Re: German Tor Legal Fund
This is for germans only. The non-germans may excuse this. Du sprichst mir aus der Seele. Ich denke auch seit einiger Zeit darüber nach, aber es wird Zeit, daß wir den Arsch hochkriegen. Ich habe sogar schon einen Namen ausgedacht: wie wärs mit German Tor Operators, z.B. GTO e.V. Vereinszwecke könnten sein: - Finanzierung eines Vereinsanwaltes, der sich mit der Materie auskennt und den Mitgliedern Hilfestellung leistet. Wie das genau funktioniert, muss im Detail geklärt werden. - Leute, die tor-Server betreiben möchten, aber aus Angst davor zurückschrecken, könnten Spenden an den GTO eV leisten, und der GTO betreibt die Server. - Der Verein sorgt dafür, daß die Server in Deutschland bei möglichst vielen unterschiedlichen Hostern stehen, um der Gefahr vorzubeugen, daß ein großer Hoster auf einen Schlag alle tor-Knoten abstellt. - Ebenso können Knoten in anderen Ländern betrieben werden, der Fachanwalt wird ermitteln können, in welchen Ländern günstige rechtliche Bedingungen herrschen. Was der Verein NICHT leisten sollte: PR für tor. Das wird ja bereits durch andere Organisationen gemacht, und wenn der GTO damit auch noch anfängt, wird es zu einer Zersplitterung der Kräfte kommen. Ich bin also dabei. Ich habe aber keine Ahnung von Recht und relativ wenig Zeit. Kennt jemand einen guten Anwalt, der Bürgerrechtsideale ein Anliegen sind und der Lust hat, schon bei der Vereinsgründung dabeizusein? Ich denke, das wäre ein günstiger Weg, um schnell zum Ziel zu kommen. Erstes Treffen: bald. Thomas Hluchnik Am Donnerstag, 15. November 2007 00:36 schrieb Alexander W. Janssen: This is to all german Tor-operators about the possibilty to found a german Tor legal fund. In german. Obviously. Hallo Kameraden, so langsam wird es Zeit. Ich hatte selber schon drei Verfahren gegen mich, die mich jetzt schon viele hundert Euro an Anwaltsrechnung kosten. Heute habe ich von jemanden gelesen, den es in einem Verfahren so richtig erwischt hat: Keinen Freispruch, sondern Einstellung nach §153 StPO. Das kann es doch nicht sein. Um es zusammenzufassen: Das Betreiben eines Tor-Nodes in Deutschland ist (noch) nicht illegal. So etwas wie Beihilfe gibt es nicht. Behilfe muss immer eine konkrete, aktive Tat sein, die es bei Tor in dieser eng definerten Form nicht gibt. Eine Menge Leute haben nun schon mit der Strafverfolgung in der einen oder anderen Art zu Tun gehabt. Es gibt in Deutschland noch keine Organisation, die sich um Leute mit geringen finanziellen Mittel kümmert. Wenn es nicht zu einem Verfahren kommt und man nicht freigesprochen wird, gibt es kaum eine Möglichkeite, irgendwie seine Kosten für die Verteidigung wiederzubekommen. Jedoch habe ich im engeren und erweitertem Bekanntenkreis doch schon festgestellt, dass die Bereitschaft, für solche Vorfälle zu spenden, eindeutig vorhanden ist. Warum nicht einen Verein gründen? Spenden annehmen. Anwälte bezahlen. Operator raushauen. So etwas gibt es in Deutschland noch nicht. Aber es wird Zeit, dass wir so etwas bekommen. Wer hat Zeit und das nötige Aussdauervermögen, so etwas durchzuziehen? Wer kennt sich im Vereinsrecht aus? Wer hat sowas schon einmal gemacht? Ich bin dabei. Ich habe so langsam die Faxen dicke. Man wird von vorne bis hinten so richtig durchgenudelt, obwohl man nur seine Bürgerrechte wahrnimmt. Datenvorratsspeicherung hin oder her: So langsam muss Schluss sein. Anfragen und Angebote bitte per Email *verschlüsselt* direkt an mich: [EMAIL PROTECTED], keyid 90DEE171. Bis bald! Mit Ringos Worten: Kamerad Alex. pgpPqnTH3RSJj.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: News orgs should be interested in running tor nodes
Am Donnerstag, 15. November 2007 07:29 schrieb Roger Dingledine: On Wed, Nov 14, 2007 at 10:48:33PM +0100, Thomas Hluchnik wrote: Has anyone ever tried to speak with the guys from SPIEGEL, FAZ, Sueddeutsche and so on that they drive own tor nodes? This would be good PR for tor. If not yet, is there anybody who has contact to news orgs? If the great news orgs in germany would have own tor nodes, they would become more sensitive about what we are fighting for. Rather than trying to get them to operate their own hardware, we might make more progress just trying to help them understand the good uses and good users for Tor. What you say is right, but if for example the SPIEGEL drives some tor exits by themselves and police seizes them it is something different for the SPIEGEL journalists. So the SPIEGEL is dircectly involved and they have much more awareness about what goes on with tor. Furthermore they would (I hope so) provide some infos in their Contact area on their website how to use anonymization tor contacting journalists or the SPIEGEL office. And thats waht I want. They shell be directly involved, not just reporting about that. Thomas Hluchnik pgp5MhGK88lBG.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: German Tor Legal Fund
Hi German Tor operators, This is for germans only. The non-germans may excuse this. Vorschlag: Weiter diskutieren auf eigener ML, dann fluten wir nicht die or-talk. Weitere Zwischenstände der Diskussionen und Resultate kann man dann auf der or-talk wieder für alle verständlich einspeisen. Es gab/gibt doch die ML der deutschen Tor Admins? Ich bin da nicht auf dem Laufenden. Falls dort auch Middleman Tor Admins willkommen sind, würde ich mich auch dort eintragen. -- Ciao Kai http://kairaven.de/
Re: News orgs should be interested in running tor nodes
Thomas Hluchnik schrieb: Has anyone ever tried to speak with the guys from SPIEGEL, FAZ, Sueddeutsche and so on that they drive own tor nodes? This would be good PR for tor. Heise and ZEIT will not run tor node, I asked them 2 month ago. May be, they will change the opinion next time. The journalist organisation Berliner Journalisten has run a tor node for 2 month and the node was closed few times ago. This tor node is now gpfTOR1 and is supported by the German Privacy Foundation (see other mailing). So far about our journalists in Germany. It seems, they are not ready for this step at the moment. We will organize some meetings with journalist organizations and Roger, when he stay in Berlin. Hope, this will bring up a tor node. Please Roger contact us directly at: http://v6ni63jd2tt2keb5.onion/contact.htm
German Privacy Foundation (was Tor legal fund)
Alexander W. Janssen schrieb: Am Donnerstag, den 15.11.2007, 01:19 +0100 schrieb [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [... Privacy Foundation ...] Ich habe gerade eine Anfrage an die Privacy Foundation geschickt und sie gebeten, mir zur erklären, was folgender Passus[1] bedeutet: In Ausnahmefällen bietet die German Privacy Foundation e.V. auch Rechtsbeistand für private Betreiber von Anonymisierung-Servern. Hi tor admins, German version for Krauts: das folgende ist eine inoffizielle Antwort vom Admin-Team der German Privacy Foundation e.V. i.Gr, dies ist nicht(!) die abschließende Beurteilung des Vorstandes: 1: Die Foundation ist derzeit noch in Gründung. Wir haben absolut kein Geld. Selbst unsere Server müssen wir als Admins selbst selbst bezahlen, es gibt keinen Zuschuss von der Foundation. Zu erwartende Rechtsstreitigkeiten werden von den Mitgliedern gemeinsam getragen. 2: Es ist zu erwarten, dass sich diese Situation in kommenden halben Jahr mit der Anerkennung der Gemeinnützigkeit bessert, so dass wir ein Konto für Probleme einrichten können und auch Spenden annehmen. Derzeit können wir keine Zusagen machen, die wir finanziell nicht abschätzen können. 3: Wir haben eine Basis für einen Verein, dessen Ziel die Aufrechterhaltung einer anonymen Infrastruktur im WWW ist (nicht nur TOR, auch für andere Projekte). Im Gegensatz zum AK Vorratsdatenspeicherung, der in erster Linie politisch arbeitet, wollen wir vor allem auf technisch/juristischer Ebene tätig werden. 4: Wir haben ausgezeichnete Pressekontakte und sind auf dem Weg, juristische Unterstützung auf Abruf als Rückendeckung zu organisieren. Es ist nicht einfach, einen neuen Verein aufzubauen. 5: Es ist in der Foundation Konsens, dass wir nicht die juristische Verantwortung für einen Server übernehmen, zu dem wir keinen Root-Zugang haben. Unsere Server werden im Team betreut und die darauf laufenden Dienste sind mit dem Vorstand abgestimmt. 6: Zur Unterstützung von TOR-Admins versuchen wir vielfältige Varianten, beispielsweise Schulungen für Juristen und Strafverfolger zum Wesen von Anonymisierungsdiensten. Ein mit Kosten verbundener Rechtsbeistand ist nicht die einzige Möglichkeit und kann auch missbraucht werden. Meldet euch rechtzeitig, nicht erst, wenn das Kind im Brunnen liegt! 7: Wer einen eigenen Verein für seinen Server gründen möchte, braucht mindestens 7 Mitglieder. Er kann sich an uns wenden. Wir können Hilfe bei der Ausarbeitung einer Satzung bieten, bei der Erlangung der Gemeinnützigkeit, Pressekontakte usw. Viele kleine Vereine sind in unseren Augen durchaus eine Alternative zu einem Monster-Verein, der immer größer und behäbiger wird. Soweit zur GPF e.V. Es hat einige Monate gebraucht, um diesen Stand zu erreichen. Vereins-Meierei ist ein komplexe Angelegenheit in Germany. Eine offizielle Stellungnahme des Vorstandes wird folgen.
RE: court trial against me - the outcome
A judge found you guilty without hearing from you, nor summoning you to a trial? That sounds like a ... dangerous procedure. Well, I This is a common procedure here for smaller offenses. AFAIK it is often used if people appeal to fines resulting of speed tickets and the like. suppose you could see it as equivalent to an offer by the public ministry to settle. Maybe. I'm not sure. The most important purpose of this procedure is that they don't want to hold a real trial and thus save money. It's usually just not worthwile to do the whole trial dance if the outcome is a fee of let's say 100 EUR or maybe a warning only. They offered me to dismiss the actual court trial according to paragraph 153 StPO which is not the same as an acquittal (no Freispruch) which I eventually accepted. My German is not that fresh anymore, but it seems to say that if your guilt is low and they don't find any interest for society at large to prosecute you, they can choose not to prosecute. Is that what that paragraph says? Yes, this is what the paragraph says. Unfortunately it implies that I am indeed somehow guilty. I wouldn't have accepted it if the judge and the public prosecutor hadn't made clear that otherwise they would have tried really hard to construct this aiding and abetting thing. :-( Bye, KK, T-Zee -- |Mirko Thiesen We're with you all the way, mostly| |[EMAIL PROTECTED]| http://www.kyb.mpg.de/ | |MPI for Biological Cybernetics| Phone: +49-7071-601-638| |Spemannstr. 38, D-72076 Tuebingen | FAX: +49-7071-601-616| smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
RE: court trial against me -
Hi, 1: by German law a Tor node admin is something like an access provider. You are not responsible for your traffic. If the court have only an IP address and you have a tor status log, they have nothing. 2: Tor is a legal service in Germany (today and yesterday, tomorrow we will see). If you provided only a legal service, it is no way to construct a case of aiding and abetting and you are not a disquieter or something like that. I know these facts. The problem is that obviously neither the judge nor the public prosecutor knew them. The lesson I learned is that a judge doesn't like to be told that her opinion a) is not logical and b) does not conform to the laws she is bound to. 3: May be, there is a judge, who do not these facts. The law depends not only on one judge. Dont give up. This might be true, but for me the situation is as follows: Currently I live in this small village called Tuebuingen with a quite clear number of judges and public prosecutors. See, this is the countryside here. It's not like Hamburg, Berlin, Koeln. If you fight here, chances are that you might face a strong opposition. Also, this court (Amtsgericht Tuebingen) is the exact same court that sentenced a student to pay a fine for wearing a crossed-out(!) swastika not so long ago. Details can be found here: http://www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/wunderbar/0,1518,407112,00.html (German only). It might have even been the same judge as the article mentions a Richterin (female judge) and I suppose there are not that many female judges here in Tuebingen. With these facts in mind, I decided to agree to the paragraph 153 thing. Yes, I might have given up. And I think it will bother me for a long, long time. After the trial was over yesterday I was so disappointed that I considerd quitting my job and moving back to Berlin or at least away from the south. But that would be just an additional punishment for me. 4: You need help. Try to contact the following organizations: [...] Thanks, but AFAIK there is nothing I can do anymore as a dismissal according to paragaph 153 can't be appealed to. Maybe contacting these organizations before the trial was held could have helped. But my impression was that the people involved were only interested in telling me what a bad person I am and not in serving up justice. I mean, look at the facts: Someone ordered an electronic voucher. This voucher is usually just an email containing some kind of unique database identifier. Why didn't they just contact amazon.de again and asked them where they actually sent the goods that were ordered with this voucher to? And doesn't Web.de here in Germany verify postal addresses of all their freemail customers by sending them a letter containing a code they have to enter in order to activate their email account? So why didn't they ask Web.de for the real address of the person who ordered the voucher? The answer is as sad as it is disappointing: The just didn't care about the case itself. They saw that someone commited a crime, and so someone - be it the right person or not - had to be blamed for it. By the way (for other admins), it is not a good solution, to ignore the first letter. Go to the visit and explain, what you have done and what you have not done. In my case the police obviously didn't have a clue about what was going on. It would have been so easy to figure out that the IP address amazon.de had in their log files actually belonged to a Tor node. See, I'm not the kind of person that generally distrusts the police, the government, or any authority just because they are an authority. I somehow even like the police - they saved me from trouble lots of years ago. But I don't know if the police officer who asked me to come by would have understood what I could have told him. I'm not sure he would have believed me. So I didn't see any chances of improving the situation for me by talking to the police. However, being the talkative person I happen to be, I was really afraid of talking me into more trouble than I was already in. And this is exactly the reason why the legislator leaves it up to you whether you talk to the police or not. Looking back, it might have been better to talk to the police in the first place. But then again - who knows? Bye, KK, T-Zee -- |Mirko Thiesen We're with you all the way, mostly| |[EMAIL PROTECTED]| http://www.kyb.mpg.de/ | |MPI for Biological Cybernetics| Phone: +49-7071-601-638| |Spemannstr. 38, D-72076 Tuebingen | FAX: +49-7071-601-616| smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
Re: court trial against me - the outcome
Am Donnerstag, 15. November 2007 schrieb Mirko Thiesen: A judge found you guilty without hearing from you, nor summoning you to a trial? That sounds like a ... dangerous procedure. Well, I This is a common procedure here for smaller offenses. AFAIK it is often used if people appeal to fines resulting of speed tickets and the like. Happened to me also here in Germany. I was assumed to be guilty before investigations started, and after investigators (police) had found out that I had nothing to do with the crime I was charged with, I got a notice that investigations were stopped. That's all. Now my files rests in the shelves for 10 years, and I doubt that they will not have an effect if again some doubt comes up about my doings... Martin -- Dr. Martin Senftleben, Ph.D. (S.V.U.) http://www.drmartinus.de/ http://www.daskirchenjahr.de/ signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Soliciting Opinions on xB Browser How To Build doc
Greetings, We've rewritten xB Browser to version 2.0.0.9/10 and are about to introduce some new functionality to it. I thought this would be a lovely time to take a step back and acquiesce to some prior requests for a doc on how to build xB Browser from scratch. I've got some questions, and hopefully you've got some opinions and maybe requests of your own. 1. Given the somewhat complicated layout mechanisms in Mozilla, would you be willing to have instructions that say to the effect Go to View|Toolbar|Customize and drag button xyz to the toolbar where desired or do we demand to see a file-based placement? 2. Given the above, you will get users placing the toolbar items or buttons in slightly different order, or editing a file with an editor that may not have the same /$r/$n EOL functions, thus we will end up with different hashes/sizes from one user to the other, despite them being the same build. Is that acceptable? What is an acceptable alternative if not? Regards, Steve
A question of preferences
I'm writing the preferences for the xB Browser, and I've been thinking about the problem of users who are smart enough to be dangerous to themselves. I'm talking about those that jump into the proxy settings and think they are speeding things up by changing to a direct connection or auto-detect. Well, yeah, they're speeding up alright, but at the cost of breaking their anonymity. So it occurs to me I can keep those settings from being persistent (nothing can stop someone who is determined to wreck their privacy). I can do this by employing the user.js, which over-rides whatever the users sets in their prefs.js files. Therefore, I am thinking about what settings should be hard-coded on browser/client startup. The goal was The purpose of user.js is to hardcode browser settings to keep users from compromising their network anonymity beyond preferences. That means for Tor/SSH usage, the browser needs to block plugins. That means for VPN usage, the browser doesn't need to block plugins. So now we're talking about two different user.js files entirely. OK fine. But we get to a new point where we have to decide what things should and shouldn't be blocked from being persistent from one session to the next. Of the following, beyond proxy settings, I'm thinking we should keep persistent: network.dns.disableIPv6 = true ; ipv6 addresses fail through tor. network.proxy.socks_remote_dns = true network.proxy.failover_timeout = 0 ;always retry the proxy, never revert. layout.css.report_errors = false ;get rid of java console errors There are other privacy related settings such as DOM and session info that are a grey area, but I am thinking those don't meet the above goal, and thus should be left as preferences for the user. Comments and suggestions welcome, Steve
Re: court trial against me - the outcome
There is already a thread about this organization/fund. I am watching it carefully because I am interested. It looks for like like we need a legal costs insurance (Rechtschutzversicherung) for tor admins. Gruesse Robert On Wednesday 14 November 2007 22:16, Robert Hogan wrote: On Wednesday 14 November 2007 20:47:50 you wrote: This country needs an revolution! Maybe! ;) In the meantime, solidarity among Tor operators would go a long way. If that case had been for 100,000 euro you might now find yourself with a date in court. Who would you turn to in such a situation? We need to create a body that we can all turn to, and only we as a group can create it. Would you be willing to contribute time to creating such an organization? Do you have any contacts who could advise on how to establish it? If so, let me know. And apologies in advance for contacting you directly if it is unwelcome.
Re: Soliciting Opinions on xB Browser How To Build doc
Arrakis wrote: Greetings, We've rewritten xB Browser to version 2.0.0.9/10 and are about to introduce some new functionality to it. I thought this would be a lovely time to take a step back and acquiesce to some prior requests for a doc on how to build xB Browser from scratch. I've got some questions, and hopefully you've got some opinions and maybe requests of your own. 1. Given the somewhat complicated layout mechanisms in Mozilla, would you be willing to have instructions that say to the effect Go to View|Toolbar|Customize and drag button xyz to the toolbar where desired or do we demand to see a file-based placement? 2. Given the above, you will get users placing the toolbar items or buttons in slightly different order, or editing a file with an editor that may not have the same /$r/$n EOL functions, thus we will end up with different hashes/sizes from one user to the other, despite them being the same build. Is that acceptable? What is an acceptable alternative if not? I suggest you use an automated build system. Make[0] should do the job. Basically all modern software projects are built with some sort of build system, it's probably a good idea to use something that everyone can acquire and use for free. Regards, Jacob [0] http://www.gnu.org/software/make/
Re: court trial against me - the outcome
I actually know of such a company that is interested in supplying tor legal insurance in DE. Is anyone interested? Steve linux wrote: There is already a thread about this organization/fund. I am watching it carefully because I am interested. It looks for like like we need a legal costs insurance (Rechtschutzversicherung) for tor admins. Gruesse Robert On Wednesday 14 November 2007 22:16, Robert Hogan wrote: On Wednesday 14 November 2007 20:47:50 you wrote: This country needs an revolution! Maybe! ;) In the meantime, solidarity among Tor operators would go a long way. If that case had been for 100,000 euro you might now find yourself with a date in court. Who would you turn to in such a situation? We need to create a body that we can all turn to, and only we as a group can create it. Would you be willing to contribute time to creating such an organization? Do you have any contacts who could advise on how to establish it? If so, let me know. And apologies in advance for contacting you directly if it is unwelcome.
Re: court trial against me - the outcome
Arrakis schrieb: I actually know of such a company that is interested in supplying tor legal insurance in DE. Is anyone interested? Yes, I am. Greets -- BlueStar88 PGPID: 0x36150C86 PGPFP: E9AE 667C 4A2E 3F46 9B69 9BB2 FC63 8933 3615 0C86 signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Soliciting Opinions on xB Browser How To Build doc
Jacob, This might be able to work, assuming we figure out if there are any dependencies for win32 Make. Actually, I could probably even have Make curl, verify, and unpack the latest Tor, Firefox, etc. Still doesn't solve all the GUI settings issues, but I guess it is a general step in the right direction. Steve Jacob Appelbaum wrote: Arrakis wrote: Greetings, We've rewritten xB Browser to version 2.0.0.9/10 and are about to introduce some new functionality to it. I thought this would be a lovely time to take a step back and acquiesce to some prior requests for a doc on how to build xB Browser from scratch. I've got some questions, and hopefully you've got some opinions and maybe requests of your own. 1. Given the somewhat complicated layout mechanisms in Mozilla, would you be willing to have instructions that say to the effect Go to View|Toolbar|Customize and drag button xyz to the toolbar where desired or do we demand to see a file-based placement? 2. Given the above, you will get users placing the toolbar items or buttons in slightly different order, or editing a file with an editor that may not have the same /$r/$n EOL functions, thus we will end up with different hashes/sizes from one user to the other, despite them being the same build. Is that acceptable? What is an acceptable alternative if not? I suggest you use an automated build system. Make[0] should do the job. Basically all modern software projects are built with some sort of build system, it's probably a good idea to use something that everyone can acquire and use for free. Regards, Jacob [0] http://www.gnu.org/software/make/
Re: Soliciting Opinions on xB Browser How To Build doc
Arrakis wrote: Jacob, This might be able to work, assuming we figure out if there are any dependencies for win32 Make. Actually, I could probably even have Make curl, verify, and unpack the latest Tor, Firefox, etc. Still doesn't solve all the GUI settings issues, but I guess it is a general step in the right direction. Every successful software project I can think of uses an automated build process of sorts. If you make UI changes, they will eventually find their way into a file. How to modify these things isn't something you'd need to place into an automated build process. It's something you'd want to put into another document. Your default settings are the files left after tweaking things to fit your desires. Build your project in an automated way around files that are already created properly. What you ship is what needs to be automated. This allows someone to take your shipped binary and validate your claims. If you're using subversion, you can easily make a single subversion server that uses external subversion repositories. This means that you can have Tor and other projects automatically pulled for a specific given revision. It should result in something stable without having to specifically release any code from those projects. This is useful because it means that users would be getting the source of those projects from their main distribution points and not you. Make is very useful though it might not fit your needs because of your desire to build the software on windows. However, it seems that you're using lots of software that depends on it for building anyway. Have you considered trying to make this work with cygwin and automating everything in simple terms? Once you have something simple, you can build something more complex. Regards, Jacob
Re: Soliciting Opinions on xB Browser How To Build doc
Jacob, It is a little out of the way to take a win32 program and put the build environment in something that isn't convenient for the end-user who would be doing the build and verification process. So changing operating systems or requiring cygwin installation isn't conducive. I'll see if we can keep it win32. But if we had to, we could probably build in in nix. And you're right about the default file issue. Just a method of preference but it would be nice if our distro hash was the same as our build hash. Steve Jacob Appelbaum wrote: Arrakis wrote: Jacob, This might be able to work, assuming we figure out if there are any dependencies for win32 Make. Actually, I could probably even have Make curl, verify, and unpack the latest Tor, Firefox, etc. Still doesn't solve all the GUI settings issues, but I guess it is a general step in the right direction. Every successful software project I can think of uses an automated build process of sorts. If you make UI changes, they will eventually find their way into a file. How to modify these things isn't something you'd need to place into an automated build process. It's something you'd want to put into another document. Your default settings are the files left after tweaking things to fit your desires. Build your project in an automated way around files that are already created properly. What you ship is what needs to be automated. This allows someone to take your shipped binary and validate your claims. If you're using subversion, you can easily make a single subversion server that uses external subversion repositories. This means that you can have Tor and other projects automatically pulled for a specific given revision. It should result in something stable without having to specifically release any code from those projects. This is useful because it means that users would be getting the source of those projects from their main distribution points and not you. Make is very useful though it might not fit your needs because of your desire to build the software on windows. However, it seems that you're using lots of software that depends on it for building anyway. Have you considered trying to make this work with cygwin and automating everything in simple terms? Once you have something simple, you can build something more complex. Regards, Jacob
Re: Why Are We Waiting for the Cavalry to Ride In? (was Re: court trial against me - the outcome)
On Wed, Nov 14, 2007 at 07:55:12PM +, Robert Hogan wrote: Secondly, your case is proof, if proof were needed, that Tor is still a project without a rock-solid layman's analogy. Every Tor server operator that ends up explaining Tor to a non-technical or even just plain skeptical audience will encounter the same problem until the crack of doom unless we all put our heads together and document one. Agreed. Part of the challenge here is that different analogies work for different people. Explaining why anonymity is useful for individuals in the US may not quite be the same as for individuals in Europe, and is probably quite different than for individuals in Guatemala. And explaining it for law enforcement is different from explaining it for road warrior executives is diferent from soldiers ... Some of the technically oriented folks don't like dumbed down analogies, because while they may do a great job at explaining some aspects of Tor, they mislead the reader about other aspects of Tor. On the flip side, we haven't found an analogy that is technically accurate and not misleading, yet can be given in a single sentence. We get half a million hits each day on the website; I bet we could do a lot better job at teaching our audience about privacy issues on the Internet than we do now. I've been pondering for a little while that maybe we should run a 'Tor analogy competition', akin to the GUI competition we ran a few years back. I have no idea who would judge it though. Thirdly, Tor operators of the world need to unite. The Tor project is not our daddy. There is no Tor Project cavalry over the hill about to ride in with a coachload of free lawyers. We need to establish a fighting fund for exactly these sorts of cases. This fund needs to be managed by a compaign group in such a way that it doesn't undermine the anonymity of the network we all help provide. I believe informal ad-hoc donations won't cut it. There needs to be an organized body that can accumulate wisdom, develop public credibility and even distribute funds to cover basic legal costs or more. I think you should divide the above suggestion into two pieces. I am all for creating an information center to teach people how to explain Tor, to hook them up with lawyers in their area, to give contact info for law enforcement in their area who have already seen a Tor talk, to explain some of what will hopefully one day be regarded as common sense (such as if the police think you might be a criminal and ask you to explain to them how the Internet works, and you ignore them, they're probably to keep thinking you're a criminal), and to actively build a local community of educatied lawyers, law enforcement, etc. There are quite a few lawyers in the US who would be happy to give advice (see Tor's legal FAQ), and we know some in Germany and other countries. For example, I send anybody with a legal question in Germany to Julius Mittenzwei, and hopefully he introduces them to useful people after that. It would be good to have more volunteers than just Julius that we can send people to. And it would be great to have more coordinators than just in the US and Germany -- there are other countries than these two, after all. But as I've found over the past few years, you really really need a coordinator inside each country who knows the right people and keeps track of local policies and laws. Somebody who knows all the coordinators, and who travels a lot and can keep up to speed on a lot of the issues, would be useful to help coordinate the coordinators. I'll continue to do what I can do to help, but I fear I'm wearing rather too many hats these days as it is. So yes, organizing better would be fabulous, along with then educating people more about the fact that people *are* organized. But collecting money and promising to fund the defense of anybody who gets in trouble? That brings in a host of complexities. No group of lawyers I've ever met promises to defend people before they've heard about the specifics of the case and the defendant. It simply wouldn't make sense for them to make a blanket promise only to find out later on that the defendant has some side hobby or past history that undermines the case. So I would argue that you already would have a huge challenge, and would do what most needs to be done, even if there aren't any funds being distributed. Hope that helps, --Roger
Re: Tor on the OLPC?
On Thu, Nov 15, 2007 at 05:42:54PM -0800, Jacob Appelbaum wrote: I just purchased one of the OLPC laptops that's shipping in theory before next year[0]. I'm curious if anyone has gotten Tor installed and running on an OLPC? Yes, I've heard it runs Tor just fine. Many of the OLPC developers use Tor on their laptop. They live down the street from Nick and me, in fact. :) The real question they've been pondering is not does it run Tor, but should it come with Tor pre-installed. After all, they don't want all these kids getting profiled and getting into local databases and so on. But alas, I don't think Tor is ready for a few million more users yet, a) because they would just add load to the network and not help relay, b) because our development pace is still too fast to point to a given Tor installation and say that's Tor and it'll work next year too, and c) because Tor is only part of the security/privacy puzzle and rest of the puzzle still needs a whole lot of work. These are on our todo list though. :) --Roger
