Recent improvements to Tor

Posted Mar 29, 2018 10:34 UTC (Thu) by merge (subscriber, #65339)
In reply to: Recent improvements to Tor by rsidd
Parent article: Recent improvements to Tor

I think so too. We all know there's plenty of good reasons to run an onion-service for your web service; That's why The NYTimes, facebook, duckduckgo, debian, many I don't know of, and probably more over time do it. It can be abused to offer illegal content and hide your location and I don't have a solution at all, but to me it feels like the Tor Project could at least try to do something about it.

The technical posssibility can't go away by design, but I think it's sad that people get the impression the Tor Project hides behind that fact and doesn't try to get creative around it.

Also, of course it's true that (maybe even stronger) anonymity can be achieved without using Tor, but some money instead. While that fact is important to see, it shouldn't always be a first reaction to doubts or critics. It's hard in this case, but taking doubts seriously is important and probably could be improved by the Tor Project.

I really think that this project will only get more important in the future, and maybe should get involved and try to fix any such non-technical issues as good as we can...

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Recent improvements to Tor

Posted Mar 29, 2018 14:35 UTC (Thu) by Tara_Li (guest, #26706) [Link] (1 responses)

You're looking for the "Golden Key" that law enforcement claims to want. As long as Tor has *any* way to distinguish between "good" and "bad" content, someone is going to try to define what that "good" and "bad" content is, and enforce filtering it. That's what it comes down to. If they build in a "Golden Key" that supposedly only law enforcement can use, well - they have to have access to that golden key to build it in, in the first place. So that's *one* non-law enforcement operation with access to it. And how do you magically keep that number from growing? It's an open-source project in the first place - so the Golden Key is going to be buried in the source for everyone to see!

The tech industry has got to figure out how to get this message out better - but aiming the message at law enforcement is useless, it needs to be aimed at the public. Law enforcement (and the politicians behind them) are going to keep putting their fingers in their ears, singing "la-la-la I can't hear you." and insisting that if the tech industry just "nerds harder", it could turn rose bushes into unicorns.

Recent improvements to Tor

Posted Mar 29, 2018 15:37 UTC (Thu) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link]

The classic example: https://badcyber.com/the-great-greek-wiretapping-affair. The possibility of wiretrapping was implemented for the good guys, but was used by bad guys. It might or might not be acceptable.

Recent improvements to Tor

Posted Mar 29, 2018 16:19 UTC (Thu) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (1 responses)

> It can be abused to offer illegal content and hide your location and I don't have a solution at all, but to me it feels like the Tor Project could at least try to do something about it.

"Abused"? Facilitating the spread of illegal content (i.e. information one State or another is trying to suppress) is a core goal of the project. Its original purpose, back when the concept was first developed by the US Naval Research Laboratory, was to enable secure, untraceable communication between intelligence operatives (spies), which is not exactly legal and above-board from the perspective of the target country. Hiding one's location is critical to either role. Why would the Tor Project attempt to "do something about" the very reason for the project's existence? Anything which could be done to restrict the spread of CP via Tor could just as easily be turned to prevent the spread of "subversive" political messages etc., rendering Tor completely useless.

People have the right to communicate in private, including anonymity if they so desire. If you want to prevent child *abuse* or other forms of harm—a laudable goal, to be sure—you'll have to do something about it in the real world, not by attacking the means of communication.

Recent improvements to Tor

Posted Mar 30, 2018 6:23 UTC (Fri) by merge (subscriber, #65339) [Link]

I know and actually support the Tor network as it is personally, I use it every day and encourage everybody to do so too.

I admit i deliberately phrased that somewhat provokingly. Tor won't, shouldn't and can't become insecure in any way deliberately. Tor should be as safe to use as can be. Also it's of course definitely not Tor's business how cruel or ill some people are.

After talking with others who have a more distant view to Tor, I have the impression that there's *something* missing for people to accept or "trust" i.e. to use TorBrowser. I don't know what that is. Communicate how to report illegal content in case you encounter some? That applies to firefox as well. Diversity in the Tor Project's team itself would maybe help. Diversity in their funding too. I know that they are working on it. We should get involved!

For me personally, the project doesn't need to do anything more than what they do now. I only have the impression that some creativity to gain acceptance from everybody would be needed. For me, it's important to connect over Tor. It would equally be so for others. And they shouldn't reject the TorBrowser because they don't trust it or the organisation... but people do.

Recent improvements to Tor

Posted Apr 5, 2018 23:55 UTC (Thu) by ras (subscriber, #33059) [Link]

> It can be abused to offer illegal content and hide your location and I don't have a solution at all, but to me it feels like the Tor Project could at least try to do something about it.

I read this as "I can't see a solution and there probably isn't a solution, but somebody should be spending their time tying to find one anyway so I can feel better about using Tor".