Computers - Software Hardware : Tor: Arms Race Between Anti-Censorship and Governments

Gorilla · Dec 30, 2011

The following is an outline/summary provided by BoingBoing:

Last night's Chaos Computer Congress (28C3) presentation from Jacob Applebaum and Roger Dingledine on the state of the arms race between the Tor anti-censorship/surveillance technology and the world's repressive governments was by turns depressing and inspiring. Dingledine and Applebaum have unique insights into the workings of the technocrats in Iranian, Chinese, Tunisian, Syrian and other repressive states, and the relationship between censorship and other human rights abuses (for example, when other privacy technologies failed, governments sometimes discovered who was discussing revolution and used that as the basis for torture and murder).

Two thirds of the way through the talk, they broaden the context to talk about the role of American companies in the war waged against privacy and free speech -- SmartFilter (now an Intel subsidiary, and a company that has a long history of censoring Boing Boing) is providing support for Iran's censorship efforts, for example. They talked about how Blue Coat and Cisco produce tools that aren't just used to censor, but to spy (all censorware also acts as surveillance technology) and how the spying directly leads to murder and rape and torture.

Then, they talked about the relationship between corporate networks and human rights abuses. Iran, China, and Syria, they say, lack the resources to run their own censorship and surveillance R&D projects, and on their own, they don't present enough of a market to prompt Cisco to spend millions to develop such a thing. But when a big company like Boeing decides to pay Cisco millions and millions of dollars to develop censorware to help it spy on its employees, the world's repressive governments get their R&D subsidized, and Cisco gets a product it can sell to them.

They concluded by talking about how Western governments' insistence on "lawful interception" back-doors in network equipment means that all the off-the-shelf network gear is readymade for spying, so, again, the Syrian secret police and the Iranian telcoms spies don't need to order custom technology that lets them spy on their people, because an American law, CALEA, made it mandatory that this technology be included in all the gear sold in the USA.

Video Presentation:
Full Article Via BoingBoing: http://boingboing.net/2011/12/29/state-of-the-arms-race-between.html
Project Website: https://www.torproject.org/
Wikipedia Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)

JohnWillsq · Mar 28, 2012

what that?

Shikamaru · Mar 28, 2012

I believe Tor does onion routing.

It is very interesting. You should install it sometime and give it a whirl.

I haven't played with it in some time. If the tools can be made portable, I'm there .
I should root and hog for some portable Tor tools now that I mention it ....

Shikamaru · Mar 28, 2012

I love the 'nets .

Portable Tor
http://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=1088

Gorilla · Jun 25, 2012

The Amnesic Incognito Live System (Tails) Live CD:https://tails.boum.org/

This one is Debian-based. I tried it out yesterday and it worked pretty well. This is the official project life cd for all practical purposes.

Liberte Linux Live CD: http://dee.su/liberte

Gentoo-based. I haven't tried this one out yet but there seem to be positive reviews about how light-weight it is.

These are complete ready to use systems that can be booted up without having to manage the browser bundles or any similar set ups.