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Tor and the So-Called Dark Web

Tor and the So-Called Dark Web

by | Apr 24, 2019 |

The word Tor comes from the acronym T-O-R which stands for The Onion Router. What the Onion Router–or Tor–does is it routes your internet traffic through multiple Tor nodes on its way to your destination. So, on the regular internet, what we call the clear web, if you go to a website address the browser sends a request directly to the server that hosts the website, and that server returns the page directly to you. What you end up with is that your ISP and the recipient both know your IP address and can potentially figure out your identity. With the Tor browser, when you go to a web address, your request gets routed through other Tor servers so that the destination server does not know your IP address or physically where your request originated.

Tor also allows people to host websites directly on the Tor network, and these sites end in .onion rather than .com or .org or the other ones with which most people are familiar. When you access an onion site, you have the added benefit of end-to-end encryption. Tor uses public key encryption which means that each node has both a public key and private key. Anything encrypted with one’s public key can ONLY be decrypted using their private key. Conversely, anything encrypted using their private key can ONLY be decrypted using their public key. So, when you go to a .onion site, the browser receives the public keys of each node between you and the end server that you are accessing. The request is then encrypted one after the other using each node’s public key, and then the request is sent off. Each server receives the request and uses their private key to decrypt the package and send it to the next node in the chain. As the request goes through each node the layers of encryption come off, much like removing the layers of an onion. The end server then receives the final request and decrypts it. Using this layered encryption ensures that each node along the way knows nothing about what they are sending. They only have an encrypted blob, and they only know whom they are sending it to next. So, they just decrypt their portion and pass it on.

Tor is not perfect. The Onion Router isn’t perfect, but it does something that is not possible on the clear web. With the clear web, all of our web traffic is out in the open, both our IP address and also the websites that we are visiting. The government collects this data en masse. With Tor, this kind of mass surveillance is impossible. If the government invests enough time and energy, they might be able to figure out who you are as you browse in Tor, but it would have to be a targeted investigation, and if they are individually targeting you, you probably already have more significant problems than the government knowing if you visit a particular onion site.

People often call privacy-minded networks like Tor the “dark web” as if it is something scary. However, what is scarier to me is an open network where everything you do can be watched and examined. Privacy isn’t scary; it’s just part of life. When you have a private conversation with somebody, do you call it a scary, dark conversation? No, it’s just a conversation! If you pay a neighbor kid with cash (which is relatively untraceable) for shoveling your walk, is it a scary dark transaction? No! Of course not!

We have been programmed from decades on the clear web to think that anything private and untraceable on the internet must be bad. However, rather than ask what might be theoretically bad let’s focus on what is actually bad. There is something far more scary and bad than Tor, and it is the government. The government are the ones stealing thousands of dollars from you each year. The government are the ones who make the purchasing of valuable goods and services expensive and complicated. The government are the ones making demands every day on your life, and if you refuse those demands, they will smash into your home, and either kill you or else kidnap you at gunpoint and lock you in a cage.

Let’s get our priorities straight and let’s fix our perspective. Freedom isn’t what is scary. What is scary are those who violently take our freedom away. Privacy is essential to freedom, which means that privacy-minded networks like Tor are essential to our freedom online.

Originally posted at: https://technoagorist.com/2

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Google is tracking your life and the police want that data

by | Apr 24, 2019 |

Jennifer Lynch at the Electronic Frontier Foundation discusses the use by law enforcement of data stored in a Google database called Sensorvault.  She also references a good New York Time article which shows specific uses of the data by police.

The data is collected by Google Apps and stored indefinitely in Sensorvault.

“The data Google is turning over to law enforcement is so precise that one deputy police chief said it “shows the whole pattern of life.” It’s collected even when people aren’t making calls or using apps, which means it can be even more detailed than data generated by cell towers.’

This technique is problematic for several reasons. First, unlike other methods of investigation used by the police, the police don’t start with an actual suspect or even a target device—they work backward from a location and time to identify a suspect. This makes it a fishing expedition—the very kind of search that the Fourth Amendment was intended to prevent. Searches like these—where the only information the police have is that a crime has occurred—are much more likely to implicate innocent people who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Every device owner in the area during the time at issue becomes a suspect—for no other reason than that they own a device that shares location information with Google.

As the Times article notes, this technique implicates innocent people and has a real impact on people’s lives. Even if you are later able to clear your name, if you spend any time at all in police custody, this could cost you your job, your car, and your ability to get back on your feet after the arrest. One man profiled in the Times article spent nearly a week in police custody and was having trouble recovering, even months after the arrest. He was arrested at work and subsequently lost his job. Due to the arrest, his car was impounded for investigation and later repossessed. These are the kinds of far-reaching consequences that can result from overly broad searches, so courts should subject geo-location warrants to far more scrutiny.

Bernie Is Right: Felons Should Vote

by | Apr 24, 2019 |

What’s the argument against felons voting?  That they’d vote for someone who’d absolve them of their crimes?  Felons might get 1-2% of a vote, so good luck with that.

What if felons could actually influence the vote?  Let’s say 10%, 20%, maybe even 30% of the vote was comprised of felons.  Yeah, that would be substantial influence.  Think about the situation, though.  30% of your electorate is in prison??!!!  Maybe there is something wrong with your laws then.  In fact, maybe it would be critical to allow felons to vote in this situation so that the law could be reformed and you wouldn’t have 30% of your electorate behind bars.  A society that locks up more than 1-2% of its people has problems.

The real argument against felons voting is that they’d all vote for democrats.  That is, having nothing to do with their crimes, these people probably come from communities that want more government hand-outs.  Mind you, this is just “the argument”, not my opinion.  This is the same argument against immigration.  Immigrants come from cultures that prefer a strong government that gives more hand-outs.  This isn’t a libertarian outcome.

However, again, let’s think proportionally.  It’s neither felons nor immigrants causing these ideologies of government and society.  Maybe they’d push the needle over the threshold, but in order for these groups’ opinions to be relevant there’s a mass – a majority – of non-felon, non-immigrant, regular left liberal democrat Americans voting for big government.

Fighting over the margins is a waste of resources.  Educate your “base”, let democracy happen.  If half of America wants socialist healthcare, and is indoctrinated by the military industrial media complex, tough luck.  See, that’s the point, even anti-socialist “red America” is blinded by deep state propaganda on war.  The country’s political cancers are long past metastasis.  We’re not going to win that bright libertarian future by stopping a few immigrants.

Donald Trump or Ted Cruz aren’t going to save America, so paring back a few million illegal California votes won’t matter.  What would we get from limiting immigrant voter fraud?  Maybe less Israel in the Golan Heights.  Think about it!  There’s no “good guy” team here.

Hell, maybe felons and immigrants voting will cut back against police state abuses!

Impeaching Trump

by | Apr 23, 2019 |

The liberals are bent on impeaching Trump. Utilitarian electoral calculations are their only considerations.

But how to impeach after he just got no-billed by the grand jury on the big collusion plot that never was, and no more than half-assed recommended for future possible charges on obstruction in the case of the big collusion plot that never was.

Hush money for hos?

That’s some pretty thin gruel.

But I sympathize. All presidents should be impeached. And Trump is certainly no exception to that. But after the complete implosion of Russiagate, demands to impeach the president certainly ring partisan and shallow.

If you really want to remove Trump, there’s only one way to do it right and do it for real:

The Democrats are going to have to call for the prosecution of Barack H. Obama for waging an unauthorized, illegal, literally treasonous, genocidal war in Yemen.

Once his indictment is returned, and it is proven that they are really going through with his prosecution, it will then be safe for the House to begin impeachment proceedings against Donald J. Trump and with a bipartisan consensus to move forward in the Senate with removal from office, whereupon a new grand jury will be waiting to indict him on the very same charges.

No need to get all martyr-y here. Life without parole in the Supermax in cages next to Ramzi Yousef and Ted Kaczynski would be appropriate for both.

Does this seem silly? That the federal laws against war crimes, the Geneva Conventions, the recently invoked War Powers Resolution; that these things would apply in real life to American presidents who deliberately slaughter helpless babies? That the Democrats would ever in a million years sacrifice their number one hero in order to prove they’re being fair when removing Trump, the greatest menace humanity has ever faced, according to them, on the most severe charges that could be brought against him? That they would do so even as a last ditch attempt to enforce the War Powers Resolution to stop this genocidal war and save those babies’ lives?

Of course it is silly. Government employees in America are far above and beyond the law. They can murder whichever babies the feel like. The House and Senate will always and forever appropriate all the money necessary as they click their heels and salute. No matter what. Partisan advantage will never concede to a genocide. Not in America. Not of Arabs. Never.

Right?

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