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Google announces uProxy

engadget.com

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Re: Google announces uProxy

#41

Post by frank_boyd »

draugadrotten wrote: post #12

> "If someone from a country with limited internet access installs uProxy, they can get a friend from the US to authorize them to surf the open web using their connection. " In effect, they would also be sending all their sensitive, potentially illegal traffic to be read and copied by the american NSA agency. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%2... People proxying illegal traffic through the U…

Or, the shorter version:

Don't use any products that are offered by or have some kind of link to one of the known NSA partner companies (as seen in Snowden's slides).

Re: Google announces uProxy

#42

Post by frank_boyd »

Grue3 wrote: post #17
draugadrotten wrote: post #12

> "If someone from a country with limited internet access installs uProxy, they can get a friend from the US to authorize them to surf the open web using their connection. " In effect, they would also be sending all their sensitive, potentially illegal traffic to be read and copied by the american NSA agency. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%2... People proxying illegal traffic through the U…

Why would somebody who lives outside of USA care about US agencies? All I want is to bypass my own country's censorship.

Ever heard of drones? I remember numbers that indicated for a country that there was 1 strike every 3rd day, on average. It was either Pakistan or Afghanistan.

Re: Google announces uProxy

#43

Post by toyg »

Grue3 wrote: post #17
draugadrotten wrote: post #12

> "If someone from a country with limited internet access installs uProxy, they can get a friend from the US to authorize them to surf the open web using their connection. " In effect, they would also be sending all their sensitive, potentially illegal traffic to be read and copied by the american NSA agency. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%2... People proxying illegal traffic through the U…

Why would somebody who lives outside of USA care about US agencies? All I want is to bypass my own country's censorship.

Should one live in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, UK, France, Sweden, Italy, Germany or in one of many other countries with a recent record of bowing to pressure from US agencies (often in spite of local laws and/or over trivial matters like copyright), then one should care indeed.

Re: Google announces uProxy

#44

Post by r0h1n »

aristidb wrote: post #34
adventured wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a valid issue, in that it's vile the way the US Government sometimes behaves, but that is not a realistic concern for 99.999999% of the world population.

I think it's a valid concern for more than 70 people.

Shouldn't that be 7000 people?

Re: Google announces uProxy

#45

Post by toyg »

shazow wrote: post #11

While we're speculating about trust and such, the video mentions that it's a browser extension which connects to a trusted peer and uses the peer as a proxy. This leads me to believe that, 1. Since it's a normal browser extension, the source will be readable and verifiable. 2. It probably uses WebRTC. It seems Google merely plays an incubator role here for the authors. Either way, I don't see much trust issues that o…

> the source will be readable and verifiable.

that's all well and good, but if it's executed by an unverifiable binary build of Chrome (i.e. the one distributed by Google), it's not worth much. For what you know, Chrome might just detect the extension is installed and silently eavesdrop on all its calls.

If this extension will work as-is on third-party Chromium builds compiled from public sources, then yeah, it can be trusted on those builds.

Re: Google announces uProxy

#47

Post by simias »

draugadrotten wrote: post #12

> "If someone from a country with limited internet access installs uProxy, they can get a friend from the US to authorize them to surf the open web using their connection. " In effect, they would also be sending all their sensitive, potentially illegal traffic to be read and copied by the american NSA agency. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%2... People proxying illegal traffic through the U…

While technically true "the US" here is only used as an example, I don't believe the endpoints have to be in the US (if I understand correctly any user of this extension can choose to become a proxy).

An other point in the video (at around 0:50) mentions that you can select your route through trusted friends. If that's true it means that you can decide where your traffic transits.

Now obviously if you use the binary chrome builds made by Google they might put a backdoor in there but that's always true.

I don't think it's fair to dismiss this because it comes from Google, if it's open source and an open standard everybody will be free to audit it and decide for themselves.

If you don't want to use any crypto-product which might be even remotely related to the NSA then I have bad news for you...

Re: Google announces uProxy

#48

Post by r0h1n »

Another "free" Google service that blinds lay people from objectively considering the cost vs. benefits of online privacy/anonymity (since "free" tends to make us act irrationally). Instead, consider paying the equivalent of a cup or two of coffee and buy yourself a real VPN subscription. Even if you must get yourself a free VPN, consider someone other than Google, a company that already has so much data on your digital lives.

Re: Google announces uProxy

#50

Post by venomsnake »

I have a better idea - bring the cost of project loon balloons really low (order of magnitude below the price of the rockets needed to shoot them) and just flood the censoring country sky with them.

The country will either have to bankrupt itself or open its internet.

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