Explore Tor, New York City! A New Meetup Starting Dec 7

> It looks like you do not use TBB or a Relay

3.1415... it goes on forever, you know.

> you like argument in a pleasant & friendly manner

Someone on the internet is... nice?

Oh I see, no longer Nice; they've rebranded as Cyberbit. Someone must be feeling... un-masked.

But if privacy were truly dead, Cyberbit would not be concerned about a bit of public exposure, eh?

> but you do not understand & do not know what you are speaking about

As I said, I am experiencing difficulty in understanding what you are complaining about, upon what factual basis (if any), and what if anything you expect anyone to do about the situation.

I get the impression that

o you *want* to use Tor

o you live in a country where it is more difficult to use Tor than (so far) in the USA

o but you aren't mad at your government, you are mad at Tor Project.

If there's logic to that line of thought, please explain.

> 1024 rsa & cha 1 are obsolete , unsecure and do not allow anonymity or privacy : it is a technical fact not a philosophical argument.

I appreciate that, but I still don't follow. You'll have to be more specific.

Are you complaining about Tor client/server software, about the TP blog, a website associated with the meetup venue, or what?

How are RSA and CHA-1 involved?

What precisely are the security flaws?

What is the threat model which makes these flaws so serious that Tor(?) "does not allow anonymity or privacy"?

It would be helpful if you would be more specific about the country in which you are experiencing problems using Tor.

> You

Just to be clear: I am a Tor user, but not affiliated with Tor Project.

> cannot promote a tool labeled as "universal" or flagged as a "freedom appeal for the world" when it works only for usa guys in the usa

Why do you think that Tor "works only for usa guys in the usa"?

Plenty of users around the world consider that Tor works for them. To be sure, in some countries you may have to use bridges and it may be more difficult to connect to the Tor network than it is (currently) in the USA. I am very worried that it may soon become just as difficult to use Tor in the USA, so if you want TP to post an explainer on bridges and using Tor in a repressive country, I also would like to see such a blog post.

> every user knows that

In which country? It would really help if you could explain in more detail why you have been frustrated in your unsuccessful attempts (?) to use Tor.

> and your humorous answer is more ridiculous than serious.

Cute :-)

> Tor is govt & google compliant

You said that before, and clearly both claims require explanation and evidence. Please provide them.

> it can't be used without to be registered or recorded, censured.

Tor cannot be used without being... registered? In what countries?

It appears to be true that in some repressive countries, citizens are required to register their real names with social media sites, but I haven't heard of requirements that Tor users register (with... the government?) as Tor users. If you know otherwise, please explain, ideally with a link to a government website stating the regulation in question.

Tor cannot be used without being... recorded?

By NSA, you mean? It is true that the Snowden leaks confirm that NSA attempts to record all encrypted datastreams sent/received anywhere in the world, and Tor datastreams are strongly encrypted, so I agree it follows that in this sense, almost anyone using encryption for any purpose (e.g. connecting to a bank, using a smart phone, not just using Tor) is being "recorded", by NSA and no doubt by other actors with global aspirations.

However, the Snowden leaks also show that NSA and its partners were having great difficulties illicitly decrypting such datastreams c. 2011, so they were (are) trying to store them all for decades, in hopes that quantum decryption with allow them to read everything decades later. But it seems clear that no-one, including NSA, really knows how this will play out during the 21st century.

Further, the Snowden leaks show that NSA was unable to effectively attack Tails, and a salient point here is that at the time of the failed attacks described in the leaks, Tails (and its parent Linux distributions) suffered from some horrible defects which would have made it easy for NSA to compromise Tails users, but they obviously simply did not know about the flaw. This was not a flaw in Tails, but a flaw in the Linux software it had inherited from parent distributions.

(Tails is the "OS on a USB/DVD" which is "amnesiac" and provides careful anonymity protections---Tor Browser and much more--- out of the box. Tails is often used by journalists, medical aid workers, human rights workers and political dissidents in dangerous places. Snowden himself used Tails while preparing to leak. People can donate to tails at tails.boum.org. I am a Tails user, but not affiliated with Tails Project.)

Sadly, these days, for more and more citizens of every nation, every place is dangerous.

For example, see this report from the wonderful people at CitizenLab:

https://citizenlab.ca/2017/12/champing-cyberbit-ethiopian-dissidents-ta…
Champing at the Cyberbit Ethiopian Dissidents Targeted with New Commercial Spyware
Bill Marczak, Geoffrey Alexander, Sarah McKune, John Scott-Railton, and Ron Deibert
6 Dec 2017

> google compliant

I worry about Google too, but I have no idea what you might mean by "Google compliant" or why you think Tor is any such thing, or what you expect Tor Project to do about it.

Customers of US telcos such as Verizon should maybe worry more about Nice (now Cyberbit) than Google, since it appears that these companies have for at least a decade hired Nice to track their own customers. How do they do it? Probably this:

thehill.com/opinion/cybersecurity/363533-how-the-nsa-could-spy-on-any-american-phone-without-congressional
How the NSA could spy on any American phone — without congressional approval
Shay Hershkovitz, opinion contributor
6 Dec 2017

Hershkovitz says its the NSA which is abusing SS7 to record PSTN (public switched telephone network) calls inside the USA, but I think the evidence suggests that it is actually Nice (Cyberbit), and that this company has actually been hired by the big telcos themselves. Note that the implication is that Nice is listening to and recording the calls themselves, possibly in violation of US law. NSA insists that it doesn't do that (to Americans), but it is very likely that it simply snatches the recordings as they exit the USA for Israel, where the Cyberbit spooks work. The Snowden leaks contain many specific examples of the fact that NSA is in the habit, not of notifying victims of foreign espionage (e.g. an Israeli company spying on USPER phone call content), but of happily copying the "take", and passing it on to their own "partners".

To be sure, anyone can claim to be a telecom and abuse SS7 the same way the professionals do.

> Tor was build for uneducated person in danger most often in the usa

You seem to be pushing this claim pretty hard. Trouble is, it is directly contradicted by authoritative statements from the originators of Tor, e.g.

svn.torproject.org/svn/projects/design-paper/tor-design.pdf
Tor: The Second-Generation Onion Router

> The original goal of Tor was to gain experience in deploying an anonymizing overlay net-work, and learn from having actual users...

Nick Matthewson has given more detail in posts to the Tor-talk mailing list, but I can't find them right now. As I recall, he said that NRL (Naval Research Laboratory) was interested in having a way for USG staff deployed to a dangerous location for Americans (a current example would be a US State Dept person posted to the new US embassy in Jerusalem) to communicate, for example from their home, without telegraphing that they are USG employees.

A key element in the original vision was that by providing strong anonymity for all, the USG employees could "hide in the noise". This has proven to be so effective that US LEAs (law enforcement agencies) have used Tor to hide their affiliation while investing on-line drugmarts, for example. Further, some in NRL were apparently enthusiastic about helping political dissidents in repressive countries (this was before 9/11, remember) to communicate with outside groups. This was so effective that the most repressive countries have turned to espionage-as-a-service companies such as Gamma International, Hacking Team, and Cyberbit. For more information, please see this recent item from Wired, by the director of Citizen Lab:

https://www.wired.com/story/evidence-that-ethiopia-is-spying-on-journal…
Evidence That Ethiopia Is Spying on Journalists Shows Commercial Spyware Is Out of Control
Ron Deibert
6 Dec 2017

> Nothing to do with the "world" or a Democracy_Republic ... just a civil report not done before by the officials military forces which police/fbi/cia/nsa.

?

> The next generation of onions will maybe solve that but will not be too late ?

?

> Tor is not exportable : it is prohibited (encryption & to be the owner of your data/hardware) almost everywhere ...

Some civil rights groups attempt to track privacy laws worldwide. This is very difficult and involves precisely the kind of international communication which is enabled by Tor, against the wishes of some governments. According to my understanding, Tor is not explicitly proscribed in very many countries. According to my understanding, the USG prohibition on exporting cryptography has been largely moot since the 1990's "cryptowar", which was decisively *lost* by NSA.

If you can provide specifics of a particular law somewhere in the world, please do so.

> taxes, provocation, brutality, jail, mental hospital etc. until a suicide or a manipulation ...

Sorry, you lost me there.

> usa is not welcome almost everywhere because the rogues states (e.u/fr/uk e.g.) win

You mean to say EU actually *won* something? You mean, like an Olympic medal?

Good for them, they need a win.

> and because the precedent presidents gone too far (& during too much time) in an abject, cruel, cupid, brutal, insane, sick politic & personal deviant behavior : that is a fact, a historic fact.

If you are thinking of such deplorable incidents as the U.S. militaries repeated "accidental" bombing of hospitals run by MSF (Doctors without Borders), then I completely agree that the USG has behaved very badly. Alas, so have many other governments: the RU bombing of civilians in Syria and the Saudi bombing of civilians in Yemen are without doubt among the most atrocious human rights violations of the century... so far.

> I trust more the new president of the united states than the last for listening & reacting with force & good faith.

IMO Obama was the smartest and most likable US President in history, not excepting George Washington (renowned in his own time for his compelling personal magnetism) or FDR. He is also without doubt a war criminal because of the methods (e.g. signature drone strikes) he adopted with such enthusiasm in the so-called GWOT. His immediate predecessor, G. W. Bush, is also a war criminal for the same reason, plus CIA torture and secret prisons. Both men should be prosecuted in the ICC for their crimes, and it is not impossible that eventually they will be.

Unfortunately, other world leaders are clearly also war criminals, e.g.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_military_intervention_in_the_Syri…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_bin_Salman_Al_Saud
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabian-led_intervention_in_Yemen

These people should also be prosecuted in the ICC.

IMO Drump is the most dangerous, mentally incompetent, and emotionally unstable US President in history (not excepting Andrew Jackson or Millard Fillmore), and also the one most prone to authoritarianism, and even to promoting an American genocide. For a review of the warning signs which have historically preceded state-sponsored genocides, see

http://genocidewatch.net/genocide-2/8-stages-of-genocide/

(by a former US diplomat).

IMO, contrary to common perception inside the US, the authoritarian impulse owes more to his troubled nature and to CN influence than to RU influence. And the genocidal impulse arises not from the original Nazis, but from the homegrown American phenomenon which provided so much of the pseudo-intellectual "justification" for Nazi genocides, the KKK.

Sad times, truly sad times...

> Tor runs only on a stable & real democracy

Earlier I think you appeared to say Tor is usable only by people inside the US. It would seem to follow that you believe that the USA is a stable and true democracy.

An authoritative and recent contrary view from inside "the swamp" can be found here:

https://publicintelligence.net/sma-influence-connectedness/

One of the authors of the essays collected in this book frankly admits that the USA has never been a true democracy. And the entire book is full of worries that the USA is far from stable, particularly against internal threats.

You will also be intrigued to find that one author says in essence that Drump and the alt right are more dangerous to the future of the USA than the late and unlamented bin Laden ever was. But another author argues that in order to survive as a single nation the USA will need to become much more authoritarian (after the Chinese model, not the Russian model, I assume).

A few months before his retirement in Oct 2016 as chief of SOCNORTH (the US Special Forces Command division which operates inside the US itself), Rear Adm. Kerry Metz granted an interview to John Gresham (better known as Tom Clancy's collaborator on numerous novels) in which he makes several intriguing statements; see

https://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/interview-with-rear-admiral…

> "For us here at SOCNORTH, it’s everything from counterterrorism to countering WMD to countering transnational organized crime, or helping our Mexican partners with that, [and] civil support, usually to the lead federal agency in our theater, in our case most often the FBI... We spend a lot of time talking, working with, and discussing with our various interagency partners: FBI, DHS [Department of Homeland Security], CIA [Central Intelligence Agency], DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration], the State Department... We could get into a longer discussion on Posse Comitatus, but some people often think that that prevents military personnel from doing anything in the homeland [inside the USA]. That’s not true. There are certain categories of support the military can provide. A piece of equipment, advice… there are many things the U.S. military can do to support whoever the lead federal agency is, and you’re not in violation. It’s direct military participation in law enforcement that Posse Comitatus prevents."

IOW, inside the USA, Special Forces can do everything but arrest or shoot civilians. But that might change:

> ... the work [of SOCNORTH] is becoming more important than we considered it in the past, because while we’ve been doing a great job fighting the “away game,” more and more we get indications that the adversaries are trying to bring it to our court. And we may have to play the home game as well.

IOW, in coming decades, SOCNORTH may be called upon to fight inside the US itself.

This does not sound to me like an expression of undying military faith in the continued political stability of the USA.

Where inside the USA does SOCNORTH expect it may have to fight? A clue comes from another recent military study:

publicintelligence.net/usarmy-megacities/
Megacities and the U.S. Army: Preparing for a Complex and Uncertain Future
6 Dec 2014
Forward by Gen. Ray Odierno, Chief of Staff, US Army.

Upon the personal request of Gen. Odierno, a task force visited and studied several cities with populations of more than a million, cities where Gen. Odierno expects the Army may be called upon to fight in coming decades. As you can see, one of these cities was NYC.

> it is a matter of honestly and N.Y.C is a test or the last refuge.

Are you saying that NYC is the last refuge of democracy?

Bill Blasio will be glad to hear this!

IMO, NYC is currently run too much like a security state for any citizen to feel safe... from the government. But it's a complicated situation and there are also good people in parts of the NYC government, maybe even parts of the US, Russian, Chinese governments. For example, here is a shout out to the health workers in RU who are trying to quell the all-drug-resistant tuberculosis crisis, and the US NGO which helps them.

Unfortunately, the SMA document cited above shows that the elements of the US military regard such international medical aid cooperation as a threat to US "national security".

> We are looking to hold meetings every two months in NYC about other related topics going forward. Future ideas for Tor-focused gatherings are in the works, with input appreciated. Leave a comment below!

Fabulous! TP needs to continually reach out to "techies" in major population centers, in order to build the volunteer base we need to run relays, perform development, assist research, staff help desks, respond to technical/political crises, and reach out to local/national/international media.

NYC is a great place to start organizing regular meetups. I hope this goes well and that success in NYC will eventually lead to regular meetups in other major cities around the world.