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Google announces uProxy

engadget.com

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Re: Google announces uProxy

#81

Post by mhurron »

draugadrotten wrote: post #22
Grue3 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You may want to care about US agencies because: - you or your family members may want to travel to the USA or one of its allies. - the USA may trade your information with other states, including your own country - you may want to protect your own country from USA's spying

They're watching anyway. Your traffic doesn't need to go through he US to be captured and analyzed by them.

The only way for the NSA to never be able to analyze your internet traffic is to never, and I do mean very literally never, use the internet.

Re: Google announces uProxy

#82

Post by Lewisham »

StavrosK wrote: post #57
r0h1n wrote: post #48

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 digi…

Did you read the article? It's not a Google service. Why buy a "real" VPN subscription instead of running things through a friend, which is way more decentralized and harder to surveil en masse?

This is a key point: VPNs provide an obvious point of failure, and are easily shut down and/or monitored by repressive regimes. The big concern is not that the VPN is shut down, but that those who connect to it are being monitored, and will get a visit from the secret police.

It's P2P so that you have clear endpoints, so repressive regimes can't ascertain whether it's a VPN or not. It's also helpful in that you might well trust a friend in another country over a VPN company.

Re: Google announces uProxy

#83

Post by Lewisham »

jsilence wrote: post #68

Why don't they simply run Tor end nodes in each of their server farms all over the world. That would actually help. But that would not make any mainstream news, would it? Bleh.

The problem with Tor is that it's not clear who is running which nodes and where you'll come out. uProxy is designed for people who know that their endpoint is friendly, such as a friend who no longer lives in the country, or a journalist that you are working with.

Re: Google announces uProxy

#84

Post by lwf »

hrjet wrote: post #79
lwf wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "their own", you mean "as required by US export restrictions that all US companies have to abide by", right? See also https://sourceforge.net/blog/clarifying-sourceforgenets-deni...

The irony here is that they are announcing a tool to subvert restrictions in other countries, but they are following their own countries restrictions to the letter.

Right, which they're obligated to do. As a company, you're bound to follow the laws of the countries in which you do business.

You have the option to direct lobbying power against laws you feel are unjust.

Re: Google announces uProxy

#85

Post by ye »

toyg wrote: post #45
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 b…

We actually don't know with 100% certainty that Chrome runs the code that we see.

Considering Google is forced to comply with NSA's shit (and other agencies in their respective countries), I wouldn't trust my life to this extension.

Re: Google announces uProxy

#86

Post by sampk »

toyg wrote: post #45
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 b…

http://uproxy.org/

Can I look at the source code?

The source code will be released by the University of Washington under the Apache 2 license after the trusted tester phase is completed. If you would like to get involved sooner go to http://uproxy.org/#join

Re: Google announces uProxy

#87

Post by fbeans »

How is this new? I can create a proxy server now, and I can share it with a friend and they can use my internet connection. They can do the same.

This is new because, It's likely easier to use, and it's all done in the browser.

The technology is certainly not new though...

Apache with mod_proxy, nginx, squid, ssh,

just to name a few of the many ways to do this...

Further to this, one doesn't need a browser plugin to do this, firefox for example already has configurable options to connect to proxy servers.

Re: Google announces uProxy

#88

Post by logicallee »

z92 wrote: post #23
Grue3 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because they are now vulnerable to blackmail from US agencies which can force them to work as their spies. "Hello, This is NSA. Will you please provide us name of all your team members, your sponsors, and do a few work for us? Otherwise we have a log file that your government will love to see."

Now you're just making shit up.

Re: Google announces uProxy

#89

Post by gohrt »

logicallee wrote: post #88
z92 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they are now vulnerable to blackmail from US agencies which can force them to work as their spies. "Hello, This is NSA. Will you please provide us name of all your team members, your sponsors, and do a few work for us? Otherwise we have a log file that your government will love to see."

Now you're just making shit up.

Citation provided: http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/submitted/Perry/repug...

Re: Google announces uProxy

#90

Post by res0nat0r »

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…

Can we stop every new thread on HN with NSA spy stories? The NSA can/has/is spying on you for a long time and it has nothing to do with any US company. Much of the traffic around the world (bound for the US or not) is routed through the USA due to us being such a central player, and these core routers have been tapped for a long time.

It doesn't matter if you are dealing with "US company" or not.

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