality do you think this advice serves?
let's put it this way: say you are 100% correct in your assessment. then we agree that this reality is wrong, and needs to be corrected. then the question is, how do we correct it? and the answer is, citizens begin to hold the police accountable for their actions, so a regular and normal human sense of respnsibility and accountability can be upheld again
in
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It seems your reality doesn't co-exist with the parents', or mine. "Posturing upper middle class suburban poser"? Are there such people like that left in Amerika? I haven't seen many middle-class for a while.
You might be surprised to find that feelings of oppression by law enforcement are common in people that aren't rich enough to drive a Lexus, or related to the local polital families. I've personally been on the receiving end of a police raid without a warrant, and held almost a week without charges bein
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Then, I got a new car. Have not been pulled over since.
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...because "stop snitching" only guarantees your community is going to become a criminally infested hell, complete with brutal and corrupt police
Unless, of course, that brutal and corrupt police force employs equally corrupt "snitches" who fabricate evidence to be used against innocent men.
Stopping this behaviour is the true objective of most of those who say "stop snitching". :)
what a moron (Score:1)
let us imagine for a moment you live in a world where the police are completely reponsible and accountable. how are they supposed to successfully keep YOUR community free of crime with a citizen so mindlessly hostile to their basic function?
your entire mentality ensures your community is a crime infested hellhole. enjoy it. you created it. no, not the police, the police serve you, they are your servants. you use them to keep your community crime free. if you instead you imagine them to be mindless jail-stuf
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let us imagine for a moment you live in a world where the police are completely reponsible and accountable. how are they supposed to successfully keep YOUR community free of crime with a citizen so mindlessly hostile to their basic function?
Then you live in a magical hippie fairyland and don't need to worry about crime in the fist place.
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Police aren't supposed to keep a community crime-free. That's not even in their job description. Their job is to clean up the mess afterward...
This is spot on. SCOTUS recognises that a police force has a limited amount of resources at its disposal. They have ruled that the police forces of this nation are under *no* obligation to either protect citizens from or prevent crime.
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NOTE: It is a crime in some cases NOT to report things to the police.
IE. If you find a dead body and you don't report it and it is later found they start with good evidence to convict you. This also applies to lesser crimes.
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I watched the video, and it provides a compelling argument assuming that you're interested in only one thing: not going to jail. And while that is a pretty big thing that we all care about, we often usually care about other things as well.
For instance, if I'm not a serial killer but the police think I am, I would certainly want to talk to the police even if doing so increased my risk of going to jail by a small percent chance because I have a larger interest in helping the police find the guilty party. An
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Honestly, you just need to take an intro to policing course from a friendly sociology department to get that the likelihood is all too high.
(Yeah, yeah, I'm not providing any stats, either, but I don't think I could provide anything that'd convince you anyway, so I'm merely pointing to experts whom you might accept and inviting you to do your own research rather than believing some random nick on the internets.)
Re:As with most technology (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe "Ignorance of the law is no excuse" to be a just tenet but it must also have before it that "Absence of the law may be in some cases."
In other words the government must put forward the laws of the land for free and make them available for the public otherwise the public is not being ignorant but instead the law is being absent.
If I make a law and never tell the people whom will be governed by it then it is as just to enforce that law as if the law were never made.
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And if ascertaining what the law says requires a full-time research staff just to answer SIMPLE questions?
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This is why we need to pass a law requiring all citizens to keep a lawyer on retainer at all times. It's the only way to make certain that our rights are respected.
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Re:knowledge of the law (Score:5, Informative)
This is where jury nullification comes in. But they don't like that much either!
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"Ignorance of the law is no excuse" is one tenet of our justice system which might as well read instead, "fuck the people"
Now that's quotable! The Law of Fuck the People has corollaries like:
We can watch anything you do just in case it's bad.
We can abduct you in the middle of the night without charge and hold for you as long as we feel like.
We can't torture you legally here so we'll take you in secrecy to a jurisdiction where we can get away with it.
No President will ever stand up for the Constitution and prosecute predecessors who allowed these things to happen.
We (the Government) will never prosecute ourselves.
We are
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If you imagine human society as performing a function that function is blanket growth and development. A good citizen is happy and/or quiet. A bad citizen is unhappy and/or not quiet.
By "or not quiet" I mean to say that in order for society to measure its own success we apply statistical measures to features of our society to look for noise. Noise, in this case, meaning people whose metrics do not conform to the metrics of a hap
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But the more problematic criminals are also the ones that are most likely to be aware of this and be careful with what and who they trust.
I'd rather have problematic criminals than problematic government/corporate censorship, and anyway the two are never mutually exclusive. Government filtering the internet doesn't seem to be getting rid of all child porn. What's the point then of censorship if the stuff they mean to censor is still out there?
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Unless they start censoring the 24-hour shower-cam on Big Brother, the great unwashed couldn't give a hoot.
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How do you know it's even out there at all?
If it's not out there, then why do I occasionally hear of people getting arrested for it?
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Dissidents? (Score:1, Flamebait)
Or Patriots? I thought only terrorists needed to hide their conversations?
Where is it common in the US?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok, where and when in the US did filtering become 'common'??
I'm hearing about it becoming common in other western countries...and am afraid it will happen here, but, I'm not aware of it being common here?
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Well, it says "more" common, thus allowing for the possibilty of it being common, currently. But for one, there's the IWF's blacklist, ISPs shaping and throttling traffic is filtering by a slightly broader definition, schools block whatever content they feel like, etc etc.
Agree or disagree with any of the preceeding examples, they're all examples of filtering.
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And rightly so, for the most part. After all the people doing the filtering are the people paying for it.
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"As filtering becomes ever more common in democratic countries such as the US, perhaps Tor (and similar tools such as I2P), will become even more valuable.""
Ok, where and when in the US did filtering become 'common'??
I'm hearing about it becoming common in other western countries...and am afraid it will happen here, but, I'm not aware of it being common here?
Well, nobody claimed that it actually was common in the US, only that it was becoming ever more common. And it is.
Most schools filter web access. Many libraries do as well. Some employers filter web access. Some ISPs are filtering/interfering with BitTorrent.
And it seems like every other week there's a story on here about how somebody wants to pass a new law to protect the children by filtering something.
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Well, that's different.
When I read a headline like above, I'm thinking national filtering and control by the government, not by generally 'private' entities. Businesses internal and publically offered hotspots are free to serve or deny as they please, it is their network. Schools, while being generally a public funded entity, is a special case due to it housing children, and being responsible for what they view
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Most schools filter web access.
I have some bad news for you--kids in school give up a lot of their constitutional rights. This has been upheld in the supreme court--go ahead and try to sue because the teacher disciplined you for cursing, see how quickly that gets shut down.
Additionally, Im not exactly sure if youre trying to present a chilling situation in which censorship was applied--dont you think that schools are one of the few places that that kind of censorship makes sense? Kids are there to learn, not browse the damn internet.
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Most schools filter web access.
I have some bad news for you--kids in school give up a lot of their constitutional rights. This has been upheld in the supreme court--go ahead and try to sue because the teacher disciplined you for cursing, see how quickly that gets shut down.
Additionally, Im not exactly sure if youre trying to present a chilling situation in which censorship was applied--dont you think that schools are one of the few places that that kind of censorship makes sense? Kids are there to learn, not browse the damn internet.
Nope. Actually I'm not terribly upset about the lack of constitutional rights in school, nor the filtering.
They're kids. Before you turn 18 you don't have a whole lot of rights, regardless of whether you're in class or not. I've been surprised by some of the ridiculous news stories... Kids getting in trouble for putting things on their MyFaceSpaceBook... But I don't really expect them to have a whole lot of rights until they turn 18.
And I doubt if many kids rely on their school's Internet to get their
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That is spying. You'll clearly see in the post you responded to and TFS the term "filtering", which requires that you also block access to particular content.
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I don't think it's talking about the government filtering it, yet, but censorship, whether it's government or corporate, is still bullshit.
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Depends on the context.
It isn't bullshit to block, as an example, myspace and other http traffic for say a POS computer because that computer is dedicated for a single use and should never be used for those sites.
It isn't bullshit to block pornographic sites in a public school system.
However it quickly becomes bullshit when the system uses a third party's blanket block list without checking at all on the third-parties ability to pick out such sites. Really what should be done in public school systems is t
its typical pantywaist hysteria (Score:1)
iran, egypt, cuba, china: everything you do is spied upon. if you say something against the party or the religion, you are brutally punished
western democracies: right wing politicians put forth timid legislation weakly attempting to curtail something everyone agrees is truly evil, like child pornography. opponents vociferously shout the retarded legislation down
these are somehow equivalent scenarios in some people's minds. as if the mere existence of idiot social conservatives in western countries is equiva
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"timidly put forth" uhm...I don't think that first word means what you think it means both sides foam at the mouth.
i'm just sick (Score:3, Insightful)
of idiots hyperfocused on western domestic "crimes" while the taliban takes over nuclear pakistan
but of course, this is no reason to focus your criticisms outside the west, right? because what goes on in pakistan is after all totally the west's fault
(smacks forehead)
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You do realize that the fact that the US tortures is the PRIMARY recruiting tool for Al Quada, and other anti-US terrorist organizations?
Showing that the US does not condone torture would put a tremendous amount of hurt on their recruiting methods.
Even if every case of US torture caused 1 plot to be uncoverd and stopped, which is not proven to be even close to the case; there is still the fact that those cases lead to hundreds upon hundreds of new recruits ready to help with more plots.
Stop 1 start 2 or mor
if the usa disappeared tomorrow (Score:2)
a giant lake
what would al qaeda and its sympathizers do? celebrate and become pastoral sheep farmers?
no, they would go right on with their murderous agenda, because it is not centered on the usa. it is an agenda wholly of their own creation based on their own retarded interpretation of otherwise valuable and sacred texts, used to justify a fascist fanaticism not seen since nazi germany. is nazi germany chamberlain's fault? chamberlain certainly fucked up in his dealings with hitler, big time. and his share
Even if you're worse, I can still be bad (Score:2)
admit some places have it a hell of whole lot worse off than western countries
So as long as we're better than the worst, we should never complain. So the person with the worst behavior in the world has set the bar for all of humanity--no one can work to change any behavior as long as it's not the absolute worst.
Looks like we have to work in serial, dealing with the one worst individual at a time, getting him to not be worst anymore then going to the next worst, until we get to everyone. What a GREAT PLAN!
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"As filtering becomes ever more common in democratic countries such as the US, perhaps Tor (and similar tools such as I2P), will become even more valuable.""
Ok, where and when in the US did filtering become 'common'??
A better question is, when did the U.S. become a democratic country?
Fine Line (Score:2)
Re:Fine Line (Score:5, Interesting)
As long as the police arrest more people for having Cannabis than they do all violent crimes combined [stopthedrugwar.org], they ARE the criminals. The police victimize more people than they protect. It's that simple.
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Did you consider that they might be a little too monged to go out beating up grannies?
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Tor and I2P are slow, but.. (Score:1)
Great article but (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd like to see a discussion of the legal ramifications of letting your system be used as a Tor relay. Suppose I volunteer some of my home network capacity to Tor.
Putting aside the fact that it's probably a violation of my broadband provider's agreement to share my connection in this way, what if someone uses Tor for kiddie porn and happens to make the final connection to the police honeypot (so to speak) from my IP address?
If anyone can point to a good discussion of this, it would be great. I'd like to let my system be a relay for Tor, but the risk seems large.
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As far as I can tell, much like any legal issue, most of what you'll find as far as legal discussion is mainly a lot of "Well, such-and-such may or may not apply here. Please consult your lawyer."
As if we all just have consitutional (if you're in the US) lawyers on retainer. I wish people would just give s
Re:Great article but (Score:5, Informative)
As I understand it, you are pretty safe. It's not *you* accessing the content.
The Tor guys recommend you have a web server on the machine which says "This is a Tor relay", presumably so that anyone who finds your machine during an investigation will know what is going on.
Two experiences of running a tor exit relay. One good, one less good:-
http://blog.torproject.org/blog/five-years-exit-node-operator [torproject.org]
http://calumog.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/why-you-need-balls-of-steel-to-operate-a-tor-exit-node/#comment-2 [wordpress.com]
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You're probably fine just for running the node. But you better be damn sure everything else in your life is squeaky clean for when the cops come knocking.
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Newsflash (Score:4, Funny)
Policemen eat food, and so do criminals! In a shocking discovery today we learned that a completely ambivalent object such as food could be used for good and for evil. Some fringe elements speculate that food in fact has no innate bias towards good or evil, and in fact does not exert any influence over the person that uses it apart from keeping them alive. But we all know that since it's rumored that TERRORISTS (tm) have been known to occasionally eat, food is obviously evil and should be banned. The fact that law enforcement officers have been spotted eating once in a while (especially in the vicinity of doughnut shops) should not allow us to forget about this lurking evil we call food. In fact, the world would be a better place if it were banned entirely.
Warning! If you are sarcasm impaired, the above paragraph may cause you to become angry. Breathe slowly and try to relax. If you cannot relax after a few minutes, you might need professional help. Sarcasm may be the lowest form of wit, but it is wit nonetheless.
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Substitute Effect (Score:2)
Is TOR really make web surfing anonymous? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Exit nodes can easily sniff everything you transmit across the unencrypted web. That's why you don't use it for anything requiring secrets.
If you're worried about it, use the darknet:
http://eqt5g4fuenphqinx.onion/
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Re:Is TOR really make web surfing anonymous? (Score:4, Informative)
Yup. It's been done (google "Dan Egerstad") and you can be pretty sure it's being done.
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Correct. The exit nodes doing this are opening themselves up to legal liability. But that means nothing in practice.
They can sniff passwords and other private information from people who don't really understand how Tor works.
Law enforcement agencies can monitor for fools who are doing illegal communications and leak identifying clues in their messages.
Tor is great, but it's not magic. You are still using a proxy. Even though the intermediaries cannot see, the final server has to.
Website providers that care
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Yes, this is a weakness. Hopefully multiple alphabet soup agencies from different countries will get this idea and end up competing with each other. An arms race of diminishing returns to get a bigger chunk of the Tor network just means we'll have plenty of free Tor bandwidth on the gov't dime.
Protip: You can edit the Tor config or source code to pick geographically diverse nodes yourself.
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Yes, it can be. And with far fewer nodes than you think [colorado.edu].
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That's a good point about TOR-based evidence not being used to prosecute someone for thoughtcrime for fear of revealing sources and methods, but once "they" know who you are, they can find some non-TOR acquired basis for suspicion and use that to get a warrant for conventional lawful intercept surveillance. So really, if you're doing anything "they're" interested,
Oops (Score:2)
how it is helping dissidents spread information in oppressive regimes such as Syria, Zimbabwe, Mauritania,
And California.
Democratic... (Score:3, Insightful)
As filtering becomes ever more common in democratic countries such as the US [...]
I'm wondering for a long time, if you really still can call the US and many other (eg European) states "democratic".
I mean, has the choice between two variants of the same shit still the right to call itself this?
I'm very lucky, that things like Tor, and research around it, still exist. It might soon be our only chance of freeing ourselves from a regime of total control.
Privacy is the next killer app (Score:4, Insightful)
Also a good tool for malware research (Score:2)
When you're a small company, you have limited resources. You can't easily build a vast network to come from different IPs every other second so a "smart" infector doesn't give you another sample to play with when you already came a moment ago.
TOR solves this by offering you a new IP every couple seconds. As a neat side effect, it means that anyone coming through that same TOR exit node won't be infected because the infector thinks its deed has already been done.
When you're talking with people, it's sometime
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There's your problem. You can't by definition be censorship resistant and censor at the same time. So unfortunately or not, censorship is an all-or-nothing proposition.
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