What is going on with Tor?

As an outsider I’ve heard that some people have long been underwhelmed with Tor.

Yet at the moment the media around Tor is exploding.

  1. Russia is offering a huge bounty for cracking identities on TOR

  2. Pando head claims that almost everyone involved with TOR was taking money from the US government something close to a million$$ and that this may have had an impact on Snowden.

  3. That the UK government claims to have cracked TOR

  4. If you use TOR the NSA will flag you as an extremist

Does this give confidence that a largely software approach is still viable even in the short run? Being very much an outsider I can only imagine that for software engineers code is never done or good enough and the last thing they want to think about especially in an innovation phase is having to lock down their stuff and give final answers that success may ensure get forever criticized.

In William Hertling’s “A.I. Apocalypse” because of manipulations by cable companies and similar issues the super intelligent A.I. designed hardwired sealed mesh nodes and sold them super cheap as another type of product to get them distributed. Book is about a year old.

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Russia is in a war with the Ukraine. Tor was created by the US Navy. Russia is in a proxy war with NATO/US over the Ukraine.

So of course they want to stop or figure out a way to peel open the onion.

Russia has even gone as far as to sue McDonalds…

To be honest I don’t like the McDonald’s food either. It’s just the timing of these events which is critical. It looks like the start of another Cold War especially with the move to re-open the spying base and the attempt to crowd fund an attack against Tor.

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Well the last cold war seemed fake enough on so many fronts. What a ruse to squash MaidSafe and other technology. Hopefully we don’t have to suffer more posturing brinksmanship or more false flags in the interim. Stopping this kind of stuff is what free speech is for, especially the anonymous kind.

On the one hand Russia is refuge for Snowden but on the other there is a problem with Tor.

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Pretty much the NSA flags anyone that takes an interest in their privacy. If you’re on this forum you’re flagged by the NSA. If you care about open source softeare and/or protecting your privacy you’re flagged by the NSA. Basically if you aren’t a sheeple that’s willing to let the NSA riffle through all your records, your underwear drawer and take it up the ass in every way shape and form while having a big smile on your face and screaming “Oh yeah baby do me harder!” you will most certainly be flagged by the NSA. I don’t really take being flagged by the NSA seriously anymore because they flag pretty much anything that the standard human being should have a right to. And moreover having the state have complete access to all your information but having no access to state information is a gross example of hypocrosy and power imbalance in and of itself.

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The difference is that while Tor was sponsored primarily by the US, the SAFE network is truly NON-national (rather than even international). It is springing forth from people who wish to empower individuals rather than nations or companies, etc. The only common denominator is cooperation to return control of information and communication resources to individuals.

The ironic part of this is that national interests will find that SAFE network is superior for handling their own secure data and communications, so will possibly choose to support it rather than suppress it (perhaps), quietly if not publicly. That it will tend to eliminate manipulation by backdoors and main-force subversion will be a down-side for the big boys, but they will probably be early adopters, despite PR yow-yow to the contrary.

At least we can be sure that we already have spooks involved and will continue to. When the network is established and proven-out, that will increase–unseen to most. But that’s okay because the playing field is level. 10,000 spooks as opposed to 500,000,000 or a couple billion+ individuals able to communicate and hold data securely changes a lot of dynamics over the long term.

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I agree and we often discuss that in the office, its unwise to imagine it is not so. This is where we all need to be able to look at any pull requests we receive and each one needs attention for sure. I think its a good position, assume there are people with nefarious reasons for SAFE and work in a manner to make it not matter. Good call. No point in looking for them either I think, its just life, but its all our job to ensure the code is not polluted. I think that would be hard though as the team are shaping up and pretty well versed in c++ and security analysis tools.

My guess will be the applications will get infiltrated as it may be easier, especially any non open source apps that come from nowhere etc. How we manage that I don’t know, or even if we should bar warning people about closed code. We also need to remember large obscure open source is almost the best place to hide backdoors these days as well. So we all need to keep code very clean modular and maintainable. Tons of tests with high coverage are good as non devs can read those and tinker a little.

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Yeah, OS is not going to automatically mean folks are not putting in crap to infiltrate privacy. I’m really interested to see where closed vs. open code goes with the new safecoin model build in these days (well a little in the future). New project idea. Open Source Press that would team up with devs to search code for nefarious stuff. There might already be something like this today. I’m not sure.

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Can we at least make some conditions on apps that are placed in the app store, that they meet some specified criteria, which if breached mean the app and developer are subject to penalties such as loss of rankings, safecoin earning ability, ultimately removal of the app, or all apps by that developer and so on.

I’m thinking of conditions such as indicating at point of download:

  • what the app does with any information obtained from or about the user
  • whether the app has the ability to debit safecoin (more fine grained that this probably)
  • etc

Wouldn’t the app store just be another app? So we (or whoever runs it) could do anything they wanted with that. I could see multiple app stores with different features: some with those you mention others without…

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Ok, Alan Turing and Julian Assange I get, now what on Earth does A Q Khan have to do with anything? Is this the same guy that you recommended I should read the works of - the guy who gave Pakistan the nuclear bomb? Wtf…ffs. Instead of just loosely alluding to things and beating around the bush, why don’t you just explain why you are such a fan? Then we can comment.
Oh you’ve removed the post now…

no offense. I am going to ignore “Alkafir” posts and double post around where they get in the way

wonderful…so responses get in the way of your babbling soap-box do they? Double post your last deleted post then…just for fun. Your previous statement on a different thread is beginning to make some kind of dark sense now. " My guess is that some day all that babble will become perfectly clear to you and obvious" Ooer…dodgy guy

no offense. I am going to ignore “Alkafir” posts and double post around where they get in the way

Along this line, anyone can make an App Store and there isn’t really an “official” source once the network is free in the wild.

What would work pretty good though is a MaidSafe seal of approval sort of thing, whereby developers we trust are included as side-checkers/co-sponsors of apps. This wouldn’t even have to exclude invasive apps, as some people at some times will be okay with or even desire a lot of stuff to be public. The seal of approval would be a full disclosure thing, or rating for privacy level, etc. Any number of these could coexist on a reputation basis, and app developers could compete to see who could get the most seals of approval from trusted reviewers. Full disclosure is the main thing.

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Yeah, something like this will most likely happen. Also, the reality is that 1, maybe 2, sites will become the go-to.

IMO the internet is more susceptible to Walmartitis (heh, after I wrote that, i realized it really does look like a disease). What I mean by that is when one company dominates a particular sector/industry.

So maybe get ahead of the curve and someone here develop something good/open/honest. There are so many examples of successful app store executions to pull the best bits from.

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There is nothing wrong with a company dominating a sector, just as long as it delivers what people want without harming others.

A belief seems to have grown that we need competition for competitions sake. It has become another state target, much like ever increasing GDP figures.

The reality is - if a company is delivering well and fairly, it may just be down to good and efficient people bring involved. After all, there are very few barriers to entry for creating competitors online. That doesn’t mean it is easy, but it is far from impossible.

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And this is exactly what we have right now. Reviewers whose reputations are built out of money. The really good reviewers are able to make the crucial lie. They roll over only at crucial times. What is the point in trying to recreate the current system?

Honest trending coupled with honest search and delistng of spam and censor regime should be enough. Individual reputation systems allow concentrated power to dictate terms. Individual reputation systems are stigmatizing regimes and there point is censorship.

There is a reason that market domination is against the law. When people who control a company have the opportunity to exploit their customers and squeeze more money out of them, they do. Until we replace business entities with ones that operate according to an ethical rulebook, broad brush anti-competitive rules are inevitable.

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no it isn’t

The reviewer’s reputation would be built on their relevant experience and over time their history of giving fair and balanced reviews by the community and probably bolstered by further peer review too - I expect

.What is the crucial lie?

What is a crucial time?

Please expand/explain

Anybody…?

If they are exploited, they can go elsewhere, assuming a free market. Can Google force you to use Gmail? How about their search engine?

However, if you introduce violence corporations will dominate. Regulations, IP, etc all put up barriers to entry.

Good video here: 4 Free Market Myths Debunked!: - YouTube

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