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Raise your hand if you have something so important to talk about that you would actually need this. Okay, you with your hand raised...stay right there...someone will be right over to talk to you shortly. :cool:

The Tor Foundation is moving forward with a plan to provide its own instant messaging service. Called the Tor Instant Messaging Bundle, the tool will allow people to communicate in real time while preserving anonymity by using chat servers concealed within Tor’s hidden network.
 
Considering our government is becoming more and more like China or Russia (massive spying, the IRS targeting political enemies, laws being passed allowing for indefinite imprisonment without charge) I'm thinking it's not a bad option.
 
Considering our government is becoming more and more like China or Russia (massive spying, the IRS targeting political enemies, laws being passed allowing for indefinite imprisonment without charge) I'm thinking it's not a bad option.

I'm thinking with the multi-billion dollar systems the NSA has, tapping communications are pretty much several points likely from the sending to the receiver, this won't provide much in terms of anonymous chat. I'm pretty sure, the NSA will be listening into these IM chats perhaps 1 week after the program is launched if not sooner.
 
This does make me wonder... who exactly needs to communicate... information that one is afraid of authorities and government overhearing and should that information really be communicated? I'm generally in favor of Tor used to ... say route torrent traffic around blocks or Tor used to say watch online news sites stories from China or some place were information is blocked by a government.

Not so happy about the concept of the same thing applied to attempting to create secret communication technologies only because I can't help but visualize/wonder who would use such technologies.
 
Perfect for the cheating spouses near you, this should team up with that big time cheating site thats always on the news I cannot think of the name right now....
 
This does make me wonder... who exactly needs to communicate... information that one is afraid of authorities and government overhearing and should that information really be communicated? I'm generally in favor of Tor used to ... say route torrent traffic around blocks or Tor used to say watch online news sites stories from China or some place were information is blocked by a government.

Not so happy about the concept of the same thing applied to attempting to create secret communication technologies only because I can't help but visualize/wonder who would use such technologies.


Just like locks on your doors, personal security is to make yourself a less attractive target. Even though you may feel that your communications taken within context are harmless, many are willing to take your words, twist them and use them for their own ends. Even worse, your communications could be used against you to help condemn you as a scapegoat in the public eye.

So ideally you as a reasonable person should be using this kind of protection so that those looking at you will go after someone else instead.
 
I'm all for this private network. Nobody needs to know who I'm communicating with. With all the survelliance these major world powers are involved in, the only way to privately communicate with someone is to have that person in front of you and you're either talking to them or handing them a note. That doesn't sound like "a free country" or "a free world". THAT'S PRISON. That is what in-mates do.
 
it is not about being afraid it is about none of their dam business...

the whole "you have nothing to hide" argument is useless

Can i not have some privacy in my life?
 
Just like locks on your doors, personal security is to make yourself a less attractive target. Even though you may feel that your communications taken within context are harmless, many are willing to take your words, twist them and use them for their own ends. Even worse, your communications could be used against you to help condemn you as a scapegoat in the public eye.

So ideally you as a reasonable person should be using this kind of protection so that those looking at you will go after someone else instead.

Whom do you presume would be these people, attempting to listen into my communication as an attempt to twist my word's meanings or quote them out of context? That seems a bit absurd in some ways:

Mostly, if it's a private communication from person A to person B and person C eavesdrops, person C's actions are illegal and not quotable in public. Without a source for person C's claims, its about equivalent as my saying "That guy from hardocp's forum once told his friend in a phone conversation, he believes sexism is a good thing and he said x, y, z". To which you might say, 'Yeah, prove it?' and person C either infringes himself and volunteers to go to jail or must retract his statement as no source is available.

I still think this falls under the category of a technology with more harm than good.
 
It is more about privacy. Or, at least, as much privacy as can be had.

If you are out in public and want to speak with someone about a private matter you move to a secluded corner and talk in whispered tones.

It isn't that you are doing something illegal. You just don't want random people to know your business.

If I'm speaking with my wife over IM, we could be talking about our soon to be born child. I would rather not have someone I don't know listen in on that conversation. It is personal. It is none of their business. I'm not trying to hide illegal activity. I'm just trying to be private about private things.

Know what I mean?
 
This does make me wonder... who exactly needs to communicate... information that one is afraid of authorities and government overhearing and should that information really be communicated? I'm generally in favor of Tor used to ... say route torrent traffic around blocks or Tor used to say watch online news sites stories from China or some place were information is blocked by a government.

Not so happy about the concept of the same thing applied to attempting to create secret communication technologies only because I can't help but visualize/wonder who would use such technologies.
So you wouldn't be annoyed if your phone was tapped, and you wouldn't opt for a free alternative that isn't? Big brother doesn't have a right to eves drop on me.

The only sad thing is that government sanctioned spying is becoming so prevalent that such technologies even have a market.
 
Didn't the Navy or some government organization fund Tor? what makes it so anonymous? or out of reach?
 
Whom do you presume would be these people, attempting to listen into my communication as an attempt to twist my word's meanings or quote them out of context? That seems a bit absurd in some ways:

Mostly, if it's a private communication from person A to person B and person C eavesdrops, person C's actions are illegal and not quotable in public. Without a source for person C's claims, its about equivalent as my saying "That guy from hardocp's forum once told his friend in a phone conversation, he believes sexism is a good thing and he said x, y, z". To which you might say, 'Yeah, prove it?' and person C either infringes himself and volunteers to go to jail or must retract his statement as no source is available.

I still think this falls under the category of a technology with more harm than good.

This is easy to answer... Businesses. Who's listening in? Government is another word for people. I don't know them or their intentions. With corporations so mingled I don't know who's interests might over lap my own companies. Secure communications is essential to a free market.
 
This does make me wonder... who exactly needs to communicate... information that one is afraid of authorities and government overhearing and should that information really be communicated?

Better question: what business is that of yours?
 
Secure communication is also essential to a successful terrorist organisation.

So's food. Let's monitor all food at all times to make sure it doesn't make its way into any terrorist stomachs!
 
So's food. Let's monitor all food at all times to make sure it doesn't make its way into any terrorist stomachs!

If you could identify terrorists based on diet I'm sure it would already be monitored.
 
Not so happy about the concept of the same thing applied to attempting to create secret communication technologies only because I can't help but visualize/wonder who would use such technologies.
students organizing protests, LGBT communities organizing or dating in countries where they would be maimed or killed for their choices, women trying to educate each other in countries where they would be maimed or killed for their choices, religious adherents organizing and communicating with each other in countries where they would be maimed or killed for their beliefs, citizens communicating with one another in countries that don't allow freedom of expression, journalists corresponding with their news agencies from within censored nations, political dissidents, and the list goes on...

you really have to ignore some horrific current events of the last few decades to question whether anonymous communication is worse than not having it.
 
students organizing protests, LGBT communities organizing or dating in countries where they would be maimed or killed for their choices, women trying to educate each other in countries where they would be maimed or killed for their choices, religious adherents organizing and communicating with each other in countries where they would be maimed or killed for their beliefs, citizens communicating with one another in countries that don't allow freedom of expression, journalists corresponding with their news agencies from within censored nations, political dissidents, and the list goes on...

you really have to ignore some horrific current events of the last few decades to question whether anonymous communication is worse than not having it.

No kidding. Governments and authoritarian apologists love talking about how terrorists and pedophiles would abuse anonymous secure communication, but nothing will change the fact that governments have committed orders of magnitude more murders and atrocities over the course of human civilization than all private citizens combined. Democide has always accounted for the most murder...not terrorists, not school shooters, but governments killing citizens. You can have stable governments in a particular region for a few centuries before it devolves into total tyranny, but there's always tyranny somewhere, and everywhere will experience intermittent but horrible bouts of tyranny again in the future...sooner or later. As "enlightened" and "above it all" as some seem to think we are, it's looking like it may come during our lifetimes. With the way the balance of power is looking at the moment, we can't get anonymous secure communication soon enough.

Tor secret services help increase the economic cost of surveillance to the point where even the NSA has to be more picky about who to spy on and when: Barring protocol or implementation bugs enabling decryption, the NSA's dragnet methods become a lot more difficult, because they have to perform [likely targeted] traffic analysis at multiple points over a sustained period of time to really figure out who is communicating with whom. Tor isn't really the best network for this sort of thing though: Tor was designed with an outproxy model in mind, whereas I2P was actually designed with "hidden services" and anonymous publication in mind from the get-go. I think it's really the superior network for this purpose on the whole, but it's currently much smaller and lesser-known. Moreover, we're really going to need a more decentralized and resilient physical layer like mesh networks as well before we can ensure the cost of widespread snooping becomes too much for the NSA to feasibly surmount.
 
...of course, none of this matters if there are backdoors in your OS or hardware. That's a huge problem too. :-|
 
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