Off-topic, but what is the current state of tor onion (hidden) services? Are they easy to de-anonymize?
There are certainly plenty of black markets thriving on onion services. Some have been online and serving for quite a few years. They seem fine.
The German Problem with Tor
71–80 of 131 posts
Re: The German Problem with Tor
#72"In reality, the German government has a double standard when it comes to the right to privacy. They will fully support that right if it's company's violating your privacy (especially, if they are American because protectionism) but in contrast, the German will give itself as many powers as it can to spy on its own citizens and those abroad." This.
Germany doesn't "give itself as many powers as it can". Just recently, the courts affirmed that even foreigners have a right to privacy that intelligence agencies have to respect.
Privacy regulation in Europe is the mot stringent anywhere, and contrary to popular myth it applies to governments just as it does to corporations and citizens.
Conservatives have been clamoring for metadata retention requirements afor communication companies for about a decade or so, but all of their ideas failed either in parliament or in the courts.
Video surveillance is illegal by default, and is only done in sensitive areas such as airports. Even as a private citizen, you can get fined for installing a camera that points at public spaces. Some landlord was even fined for installing a fake camera in the public staircase, because the possiblity of surveillance was considered harmful.
Re: The German Problem with Tor
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a useless reply. There is no black and white, and the parent is asking about the shades of graay.
There are no shades of grey here - state actors have access to every internet node, fibre optic cables, operating systems and hardware. So unless you take your time to build your own CPU, main board and modem and only use our own private direct fibre connection, you're a potential target for being spied on. It's as simple as that. You can make things harder by encrypting your traffic, but that's possible regardless o…
You say "There are no shades of grey here" but then you contradict it by saying "You can make things harder by encrypting your traffic", so obviously you don't mean it.
By dismissing the imperfect possiblities of making yourself safer, you seem to be saying "there only needs to be one gunner to shoot you when you look out the window, so either you never leave your bunker or may as well live in a war zone", while dismissing those who ask "which country is the most peaceful and stable, so that I can settle there?".
People can be well aware of weak crypto, compromised CPUs, TEMPEST, Tor compromises, state actors and legal problems, and yet still choose which of those to defend against, and to what extent. In real life, people take tradeoffs, because it's almost never an all-or-nothing situation.
Re: The German Problem with Tor
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds different than something like the US, where if a law is unconstitutional it's struck down immediately (rather than giving time for the legislature to fix it), and the defendant acquitted (not sure what happens in germany).
> where if a law is unconstitutional it's struck down immediately What? Cases take years or decades to make their way through the court system. You might be thinking of the fact that some laws get an injunction on their enforcement until they are ruled on, but that is not mandatory. More important, they are not struck down, only enjoined. And of course if the legislature changes the law, the case becomes moot by the…
>What? Cases take years or decades to make their way through the court system. You might be thinking of the fact that some laws get an injunction on their enforcement until they are ruled on, but that is not mandatory.
It's implied that we're talking about what happens after it's decided. We obviously can't talk about the action of the court before it's been decided. What matters is what happens after a decision has been made. The grandparent comment gave me the impression that in germany, after a law has been found to be unconstitutional by the courts, it doesn't get struck down. Instead, it gets sent back to the legislature for revision, while remaining valid in the meantime.
>And of course if the legislature changes the law, the case becomes moot by the time it reaches the court (this happens semi-regularly, where the court refuses to rule on the constitutionality of a law that is no longer on the books).
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Is this supposed to be a flaw? What purpose does it serve to rule on laws that have already been revoked? To throw some shade on the legislative branch? To punish them somehow? Moreover, is this something that doesn't happen in germany?
Re: The German Problem with Tor
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Recently the German constitutional court ruled the government can't spy on foreigners outside Germany, as they enjoy constitutional protections: https://www.dw.com/en/german-intelligence-cant-spy-on-foreig... Of course, in a democratic country where the judicial system is separated from the legislative powers one should wait for the law (or the lawsuit) to know how it is enforced in reality.
> one should wait for the law (or the lawsuit) to know how it is enforced in reality. Of course, as we discovered that the NSA was gamboling, if you're doing it in secret, and the secret that you're doing it is protected by law, then if you do something illegal, it won't be legal to take you to court...
This assumption (i. e. that everything bad is done anyway, only in secret) is a truism. People who buy into this sort of cynicism will rely on the non-existence of evidence as evidence of their theory of all-powerful government able to suppress all evidence.
The idea is also destructive for any effort to improve matters: if everything and everyone is corrupt, there's no point in trying to hold anyone to account. And if those in power continually get hit with the wildest accusations people can think of, they will at some point abandon the idea of trying to do a good job and/or being honest because there are no incentives whatsoever when the discourse is dominated by narratives that are no longer in any way tied to their actual behaviour.
Re: The German Problem with Tor
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a useless reply. There is no black and white, and the parent is asking about the shades of graay.
There are no shades of grey here - state actors have access to every internet node, fibre optic cables, operating systems and hardware. So unless you take your time to build your own CPU, main board and modem and only use our own private direct fibre connection, you're a potential target for being spied on. It's as simple as that. You can make things harder by encrypting your traffic, but that's possible regardless o…
> The only computer that is safe from attacks is not connected to any network and only ever used in a windowless room surrounded by reinforced concrete walls.
Perhaps such a computer is safe from the types of attacks you contemplate, but through-the-wall surveillance has been happening for decades.
Re: The German Problem with Tor
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
> one should wait for the law (or the lawsuit) to know how it is enforced in reality. Of course, as we discovered that the NSA was gamboling, if you're doing it in secret, and the secret that you're doing it is protected by law, then if you do something illegal, it won't be legal to take you to court...
This assumption (i. e. that everything bad is done anyway, only in secret) is a truism. People who buy into this sort of cynicism will rely on the non-existence of evidence as evidence of their theory of all-powerful government able to suppress all evidence. The idea is also destructive for any effort to improve matters: if everything and everyone is corrupt, there's no point in trying to hold anyone to account. And…
Assumption? I was describing a historical anecdote.
>if everything and everyone is corrupt, there's no point in trying to hold anyone to account.
What's your plan for holding anyone to account without limiting secrecy? Seriously, there are zero ways to have accountability to the public without the public knowing what they're judging. The authority knowing the facts is the absolute most basic element of decision-making, and it precedes all other organizational or procedural designs.
>if those in power continually get hit with the wildest accusations people can think of,
No accusation was made. I am merely pointing out that there is no system of accountability. Zero accountability plus human nature plus power always leads to the same thing - and although we don't know the details, we can be sure there's some kind of mold growing under the counter so to speak.
Re: The German Problem with Tor
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not true at all. The rulings of the German Constitutional Court are extremely important (at the very least compared to almost all other Constitutional Courts in the world) and have very real consequences. Just one example: The recent PSPP Judgement had the potential to end the Euro. It didn't but if the Court had ruled in a slightly different way (which would have been within it's Constitutional Powers) the Bu…
> The fact that the Court tries not to do something like that is because it is also a political actor searching for stability. This sounds to me like someone saying that the Queen of England has the power to dissolve parliament - and just doesn't for political concerns. (Those political concerns being that if she ever exercises that power, it'll be removed) At some point you have to recognize that if you can only use…
I can see where you're coming from but this analogy does not hold up. The German Constitutional Court (GCC) does exercise its powers, but it tries not to break anything, therefore it gives the responsible actors some time to change the law/their behavior. Maybe another example: The Court decided that the (specific calculation of the) German property tax was unconstitutional. But if they just declared the whole tax void, this would have been an enormous problem for the state financing. Therefore they decided that the Government had roughly one year to set up a new system that would follow the constitutional requirements as laid out by the Court. This is what the government has done and now the requirements are fulfilled.
Re: The German Problem with Tor
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's only double standards if one considers states and companies as being in the same position. A state and a company have vastly different goals. A state should care for its citizens, this includes protections against threats to public safety (terror, organized crime) and surveillance is a tool in the box for that. A company on the other hand, would have no issues fleecing people and abusing their power for profit…
In many places in the world, the government is corrupt and there is no transparency. I’d be surprised if people trust their governments in Poland, Bulgaria etc. Government officials have more power to abuse people than companies. At least Germany has an established constitutional court that can still resist the politicians to some degree. I think the american view is that governments are bad because they can be used…
> I’d be surprised if people trust their governments in Poland, Bulgaria etc.
> But I bet people having experienced autocratic regimes can never trust their government.
If there is a lack of trust within the Polish public toward the state, then it stems in large part from a history of oppressive foreign or foreign-controlled governments over the course of the last 200 years. Of course, prior to that, the Polish republican tradition generally took a somewhat skeptical view of government and government power, introducing a system of checks and balances that ultimately tipped in favor of the nobility via the Sejm. But recent attitudes are IMO influenced by a kind of habit of viewing government as a foreign intruder dominated by foreign interests (which, frankly, continues to this day in the form of competing German, American, and Russian influence often represented by competing parties). The end of the Cold War did not, of course, lead to the expulsion of the entrenched interests and power networks formed during the years of the Soviet-dominated People's Republic which also contributes to the antipathies Poles have toward government.
Re: The German Problem with Tor
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I've heard, the Nordic countries like Netherlands, Norway, Finland, etc. and some Eastern European countries like Romania are people friendly (at least for now).
I quickly checked for the Netherlands and it seems there's no big practical difference. The 2017 Act on Intelligence and Security Services allows Dutch intelligence and security services to tap into internet traffic without giving clear reasons or oversight. Doesn't sound all that "people friendly" to me. There's a difference between privacy laws concerning companies and public institutions (where the countries you m…
Also, Netherlands is part of nine-eyes (and so are Denmark and Norway for that matter)
And it's not a Nordic country neither geographically nor in spirit. It has an economic system that's much closer than that of the UK and US than the Nordics.