Imagine How The FBI And NSA Would Flip Out If Tor Browsing Was Built Into Firefox Or Chrome?
from the things-could-get-interesting dept
All last week, we saw law enforcement types freaking out about the news that Apple and Google were making phone encryption a default. While a good step in the right direction, this was really kind of a minor thing, only protecting a small bit of information -- and yet law enforcement folks went nuts.So just imagine how crazy they'll go if Tor were embedded directly into Firefox as the default "private browsing mode," as was recently hinted at by Tor exec director Andrew Lewman. Even though private browsing mode still isn't even used that much, adding Tor automatically to it would be quite handy for those who wish to have greater control over their privacy, but haven't gone through the trouble of setting up Tor themselves. Lewman didn't name the browser that has been thinking about this, but did say it had 10 to 20% of the market, which suggests Firefox is the most likely partner. Though, frankly, it would be nice to see this as a feature on all browsers.
Still, I imagine that if that happens, we'll see a similar freakout from the FBI, DOJ, NSA and others, insisting that actually protecting user privacy is somehow better enabling criminals and terrorists. Of course, the truth is that most criminals and terrorists do plenty of other things to reveal themselves. Very, very, very few people are competently able to hide any and all behavior against even semi-competent detective and intelligence work. But what further expanding Tor can do is better protect perfectly legal and innocent behavior from being tracked and abused.
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Filed Under: encryption, firefox, law enforcement, privacy, private browsing, tor
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I can take a guess...
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Re: I can take a guess...
I've rapidly gone from believing our western governments to be ethical and moral beacons to the world, champions of civilization all, to considering them the direst threat to my safety and well-being in existence. Nowadays I can't decide whether to leave, or stick around and watch it all come apart.
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Re: I can take a guess...
Hopefully it'll make civilization as we know it cease to exist and replace it with civilization as we'd like it -- but I'm not holding my breath.
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Re:
So that would be a Torpedo then?
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Holder urges vendors to leave device "hackdoors" open
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/09/30/holder-urges-tech-companies-t o-leave-device-backdoors-open-for-police/
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We don't have to imagine
It's inevitable.
They will freak out.
Pull up a chair and let's watch it happen.
(The MPAA will complain about how TOR is responsible for all piracy, except when it's Google's fault; and this clearly hurts corn farmers, so, I reluctantly add...)
Grab a popcorn.
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Re: We don't have to imagine
It uses Firefox.
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/jk
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Gotta protect those kids from pix of dongles
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Re: Gotta protect those kids from pix of dongles
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I'd think that the FBI would WANT this
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Re: I'd think that the FBI would WANT this
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Re: Re: I'd think that the FBI would WANT this
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Re: I'd think that the FBI would WANT this
It's them against us, you know.
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If its open for the government...
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Anyway, TOR is probably already compromised. Keep in mind who made the damn thing in the first place.
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I thought those were FBI-leaked documents that refer to it as the bane of their existence -- I thought the NSA-leaked documents showed that they owned a large portion of the exit nodes and were using the data gathered to flag things up for parallel reconstruction.
Of course, it was misuse of Tor that got Silk Road flagged and shut down (one of the widgets on one of the pages was pulling data from a static IP, it wasn't properly routed), so I think for many purposes, TOR is secure, and for some purposes it is broken by design.
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This is a long way from "breaking" Tor. Exit nodes don't know who they are carrying the traffic for, so compromising them doesn't really get you anything beyond what you could get just by sniffing the traffic through the ISP.
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Will CloudFlare stop blocking Tor when this happens?
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That would be a Chrime...
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We'll stop treating them like assholes when they stop treating us like criminals.
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Now I understand why law enforcement is complaining. "Semi-competence" must be beyond them.
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Andy Griffith
And go back to the days of Walton's Mountain and have the local merchant's wife read the return address on all the mail.
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Re: Andy Griffith
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"...default 'private browsing mode'..."
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Re: "...default 'private browsing mode'..."
TOR 2.0 anyone?
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Re: Re: "...default 'private browsing mode'..."
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Tor
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On the plus side, that'd mean they'd be considered pirates.
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better still
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NSA style relays
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i just read where UK prime minister, Cameron, is going to remove the Human Rights law. im just wondering whether he will be allowed to get away with that? he's trying to not only go down the same road as the US government, he's trying to out do it! when hundreds of thousands of protestors are demonstrating in Hong Kong, trying to get civil rights, human rights, freedom and privacy, ie a democracy, Cameron is actively trying to destroy it! what the hell is wrong with these governments?
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Those people who enter politics are those who wish to impose the type of society that they prefer on everybody else, in that regard they are little better that ISIS, but they cannot see it.
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New Version Available
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Will not happen
But what is much more realistic.. Firefox is anyway compromised... adding DRM, supporting ads, integrating Google services more and more! I would rather recommend trusting in Seamonkey instead of Firefox these days.
Mozilla turned more and more moronic after Google shoved tons of money into their a.......!
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