The Tor Browser and Government Surveillance

[Ella S.]

I'm posting this through the Tor relay. Suffice to say, yes, I think so.

It's not enough to just use Tor. You also want to use free, privacy focused software and operating systems. There's no sense in using Tor on Windows 11 when it's sending all of your keystrokes to Microsoft, anyway. In a pinch, you can use TAILS for this.

If you're in a country that blocks Tor use, you can use bridge nodes.

I think it's worth noting that Tor is not as anonymous as you think. If you have access to where someone is connecting from and their end-node, then you have essentially de-anonymized them completely. In the US, the NSA has access to basically all traffic sent through ISPs, so it knows where you're connecting from. They also run many of the end-nodes, so there's a higher chance that they will know exactly what you're doing.

That's part of the reason so many users are moving over to i2p, which uses a p2p network that isn't vulnerable to end-node snooping.

 

[We Never Know]

Unless the government is concerned about what I'm posting on RF, I probably have little to worry about. I'll just stick with Safari.

Yep. Only people with something to hide worry about it.

 

[Ella S.]

Yep. Only people with something to hide worry about it.

Everyone has something to hide from someone.

Let's say you signed up for a service and it asks for your ethnicity. It matches your account with your IP address, which is linked to your home address. No matter what ethnicity you are, there is a hate group out there that wants to hurt you simply for being a part of that ethnicity. All they have to do is gain access to that internal list and they suddenly have a long line of targets, potentially including you.

That's not a hypothetical. That sort of thing happens more often than you would think. Privacy isn't about hiding what you're up to. Ultimately, it's about securing your data from those that might abuse it.

Even if only your government has access to the data and you trust everyone in office now, what's guaranteeing that you can trust the people who take office after them and inherit your data? Nothing.

Saying that we shouldn't value privacy because we have nothing to hide is like saying we shouldn't value free speech because we have nothing to say. We inevitably will have something to hide or say eventually.

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." - Cardinal Richelieu

^That's optimistic given that your data is being filtered by algorithms with false positive rates. Even if you truly have nothing to hide, the algorithms that analyze your data might falsely believe you do, getting you unfairly blacklisted from international flights or negatively impacting you on background checks run by employers. That also happens more often than you would think.

 

[Heyo]

Everyone has something to hide from someone.

Let's say you signed up for a service and it asks for your ethnicity. It matches your account with your IP address, which is linked to your home address. No matter what ethnicity you are, there is a hate group out there that wants to hurt you simply for being a part of that ethnicity. All they have to do is gain access to that internal list and they suddenly have a long line of targets, potentially including you.

That's not a hypothetical. That sort of thing happens more often than you would think. Privacy isn't about hiding what you're up to. Ultimately, it's about securing your data from those that might abuse it.

Even if only your government has access to the data and you trust everyone in office now, what's guaranteeing that you can trust the people who take office after them and inherit your data? Nothing.

Saying that we shouldn't value privacy because we have nothing to hide is like saying we shouldn't value free speech because we have nothing to say. We inevitably will have something to hide or say eventually.

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." - Cardinal Richelieu

^That's optimistic given that your data is being filtered by algorithms with false positive rates. Even if you truly have nothing to hide, the algorithms that analyze your data might falsely believe you do, getting you unfairly blacklisted from international flights or negatively impacting you on background checks run by employers. That also happens more often than you would think.

:winner:

 

[Zwing]

Only people with something to hide worry about it.

Not true. Many people simply don’t like the thought that if they say certain words online, like “kill”, Allah”, “jihad”, etc., that their IP address will be “pinged” by NSA software within some data center, and stored in a special database. The issue here is privacy, not getting away with any type of malfeasance. I think that per the first amendment, I should be able to say whatever I want without government notice. As it is, if I say “I just killed a fly” on this forum, I might very well be noticed and placed on a list, and I don’t like that.

 

[Zwing]

C

end-node snooping.

Great word! This is just what it is…and what I don’t like.

 

[Heyo]

Yep. Only people with something to hide worry about it.

I have something to hide. My email address.
It's less the government I dread, it's the corporations. They collect all the data to flood my inbox with targeted adds.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

With governments exploiting the continuing revolution in information technology to surveil, control and oppress its citizenry (we all are, in my opinion, nothing more than slaves to an new master), are encrypted browsers such as Tor part and parcel of an effective response? Please discuss.

Well, it's not like it's a secret how to use Tor and it's not like all or most of the URLs aren't indexed on rather known directories (like the Hidden Wiki)...so I'd say use at your own discretion and be very suspicious, at least. No online platform is truly safe, anyway. Pretty much all of them have ties to the military and/or intelligence.

 

[Ella S.]

I have something to hide. My email address.
It's less the government I dread, it's the corporations. They collect all the data to flood my inbox with targeted adds.

It's also less work to detach yourself from corporate data collection than to evade government surveillance.

 

[Heyo]

It's also less work to detach yourself from corporate data collection than to evade government surveillance.

Yes, but it can be hassle, too. And detaching oneself from corporate data collection is evading government surveillance as the government can easily obtain corporate data collections.

 

[Ella S.]

Yes, but it can be hassle, too. And detaching oneself from corporate data collection is evading government surveillance as the government can easily obtain corporate data collections.

I maintain a "work identity" that's fully public, but everything I do with it is directly related to my career. I use it for job hunting, GitHub, certificate training, etc. I can even use it with Slack and Zoom, because I consider all of that to be a part of my public work history that I actually want potential employers to have access to.

That's easier to accomplish than detaching completely, especially when I work remote in the tech industry, but it's a hassle to try to make sure my identities never overlap. If I was formally investigated, any interested agency with enough resources could discover who I am behind this account on RF, but data collection agencies shouldn't be able to link it to my public accounts or name on their own.

The public work identity also makes sense because you can't count on other people to be as privacy focused as you are, anyway. If you buy a burner phone but your mom puts that number in her contact list with your full name, then that number is burned. If you use a Tor mail service but send a message to a gmail address, Google and most governments then have access to all of that message's contents.

Complete privacy requires total off-the-grid self-sufficiency, which is a great ideal to work towards but prohibitively expensive and unrealistic for many people. So it's easier to keep separate profiles and just never, ever let them intermingle.

 

[dybmh]

I don’t think that the Government should even be in the business of monitoring the communication of it’s own citizenry

What about monitoring social media / forum posts for signs of a potential school shooter? It seems like there are almost always red flags which could be detected and proactively prevent some of these horrific events. While I would love to see a constitutional ammendment to address the root cause, since that seems unachievable, would you support web-crawlers looking for changes in online rhetoric? Then this would trigger a wellness check or some sort of follow-up by law enforcement?

 

[We Never Know]

I have something to hide. My email address.
It's less the government I dread, it's the corporations. They collect all the data to flood my inbox with targeted adds.

Yeah all that junk email and junk mail sux.

 

[Zwing]

I have something to hide. My email address.
It's less the government I dread, it's the corporations. They collect all the data to flood my inbox with targeted adds.

So true, and if they can somehow obtain and associate your email address with the IP, then you’re…well…you know.

 

[Zwing]

With governments exploiting the continuing revolution in information technology to surveil, control and oppress its citizenry (we all are, in my opinion, nothing more than slaves to a new master)…

Hahaha…that was quite hyperbolic, wasn’t it? I must have been cross about something when I wrote that, not that it’s completely untrue.

 

[Stevicus]

What about monitoring social media / forum posts for signs of a potential school shooter? It seems like there are almost always red flags which could be detected and proactively prevent some of these horrific events. While I would love to see a constitutional ammendment to address the root cause, since that seems unachievable, would you support web-crawlers looking for changes in online rhetoric? Then this would trigger a wellness check or some sort of follow-up by law enforcement?

This sounds good in theory, although if law enforcement follows up on every cranky post on the internet, they'll be spending most of their time doing wellness checks and answering false alarms.

 

[Zwing]

What about monitoring social media / forum posts for signs of a potential school shooter?

I find that acceptable only so long as there are clear signs that someone is “going off the rails” in the “real (non-virtual) world”. The type of surveillance that I am complaining about is blanket surveillance mediated by very powerful server systems running recognition software, which processes utterly decontextualize the markers they are looking for. It is the same issue with the video cameras everywhere today: the blanket recording of everybody at all times.

 

[Stevicus]

I find that acceptable only so long as there are clear signs that someone is “going off the rails” in the “real (non-virtual) world”. The type of surveillance that I am complaining about is blanket surveillance mediated by very powerful server systems running recognition software, which processes utterly decontextualize the markers they are looking for.

I agree, if for no other reason than it's an ineffective waste of resources. The ECHELON system has been in place since the early 1970s, but I can't see that America is any safer now than before it was implemented. If anything, we're probably in a more vulnerable and insecure spot today than we were in 1970. It's like devoting law enforcement resources to do nothing but write parking tickets, while ignoring all the major crimes.

 

[dybmh]

I find that acceptable only so long as there are clear signs that someone is “going off the rails” in the “real (non-virtual) world”. The type of surveillance that I am complaining about is blanket surveillance mediated by very powerful server systems running recognition software, which processes utterly decontextualize the markers they are looking for. It is the same issue with the video cameras everywhere today: the blanket recording of everybody at all times.

Well, my idea would be scooping up anything that is posted by anyone anywhere without context. It would be looking for changes in rhetoric, escalations, kind of like modern virus scanners and malware detection. Someone could post about how they hate the public school system 100 times. Or post 100 times about how useless living in this world is, but neither of those would trigger anything unless it's escalating.

And, no, I wouldn't be waiting for any kind of real-world, non virtual indicators. It doesn't seem like people report those, or when they do, they are ignored.

What do think? Too big-brothery or is it justified considering the situation?

 

[VoidCat]

What about monitoring social media / forum posts for signs of a potential school shooter? It seems like there are almost always red flags which could be detected and proactively prevent some of these horrific events. While I would love to see a constitutional ammendment to address the root cause, since that seems unachievable, would you support web-crawlers looking for changes in online rhetoric? Then this would trigger a wellness check or some sort of follow-up by law enforcement?

I wouldnt trust the government to not abuse their power regarding this