Considering the staggering number of arrest for online/offensive communications in England & Wales, we should add Britain to the list of Russia and Iran
I’d much rather get arrested in Britain than Russia or Iran. And I certainly wouldn’t put the UK in the same bucket as Russia and Iran. Not even close.
Hate speech is a problem. If it wasn’t, why are Russia and China spending so much on troll farms? It’s a direct attack on a democracy’s ability to form consensus. I don’t think we’ve found the right, effective way to deal with this problem yet, but I applaud any democratic country that tries sth in that area.
That comparison is not only highly inaccurate, it’s also harmful in that it distracts from the real problem at hand.
Putin and Khamenei are ruthless, brutal dictators. You don’t need to like Starmer, but he’s none of that. He’s a proper democrat. The implication that they’re all somewhat the same delegitimises democracies and legitimises these dictators. That’s how they win.
I personally don’t think UK’s age verification thing is a good idea. I like Germany‘s idea of mandating PC and smartphone manufacturers to put simple parental controls in thar parents, not the central government, can enable for their kids.
I love Australia‘s banning of Social media for kids. Let’s see where that leads. I don’t live there but am very excited for rhe outcome of that experiment.
We can’t just sit here and simplify everything to black and white while Russian troll farms polarise our societies. We bear some responsibility here to have a nuanced debate about these things.
I was also surprised the post focusses on Rus/Iran when Australia, UK, and many more countries (Malaysia, Thailand) have/are introducing laws to prevent large swaths of free speech (banning mediums by age, banning conversation by topic, or by making speaking one's mind online too risky, as almost anything now can be interpreted as 'offensive' or 'hate speech').
Yes. I think social media or app bans should count as well, as well as consequences for things posted on social media which are simply opinions. I think killing of journalists should count as well (so probably India, Israel, etc.)
And I think also frivolous suits lodged by the govt at people for their speech. So that would include suing Twitter users for making jokes about the FBI director girlfriend, etc. One of the biggest things to censor speech the US is doing is forcing the sale of TikTok to government friendly group. There are many ways governments censor our speech, and they seem, sadly, to be increasing worldwide
You must keep in mind TOR is funded in large part by the US government. It’s a bad look for them to put their allies in the same list as their enemies.
Legal question for the Tor team (disclaimer, I love Tor and use it in BrowserBox):
- Does Tor need an OFAC license to supply to Russian and Iranian (and other sanctioned entities)? What's your approach to stay compliant and globally helpful? I know 50% of your funding comes from US government (or did a few years back, still?), does this give you extra pathways to engage those regions?
I'm wondering because the system would seem to fall under ITAR due to its encryption, and even if non-ITAR is still a cyber product and these countries are heavily OFAC listed rn.
This is relevant for me right now as I was recetnyl contact by a significant entity in a sanctioned region with a massive deal for BrowserBox. Applying for an OFAC license to see if it's possible to serve them (but we have to make final determination on ethics/legal even if license is approved, I guess). My feeling is that broad sanctions don't hurt the things they are meant to but punish people in all countries from forming transnational links that might actually help to prevent conflicts and build relations however small. Idk, just my reflections after encountring this situation.
OFAC regulates international trade. Isn't Tor's publication an act of pure speech, rather than commerce? They're not charging for it, and they aren't physically moving any goods across borders. How could Tor be subject to any restrictions here?
(not a lawyer, just someone who naively thought the Crypto Wars ended in the 90s)
OFAC applies to trade, like your "massive deal". OFAC's original authority comes from a law titled, literally "The Trading With the Enemy Act".
Tor publishes free software, asking nothing in return. That isn't trade. Neither are those evangelists who broadcast sermons on shortwave radio -- they certainly "serve" Iran in the sense that people in that country can hear their broadcasts.
"Cyber product" lolwut? I think you have been breathing too many beltway fumes.
Folks using nyanpass setup for first hop into a near China hosting provider, then it's usually two additional hops within Asia and then the internet. There's a whole industry / ecosystem of folks who sell this - and set rate limit controls based upon how much you pay etc.
No as long as you pay CN2 GIA rate. Not ratelimited just oversubscribed and bad peering. Purchase the hundred dollar per mbps CN2 GIA dedicated bandwidth its no problem.
The section on conjure is fascinating. For those who haven't followed the refraction networking space, the idea of leveraging unused address space at the ISP level is something academic papers have proposed for years [1]. Seeing it deployed in the wild is huge. The hardest part of this has always been non-technical by the way. Convincing ISPs to cooperate. If the Tor project has managed to get ISPs to route traffic destined for unallocated IPs to a station that handles the handshake, it completely breaks the censor's standard playbook of IP enumeration. You can't just block a specific subnet without risking blocking future legitimate allocations.
I’d be curious to know if these are smaller, sympathetic ISPs or if they managed to partner with larger backbone providers. I'm interested to hear more about this.
2017: ~5,500 arrests
2019: ~7,734 arrests
2023: ~12,183 arrests
Hate speech is a problem. If it wasn’t, why are Russia and China spending so much on troll farms? It’s a direct attack on a democracy’s ability to form consensus. I don’t think we’ve found the right, effective way to deal with this problem yet, but I applaud any democratic country that tries sth in that area.
I also think Tor is great, just for the record.
For Iran and Russia, it is what Khamenei and Putin don't want to hear,
in the UK it's what Starmer doesn't want to hear.
Putin and Khamenei are ruthless, brutal dictators. You don’t need to like Starmer, but he’s none of that. He’s a proper democrat. The implication that they’re all somewhat the same delegitimises democracies and legitimises these dictators. That’s how they win.
I personally don’t think UK’s age verification thing is a good idea. I like Germany‘s idea of mandating PC and smartphone manufacturers to put simple parental controls in thar parents, not the central government, can enable for their kids.
I love Australia‘s banning of Social media for kids. Let’s see where that leads. I don’t live there but am very excited for rhe outcome of that experiment.
We can’t just sit here and simplify everything to black and white while Russian troll farms polarise our societies. We bear some responsibility here to have a nuanced debate about these things.
And I think also frivolous suits lodged by the govt at people for their speech. So that would include suing Twitter users for making jokes about the FBI director girlfriend, etc. One of the biggest things to censor speech the US is doing is forcing the sale of TikTok to government friendly group. There are many ways governments censor our speech, and they seem, sadly, to be increasing worldwide
> No mention of "age verification"
> No mention of people arrested for Twitter posts in the UK and the EU
What did they mean by this?
- Does Tor need an OFAC license to supply to Russian and Iranian (and other sanctioned entities)? What's your approach to stay compliant and globally helpful? I know 50% of your funding comes from US government (or did a few years back, still?), does this give you extra pathways to engage those regions?
I'm wondering because the system would seem to fall under ITAR due to its encryption, and even if non-ITAR is still a cyber product and these countries are heavily OFAC listed rn.
This is relevant for me right now as I was recetnyl contact by a significant entity in a sanctioned region with a massive deal for BrowserBox. Applying for an OFAC license to see if it's possible to serve them (but we have to make final determination on ethics/legal even if license is approved, I guess). My feeling is that broad sanctions don't hurt the things they are meant to but punish people in all countries from forming transnational links that might actually help to prevent conflicts and build relations however small. Idk, just my reflections after encountring this situation.
> product
OFAC regulates international trade. Isn't Tor's publication an act of pure speech, rather than commerce? They're not charging for it, and they aren't physically moving any goods across borders. How could Tor be subject to any restrictions here?
(not a lawyer, just someone who naively thought the Crypto Wars ended in the 90s)
OFAC applies to trade, like your "massive deal". OFAC's original authority comes from a law titled, literally "The Trading With the Enemy Act".
Tor publishes free software, asking nothing in return. That isn't trade. Neither are those evangelists who broadcast sermons on shortwave radio -- they certainly "serve" Iran in the sense that people in that country can hear their broadcasts.
"Cyber product" lolwut? I think you have been breathing too many beltway fumes.
Does basically all network leaving China still get ratelimited at a few megabytes per second?
No as long as you pay CN2 GIA rate. Not ratelimited just oversubscribed and bad peering. Purchase the hundred dollar per mbps CN2 GIA dedicated bandwidth its no problem.
I’d be curious to know if these are smaller, sympathetic ISPs or if they managed to partner with larger backbone providers. I'm interested to hear more about this.
[1] look up tapdance