Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Staying ahead of censors in 2025

forum.torproject.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 349 posts

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#11

Post by Fiveplus »

The section on conjure is fascinating. For those who haven't followed the refraction networking space, the idea of leveraging unused address space at the ISP level is something academic papers have proposed for years [1]. Seeing it deployed in the wild is huge. The hardest part of this has always been non-technical by the way. Convincing ISPs to cooperate. If the Tor project has managed to get ISPs to route traffic destined for unallocated IPs to a station that handles the handshake, it completely breaks the censor's standard playbook of IP enumeration. You can't just block a specific subnet without risking blocking future legitimate allocations.

I'd be curious to know if these are smaller, sympathetic ISPs or if they managed to partner with larger backbone providers. I'm interested to hear more about this.

[1] look up tapdance

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#12

Post by [deleted] »

keepamovin wrote: post #5

Legal question for the Tor team (disclaimer, I love Tor and use it in BrowserBox): - Does Tor need an OFAC license to supply to Russian and Iranian (and other sanctioned entities)? What's your approach to stay compliant and globally helpful? I know 50% of your funding comes from US government (or did a few years back, still?), does this give you extra pathways to engage those regions? I'm wondering because the system…

[deleted]

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#13

Post by [deleted] »

greyface- wrote: post #7
keepamovin wrote: post #5

Legal question for the Tor team (disclaimer, I love Tor and use it in BrowserBox): - Does Tor need an OFAC license to supply to Russian and Iranian (and other sanctioned entities)? What's your approach to stay compliant and globally helpful? I know 50% of your funding comes from US government (or did a few years back, still?), does this give you extra pathways to engage those regions? I'm wondering because the system…

> supply > product OFAC regulates international trade. Isn't Tor's publication an act of pure speech, rather than commerce? They're not charging for it, and they aren't physically moving any goods across borders. How could Tor be subject to any restrictions here? (not a lawyer, just someone who naively thought the Crypto Wars ended in the 90s)

[deleted]

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#15

Post by piekvorst »

Fiveplus wrote: post #11

The section on conjure is fascinating. For those who haven't followed the refraction networking space, the idea of leveraging unused address space at the ISP level is something academic papers have proposed for years [1]. Seeing it deployed in the wild is huge. The hardest part of this has always been non-technical by the way. Convincing ISPs to cooperate. If the Tor project has managed to get ISPs to route traffic d…

I doubt that Russian ISP would cooperate.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#16

Post by [deleted] »

Fiveplus wrote: post #11

The section on conjure is fascinating. For those who haven't followed the refraction networking space, the idea of leveraging unused address space at the ISP level is something academic papers have proposed for years [1]. Seeing it deployed in the wild is huge. The hardest part of this has always been non-technical by the way. Convincing ISPs to cooperate. If the Tor project has managed to get ISPs to route traffic d…

[deleted]

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#18

Post by nomilk »

throwfaraway135 wrote: post #17

Considering the staggering number of arrest for online/offensive communications in England & Wales, we should add Britain to the list of Russia and Iran 2017: ~5,500 arrests 2019: ~7,734 arrests 2023: ~12,183 arrests

I was also surprised the post focusses on Rus/Iran when Australia, UK, and many more countries (Malaysia, Thailand) have/are introducing laws to prevent large swaths of free speech (banning mediums by age, banning conversation by topic, or by making speaking one's mind online too risky, as almost anything now can be interpreted as 'offensive' or 'hate speech').

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#19

Post by vscode-rest »

throwfaraway135 wrote: post #17

Considering the staggering number of arrest for online/offensive communications in England & Wales, we should add Britain to the list of Russia and Iran 2017: ~5,500 arrests 2019: ~7,734 arrests 2023: ~12,183 arrests

You must keep in mind TOR is funded in large part by the US government. It’s a bad look for them to put their allies in the same list as their enemies.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#20

Post by aprilthird2021 »

nomilk wrote: post #18
throwfaraway135 wrote: post #17

Considering the staggering number of arrest for online/offensive communications in England & Wales, we should add Britain to the list of Russia and Iran 2017: ~5,500 arrests 2019: ~7,734 arrests 2023: ~12,183 arrests

I was also surprised the post focusses on Rus/Iran when Australia, UK, and many more countries (Malaysia, Thailand) have/are introducing laws to prevent large swaths of free speech (banning mediums by age, banning conversation by topic, or by making speaking one's mind online too risky, as almost anything now can be interpreted as 'offensive' or 'hate speech').

Yes. I think social media or app bans should count as well, as well as consequences for things posted on social media which are simply opinions. I think killing of journalists should count as well (so probably India, Israel, etc.)

And I think also frivolous suits lodged by the govt at people for their speech. So that would include suing Twitter users for making jokes about the FBI director girlfriend, etc. One of the biggest things to censor speech the US is doing is forcing the sale of TikTok to government friendly group. There are many ways governments censor our speech, and they seem, sadly, to be increasing worldwide

Post reply on HN