On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 11:10:36AM -0400, Chris Dagdigian wrote: > > Seriously? I spent some time trying to parse Juan's various messages > yesterday to try to understand his point of view ... if you remove all of > the insults and snide remarks the only concrete position I could discern was > that he was legit upset over the marketing/PR approach of the Tor project. > He wants the Tor project to do better messaging to make it clear that Tor > can't protect anyone who may be facing an adversary with nation-state levels > of technical resources. He feels strongly that the project should not > advertise or promise "anonymity" given that it's pretty clear now that > someone with significant resources and technical assets can de-cloak > individual Tor users who catch their attention.
Vitriol aside, the problem is that you don't get to just apply your own intuitive decisions about the meaning of technical terms and then complain based on that. To get out of my own technical area to one I'm guessing is more familiar to those who seem to favor political points regardless if they make any scientific sense: I could say that democracy is when each person in a society has a say (vote) on any law or official decision that society makes. This is not entirely unintuitive (and I really don't want to get into quibbles about what's a person, etc.) One problem is that, whether that definition is right or wrong, there are almost no democracies anywhere, and everyone recognizes that this couldn't scale to societal size in practice. The closest to this definition in the U.S. might be New England town meetings. But even small towns typically elect officials to decide various things. Somebody who decides that is how the term must be used and thus runs around saying "that's not democratic" about every action of a town council or school board is not contributing anything constructive by doing so. The Tor Project remains the exemplar of being up front about what it provides and doesn't, what needs improvement, what people have found about weaknesses etc. (I know simply saying nobody is doing it better is not an excuse for not trying harder, but it is a standard of reasonableness). "Anonymity" has some intuitive meaning that has been articulated to multiple meanings as lots of precise mathematical and technical analysis teases intuitions out. If you have a better single word than 'anonymity' that conveys to people who don't want to read all that technical mumbo-jumbo what Tor provides, I think we would all be happy to use it. (Well I would anyway.) > > I actually sort of agree with that argument but sadly it was lost amidst a > deluge of venomous words - the same sort of aggressive "you are all just > useful idiots of the DOD/NSA" word salad stuff that causes people to hit the > delete key right away. And 100% a contribution to worsening signal-to-noise > ratio on this list. > > Beyond suggesting that the project do better PR/Marketing about the real > levels of privacy/anonymity offered I can't think of any other useful point > raised. Everything else was just a rehash of what you hear from people who > think the projects origin, backers and developers make it unsuitable for use > by anyone at any time. Not new and not interesting at all. Thanks. I do think Tor people work hard not just making good things to make the Internet a safer more secure place but also trying to figure out how to articulate that usefully to the broader public. I can say that many times when I have suggested some more precise description of what is provided, people who understand public communications way better than me, gently pat me on the head and explain that nobody's going to understand what I just said and/or that people will grab some technical nuance in it and draw the totally opposite conclusion of what is intended. Constructive contributions there, as in the technology itself, would always be welcome. aloha, Paul > > My $.02 of course > > Spencer wrote: > > > >Juan's comments, in particular, have been most valuable in pointing out > >the network's shortcomings in this area. > > -- > tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk@lists.torproject.org > To unsubscribe or change other settings go to > https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk > -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk@lists.torproject.org To unsubscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
