251–260 of 367 posts
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Well, not all the exit nodes by now. But many of them. Most people are probably leery of running an exit node, because its traffic is in the clear (modulo ssh) and often connects to disparate and shady servers.
This is what I've never understood about Tor. What possible incentive does anyone have to run an exit node? Seems like nothing but a liability for some extremely awful stuff.
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What's the purpose of this distinction, if the actor (law enforcement) does not effectively make this distinction?
Law enforcement and the courts mostly do make the distinction effectively—it's what they are for. That they sometimes accidentally or deliberately fail to do so is true, but it doesn't license lawbreaking. In the US, there's a small chance of an innocent being harassed for something they didn't do, but a much larger chance of a criminal being arrested, charged, and jailed for something they did do. If you don't want…
The question at hand is not whether to break the law, it's whether to protect yourself from intrusion by state authorities with demonstrably little public accountability.
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Parallel construction. They use their real methods to identify the user, then once they know the user, specifically target them with simpler known methods to build evidence for the case. In the court filing, they present evidence that they've gained through known methods which don't work all that well unless you already have a suspect, but they actually caught the suspect using methods that are not public (and won't…
Is there proof of anything like this or is it just a conspiracy theory you’re peddling?
The CIA did a great job getting that word out there. It's sad it's used to dismiss credible and logical conclusions so readily.
I think a lot of this has been covered elsewhere before: - when using tor you should disable javascript because a malicious or compromised site can use javascript to do non-tor stuff that potentially compromises your location. (can be a big pill to swallow, web without javacript is very 90s) - Run torbrowser within a secure VM or separate device using Tails to minimize your activity footprint - Use a VPN when connect…
Has this advice been studied? If everyone uses a VPN you could be reducing network diversity. A single compromised provider could make correlation attacks easier across the entire network.
I'm not saying that's certain, but I'm generally skeptical of "hone remedies" when it comes to Tor. There is so much potential for counterintuitive interaction.
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> - ordering the most boring coffee The fatal flaw in the plan: Barista talking to news after person is arrested by FBI: "As soon as they ordered the brewed coffee with no customizations after standing in line for 10 minutes, I knew something was suspicious. Who comes to Starbucks, stands in line for 10 minutes, and then orders boring coffee?"
Good point! Let's make it a caramel macchiato with two pumps vanilla and sugar free creamer! Oh god I am leaking information!
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Lol if you don't want to be fucked with by the government, just don't break the law! Unfortunately that doesn't work. Sometimes legal activities are best kept under wraps. I have a signed and executed federal search warrant in my drawer. I was tossed in a cell. I was dragged to a hospital. I was sent the bill for the "search" and am currently being hounded by debt collectors. Nothing was found and I did nothing wrong…
I'm sorry to hear that. I'd like to think that is a rare exception, not the rule. It certainly isn't what I experienced when I entered the USA as a foreigner (with a DAP and Sharp Zaurus which didn't get checked either back in 2005). I know there's an issue of discrimination among police; it is something we (society) need to combat.
A woman (who they never even got a warrant for and nothing found) at the hospital I was at was forcefully penetrated in a pretty disgusting way and I'm unaware of any significant remedy for her despite a lawsuit [2]. The lawyer who took her case told me they'd given up on such cases when I spoke with them. I complained to the relevant medical state board and they basically said everything is kosher.
While in the hospital with officers, I had the opportunity to ask them about their history in regard to this behavior. They bragged to me of various nefarious activity, such as taking someone in because they had a trans female-to-male "appendage" so they accused it of being a drug smuggling apparatus apparently to fuck with them. It was clear to me in these discussions it is routine and common behavior, and they voiced to me it was profitable for them as they commonly were paid a very high overtime wage to sit in the hospital which is easy work compared to their normal job at the port of entry and allows them to buy expensive trucks.
2 (relevant details start bottom page 6) is a pretty brutal read.
[0] https://www.aclutx.org/sites/default/files/aclu_hospital_adv...
[1] https://www.aclu-nm.org/en/press-releases/cbp-settles-lawsui...
[2] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.azd.985...
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I don’t think this is true unless the original evidence was obtained in violation of the fourth amendment, which zero days are not necessarily. You’re right though using parallel construction to launder prohibited search is illegal.
Why wouldn't parallel construction be perjury, even if the real search was legal?
The purpose of laws like the 4A is to prevent the police from harassing innocent people by going on fishing expeditions. The purpose of the poisoned tree doctrine is to prevent the police from committing crimes as part of their work.
But if a plains-clothes police officer sees you load a kilo of cocaine into your car every Tuesday, on the same street corner, there's nothing illegal or immoral about him telling a uniformed cop to show up next Tuesday, to observe you doing just that. I see no reason why the uniformed cop should be compelled to reveal his source.
Now, if the plains-clothes officer was doing warrant-less break and entry in order to observe you doing the crime, that would be an ethical problem.
This does create a bit of a connundrum - where you often can't tell if parallel construction was used to cover for legal, or for illegal behaviour. But I see no reason for why the first case I presented should be forbidden. If pressed on the stand as to why the officer chose that street corner to be on Tuesday, they can avoid prejury by declining to answer, or just say that they were tipped off. I find it doubtful that a judge would compel the officer to answer, or to elaborate - he's not the one that's on trial, after all.
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> unsubstantiated claim There's a court document from a defender specifically referring to the evidence the FBI is presenting. Lawyers can be severely sanctioned if they lie in a briefing, so the lawyer drafting that has certainly seen a court document by the FBI stating that they got the IP of this user despite Tor. Bruce never claims more than that.
"Got the IP despite Tor" might just be user error, visited the site once with Tor disabled, or logged into the same account elsewhere with both their clear IP and their Tor browser. The exact same thing that happened to Silk Road.
From Bruce of all people, this is a wildly provocative, unsubstantiated claim about routine takedown behavior from the feds. I mean, nobody hates the gov side of the cryptography wars more than me, but this type of article is well below table-stakes for discussion. Especially by legendary professionals of repute like Bruce. It's very disappointing to me. The price of clicks truly deconstructs the modern man's integri…
My take on it: He's sending out a reminder that Gov retains ability to extract people it wants from encrypted comms. He may have noticed a downturn in similar news stories. That we don't know the methods used here, this seems to emphasize the old reasons to live in caution.
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"Got the IP despite Tor" might just be user error, visited the site once with Tor disabled, or logged into the same account elsewhere with both their clear IP and their Tor browser. The exact same thing that happened to Silk Road.
That's possible, but the blog never claims otherwise. In fact it says "There are lots of ways to de-anonymize Tor users" so I think it's unfair to say Bruce is making unsubstantiated claims.
Just like when you say "a BMW driver crashed into a mall", you mean that they did it with their BMW, not with the Subaru that they also own.