[Freedombox-discuss] Dumb idea: Alternative to Tor that promotes good behavior

[Jonathan Wilkes]

>----- Original Message -----
>From: Simo <s at ssimo.org>
>To: Bill Cox <waywardgeek at gmail.com>
>Cc: freedombox-discuss at lists.alioth.debian.org
>Sent: Monday, October 28, 2013 8:37 AM
>Subject: Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Dumb idea: Alternative to Tor that promotes good behavior

>On Sun, 2013-10-27 at 13:26 -0400, Bill Cox wrote:
>> What do you guys think?

>You are a great censor!

Do you run a tor exit-node?

The more important point to take away is that Tor's current design puts an enormous responsibility on the owner/operator of the exit-node.  I don't agree with Bill's approach either but I'd suspect that most people would find it very difficult to directly support basic principles of free speech when watching what tends to get requested through their own machines.

That's why I was interested in the Phantom protocol:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hbiZf6VmsQ

It addressed the issue of speed and can support Bittorrent traffic, so people ostensibly interested only in convenience would use it.  But also there is no such thing as an exit node-- everything exists as the equivalent of Tor's hidden services in the overlay.  That means a much weaker argument against supporting bad behavior, because if it works then one should not be able to tell where the traffic they relay actually ends up.

It seems like development stopped awhile back on it, possibly because a) no exit nodes seemed like a bad tradeoff at the time and b) it's not clear how you actually connect to the network in the first place.  I think "a" has changed since the Snowden leaks but "b" is probably still a sticking point.

-Jonathan

>Simo.