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Privacy Censorship Communications Network The Internet News

The New York Times Launches Tor Onion Service To Overcome Censorship, Ensure Privacy (betanews.com) 69

Posted by BeauHD from the you-gotta-do-what-you-gotta-do dept.
Mark Wilson quotes a report from BetaNews: The New York Times has announced that it is launching a Tor Onion Service version of its website. The new, more secure way to access the site will open it up to people around the world whose internet connections are blocked or monitored. It also caters to a growing breed of people who are concerned about what their web browsing habit might reveal and who have turned to Tor to protect their privacy. The new service is described as "experimental and under development," and some features of the website -- such as the ability to comment -- do not work. The NYT warns that fine-tuning of performance and features may mean there are periods of downtime, but the long-term aim is to completely replicate the main website as an Onion Service.
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The New York Times Launches Tor Onion Service To Overcome Censorship, Ensure Privacy More

The New York Times Launches Tor Onion Service To Overcome Censorship, Ensure Privacy

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  • Inception? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The Onion Router Onion Service?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Shades of Being John Malkovich.

    • The New York Times launches Tor Onion service to overcome censorship, ensure privacy.

      The Onion launches New York Tor Pretzel service to overcome hunger, snack envy.

  • Why do they hate America and Freedom so much?

    • you say those two words in one line as if you actually mean it ?
      do you want me to sum some up ? meddling in ... meddling in ... assassination, meddling .... "the united lobbies of the leaders of the free world" (self-proclaimed) ... meddling in ... and maybe some, oowh, euhm, meddling in ... .creating al qaeda in afghanistan in the name of what about zee russians ... creating IS in iraq while trying to neutralize the zone ... now competing with the russians to bomb them the flattest first in Syria ... and
  • for the NY Times. this looks like an Onion headline.

  • TheOnion (Score:5, Funny)

    by igny ( 716218 ) on Friday October 27, 2017 @08:21PM (#55448067) Homepage Journal
    I understand NY Times' desire to compete with TheOnion for delivery of satirical news, but enough is enough, TheOnion must sue NY Times for trademark violation here.

  • Bitcoin paywall, presumably?

  • Pay wall? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bsDaemon ( 87307 ) on Friday October 27, 2017 @08:30PM (#55448093)

    Do they still paywall the stories? Do they allow you to log in? (Thus helping to deanonymize you on other onion sites)?

    If they're giving easy text versions of stories, free from paywall, without the annoyance of comments (meta comment bashing comment...) then it may be worthwhile. Otherwise, like FB over Tor they are probably just going to do more harm than good

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by CaptainDork ( 3678879 )

      I never meta comment I didn't like.

    • I am curious: what is the issue with FB over Tor? (I don't have a Facebook account so I can't try it.)

      • You have to log in, it uses javascript, etc. so they would be able to a) fingerprint you and b) tie you to a (presumably) real identity. It seems to defeat the whole purpose and creates an OPSEC breach for anyone dumb enough to do it

        • It seems to defeat the whole purpose

          There are two purposes for Tor. One is to prevent third parties from tracing you by monitoring your traffic. That is unchanged.

          But another purpose is to prevent the SECOND party (FB, or NYT in this case) from tracing you, which having to log in completely defeats.

          I don't know, so I'm asking. Is there a javascript function that could appear on a web page served via Tor from NYT or FB that would cause the browser to reach out to another website directly (not via Tor) and disclose the user's actual source IP

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            There are two purposes for Tor. One is to prevent third parties from tracing you by monitoring your traffic. That is unchanged.

            But another purpose is to prevent the SECOND party (FB, or NYT in this case) from tracing you, which having to log in completely defeats.

            I don't know, so I'm asking. Is there a javascript function that could appear on a web page served via Tor from NYT or FB that would cause the browser to reach out to another website directly (not via Tor) and disclose the user's actual source IP

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Kjella ( 173770 )

            I don't know, so I'm asking. Is there a javascript function that could appear on a web page served via Tor from NYT or FB that would cause the browser to reach out to another website directly (not via Tor) and disclose the user's actual source IP address? Something like the one pixel images used to track users reading an email. Does the system of the Tor user force all IP traffic through Tor no matter what destination, or can stuff slip out the side, so to speak?

            No, in theory Javascript can't do anything really nasty as all traffic is routed through TOR, whether it's onion sites or via exit nodes to the normal web. They can fingerprint your browser much better to recognize return visits and possibly track you across sites, which may be a risk if you're doing identifying activities some of the time. But you have exploits [arstechnica.com] such as these, they all involve breaking the security model but most of them involve Javascript. While in theory there can be bugs in any part of t

        • Anonyminity is only one function of Tor. It has a second function too: Censorship evasion. Plenty of people around the world really don't mind Facebook knowing who they are - they just want to hide from their government, to make sure they are not arrested for sedition or blasphemy, or access news and material their government has deemed too dangerous to permit the people to see. In that event, Tor does the job very well.

          • Plenty of people around the world really don't mind Facebook knowing who they are - they just want to hide from their government,

            Facebook, as a corporation, is a creation of the government, and the government has methods of getting information from them. In the US, that's a warrant. In other countries, that may be less strenuous on the government. It may be under the table, via hacking, for example.

            Facebook exists to make a profit off of the individual's information, and so may wind up selling it to that government, even indirectly. It is much safer for those who are scared of their government's knowledge of their access to a corpor

  • this will be fun to watch.

  • This is the same Tor whose team had such strong free speech principles they said they would change it to make it hard to access The Daily Stormer. The New York Times isn't censored on the regular internet, they're so pro-establishment. Nobody needs it as an Onion site.

    • This is the same Tor whose team had such strong free speech principles they said they would change it to make it hard to access The Daily Stormer.

      Pics or it didn't happen. The only comment I found was this:

      We are disgusted, angered, and appalled by everything these racists stand for and do. We feel this way any time the Tor network and software are used for vile purposes. But we can't build free and open source tools that protect journalists, human rights activists, and ordinary people around the world if

  • As much as I hate the NYT's propaganda, I would be very happy to see more news and information available to those who live under the criminal leadership in countries like China, Russia, and Iran. Old VPN technologies are easy to block or identify with deep packet inspection - it's not cheap to do so, but corrupt countries like China and the US have virtually unlimited resources for manipulating the internet. We need a new internet.

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