TOR = open door?

[Marisa H]

Hi,

I was reading on this thread hat using TOR constitutes probable cause for investigation if your ISP is analyzing traffic patterns. This doesn't make sense to me. Authorities need a warrant to search your house but they can just look at your nternet traffic just because you use a publicly available software that you can download from thousands of internet sites? Does anyone have confirmation or refutation of this?


I understand its probably late where you are at, so you may be misinterpreting what your reading. What I am saying here is if your transmitting and receiving over an anonymous network, your ISP is going to know about it, not necessarily exactly what you are transmitting and receiving. However, If your ISP is doing behavioural trends on its traffic by some agency's request directly, indirectly related, or completely unrelated to you, and monitors how many mb/month of your traffic has been logged while using tor, depending on the circumstances thats enough to warrant probable cause to do further inquiries and take further actions on their own behalf, or whatever agency may have approached them. If you're doing some malicious, and think you have to be caught in the act to be prosecuted, you're in for a rude awakening. You said you're not. I dont care if you are or not, but do what you want. :)

[pwnst*r]

Anonymity at the probable cost of security? Lol @ tor

[juancarlospaco]

All non-encrypted internet traffic can be sniffed

[gnomeuser]

would that argument depend on:

a) your ISP doing sufficiently detailed information gathering and logging to determine tor usage

b) that they then openly share this data with authorities

A seems likely though privacy laws generally put a term on logging, B however seems unlikely and probably also downright illegal in many countries.

What business reason would an ISP have to volunteer information about their paying customers to the police. And if they do not do this how would the authorities know that this is taking place outside of tapping your connection (which should require some kind of warrant - which again depends on probably cause which one has to wonder how they would establish).

If this is allowed to happen it would be a terrifying legal situation which must be fixed to ensure the freedom and privacy of the citizens.

[Regenweald]

My sisters were recently shopping online and realized that based on our ip address, We were getting higher prices on the exact same items. She's in NY, we're in the caribbean. So an obvious solution to me was a proxy server/network.
As for probable cause I see no problem with this, when I think Tor, the back of my mind still says child pornogropher. True, some users may need/want absolute anonymity for innocent reasons, but travelling alongside your packets will be some whose senders and receivers need to be locked away for life.

[carjack]

Tor encrypts taffic so your ISP does'nt see what sites you are visiting or downloading, It's only technology and just like the net will be abused by a small percentage

[coolbrook]

Privacy's extinct, homegirl.

[Chronon]

Tor encrypts taffic so your ISP does'nt see what sites you are visiting or downloading, It's only technology and just like the net will be abused by a small percentage

It's only encrypted from point to point within the relay system. The content coming from the exit node to your computer is only encrypted if there's encryption established between your computer and the source (end-to-end).

[Gallahhad]

My sisters were recently shopping online and realized that based on our ip address, We were getting higher prices on the exact same items. She's in NY, we're in the caribbean. So an obvious solution to me was a proxy server/network.
As for probable cause I see no problem with this, when I think Tor, the back of my mind still says child pornogropher. True, some users may need/want absolute anonymity for innocent reasons, but travelling alongside your packets will be some whose senders and receivers need to be locked away for life.
Woah!
I'm a bit shocked.
They drive cars too, so while driving down the freeway, traveling along side the family car may be some drivers that need to be locked away... therefore when I think of people driving cars on a freeway...
Infringing the rights of the many because of the few who abuse them, I don't think that is good policy. Assuming a Tor user is doing CP, wow, that's a tad bit insulting to the majority of the Tor users who are not, don't you think? Please show some data supporting your conclusion. I tend to assume innocent until proven guilty, crazy idea, but I kinda like it.

[CottonCandy]

would that argument depend on:

a) your ISP doing sufficiently detailed information gathering and logging to determine tor usage

b) that they then openly share this data with authorities

A seems likely though privacy laws generally put a term on logging, B however seems unlikely and probably also downright illegal in many countries.

What business reason would an ISP have to volunteer information about their paying customers to the police. And if they do not do this how would the authorities know that this is taking place outside of tapping your connection (which should require some kind of warrant - which again depends on probably cause which one has to wonder how they would establish).

If this is allowed to happen it would be a terrifying legal situation which must be fixed to ensure the freedom and privacy of the citizens.

Have you heard about ACTA? http://www.eff.org/issues/acta

From the 4th paragraph under the section "Why You Should Care About It":

"the same industry rightsholder groups that support the creation of ACTA have also called for mandatory network-level filtering by Internet Service Providers and for Internet Service Providers to terminate citizens' Internet connection on repeat allegation of copyright infringement (the "Three Strikes" /Graduated Response), so there is reason to believe that ACTA will seek to increase intermediary liability and require these things of Internet Service Providers. While mandating copyright filtering by ISPs will not be technologically effective because it can be defeated by use of encryption, efforts to introduce network level filtering will likely involve deep packet inspection of citizens' Internet communications. This raises considerable concerns for citizens' civil liberties and privacy rights, and the future of Internet innovation."

[toupeiro]

Information isn't willingly handed over to authorities, but it can be requested, and potentially subpoenaed. Your ISP cares more about their own @$$ than yours when it comes to potential legal prosecution. But you can believe the fairy tale that Tor prevents anyone from knowing what you're doing if you like. :P

[Regenweald]

Woah!
I'm a bit shocked.
They drive cars too, so while driving down the freeway, traveling along side the family car may be some drivers that need to be locked away... therefore when I think of people driving cars on a freeway...
Infringing the rights of the many because of the few who abuse them, I don't think that is good policy. Assuming a Tor user is doing CP, wow, that's a tad bit insulting to the majority of the Tor users who are not, don't you think? Please show some data supporting your conclusion. I tend to assume innocent until proven guilty, crazy idea, but I kinda like it.

Your analogy is a bit silly. If you need data, go to any LAW enforcement site and have a read. I'd gladly give up all of my privacy if we could wipe that particular group off the planet. If your grocery list and vacations pics are of national importance, fine. But don't give me the innocent until proven guilty crap. That only works in fairy tales and on paper.

[k64]

TOR or sTORm? sTORm is for Windows, and is a worm/botnet. TOR is imply an email client.

[ice60]

it depends where you live. it wouldn't surprise me if it happened here in the uk with our government, but then that's the one time the eu can be useful (as our government has given all its power away to the eu without even a referendum even though it was one of the manifesto promises) anyway lol, if they think you're a terrorist they can probably do it, like our stop and search law - they pass a law specifically for terrorists then use it on everyone for as long as possible, until it's challenged in court and they're told it's unlawful, just like the stop and search law.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8453878.stm

i know this isn't the question, but TOR is totally safe. the thing to remember is it protects your privacy - your isp can't see your destination and the destination doesn't know your true IP. it doesn't encrypt your traffic end-to-end, traffic does travel in the clear through some hops.

[samjh]

But don't give me the innocent until proven guilty crap. That only works in fairy tales and on paper.

Presumption of innocence is not a fairy tale, and its effectiveness is not limited to paper.

[ankspo71]

As far as my ISP goes, I wouldn't trust them not to snoop.

I tried tor back when I was using windows, and I didn't feel that secure with it. I just don't like the idea of having my connections pass through that many more computers.

Is their even such a thing as true anonymity anyways? Browser plugins can give away an identity on site, and probably cookies too if they are enabled. No-script isn't much help if you have to disable it on the site that isn't working because of it. Search engines log everything, and google even blocked some of my custom searches through tor. I think UDP and DNS protocols can transmit little bits of identifiable info too. This is just my opinion on how I think anonymity can't be trusted 100%.

[pwnst*r]

TOR or sTORm? sTORm is for Windows, and is a worm/botnet. TOR is imply an email client.

lol

[Gallahhad]

Your analogy is a bit silly. If you need data, go to any LAW enforcement site and have a read. I'd gladly give up all of my privacy if we could wipe that particular group off the planet. If your grocery list and vacations pics are of national importance, fine. But don't give me the innocent until proven guilty crap. That only works in fairy tales and on paper.
Wow.

[Xbehave]

If you are a Tor node, all your traffic is encrypted until it reaches an exit node, because it is mixed up with others traffic, by the time it reaches that node it is impossible to tell it was yours.

If you use a Tor proxy, the traffic can be snified on it's way to the entry node (if your traffic is encrypted then you are fine)

If you do not use Tor, your ISP can always tell where your traffic is going (even if it is encrypted)

[samjh]

Is their even such a thing as true anonymity anyways? Browser plugins can give away an identity on site, and probably cookies too if they are enabled. No-script isn't much help if you have to disable it on the site that isn't working because of it. Search engines log everything, and google even blocked some of my custom searches through tor. I think UDP and DNS protocols can transmit little bits of identifiable info too. This is just my opinion on how I think anonymity can't be trusted 100%.

Complete anonymity is a myth. The only way to be completely anonymous is to do something very wild, like living alone in the Kalahari Desert. If you want to have any useful connection to modern civilisation, you won't be able to live completely under the radar.

[soni1770]

Your analogy is a bit silly. If you need data, go to any LAW enforcement site and have a read. I'd gladly give up all of my privacy if we could wipe that particular group off the planet. If your grocery list and vacations pics are of national importance, fine. But don't give me the innocent until proven guilty crap. That only works in fairy tales and on paper.



They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.



ummm, who said this.....



http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin

[Chronon]

Complete anonymity is a myth. The only way to be completely anonymous is to do something very wild, like living alone in the Kalahari Desert. If you want to have any useful connection to modern civilisation, you won't be able to live completely under the radar.

That's more secrecy than anonymity. Anonymity suggests that you transmit information to others in a way such that your identity is hidden or unknown. Living alone in the Kalahari means you aren't transmitting any information to anyone.