I recently had the pleasure of receiving some OnionLink related phone calls from the Singapore Police Force. They were very polite and had noticeably impeccable English.
I learned some things from these discussions.
In Asia, the noun-phrase "Privacy Enhancing Technologies" is viewed with suspicion. But you frame the exact same thing as a "Transparency Enhancing Technology", and they're all about that!
E.g., whistleblowing isn't seen as privacy enhancing for the individual, but as transparency enhancing for the society!
Taking a step back, this may be an instance of the individualist vs collectivist default frame of reference in Western vs Eastern societies.
I mention this as an example for how Tor can better survive, and perhaps even gain cultural traction, in Asia.
-V
On Sun, Jul 17, 2016 at 06:50:42AM +0800, Virgil Griffith wrote:
I recently had the pleasure of receiving some OnionLink related phone calls from the Singapore Police Force. They were very polite and had noticeably impeccable English.
I learned some things from these discussions.
In Asia, the noun-phrase "Privacy Enhancing Technologies" is viewed with suspicion. But you frame the exact same thing as a "Transparency Enhancing Technology", and they're all about that!
E.g., whistleblowing isn't seen as privacy enhancing for the individual, but as transparency enhancing for the society!
The whistleblowing use-case is transparency enhancing tech built on top of privacy enhancing technology; it does not mean that Tor itself is mainly transparency enhancing tech.
Conversely, a "blockchain" enthusiast could promote the "transparency enhancing technology" of paying employees of the government with some kind of anti-privacy blockchain recording what they do with their funds to allow all their finances to be easily inspected. Or for that matter, you could use the "transparency enhancing technology" of putting cameras in the washrooms, to make sure no-one was using that moment of privacy to receive bribe money. (the first example isn't hypothetical - I actually have had to turn down clients asking me to work on projects like that)
In Bitcoin we have many in the community vigorously portraying Bitcoin as anything but anonymous, including to government regulators. This has lead to serious misconceptions about the system, for instance regulators thinking that metadata like IP addresses and even human identities are recorded on the Bitcoin blockchain. The reality is somewhere in the middle: Bitcoin isn't perfectly anonymous, but it's still very difficult to trace funds without a high risk of false-postives, particularly if people are putting any effort into hiding their tracks.
I'm personally very concerned that this deception will backfire on the Bitcoin community: if people think you've lied to them, you'll lose your trust very quickly, and the whole field will get a negative reputation. It also means that you may be forced to change the reality to fit the narrative: if regulators have been assuming Bitcoin isn't anonymous, the fact that it is may be something we're demanded to "fix" on short notice.
I think what you're proposing has the exact same type of risk for Tor.
I think what you're proposing has the exact same type of risk for Tor.
Three minor bits.
(1) In the abstract, both western and eastern societies are typically in favor of whistleblowing. But whistleblowing is represented in the value-system very differently. If you started drilling down into specifics, asian authorities would accept that whistleblowing requires anonymity for the whistleblower---so we're all factually on the same page for what's involved. The difference is that whereas the West conceives of whistleblowing as a privacy technology, the East conceives of it as a transparency technology.
(2) The bitcoin analogy is a little different because this tension arises from conflicting conceptions privacy/transparency bitcoin actually provides. In the whistleblowing example, there's no such ambiguity on the mechanics, yet the framings are still opposite.
(3) Historically speaking, Asia is the most anti-Tor region in the world. I assert that, even with asian authorities, there's often agreement on some concrete specifics (e.g., the value of whistleblowing). Putting these concrete examples into their native framing makes it much easier to find that mutual agreement. And this would be a good thing for increasing Asia's receptivity to Tor and related technologies.
Perhaps the most high-profile example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-corruption_campaign_under_Xi_Jinping It is striking that this is a cause both the Paramount Leader of the Chinese Community Party and Tor Project can get behind (ignoring details of Xi's specific implementation).
-V
On Sun, Jul 17, 2016 at 11:00 AM, Peter Todd pete@petertodd.org wrote:
On Sun, Jul 17, 2016 at 06:50:42AM +0800, Virgil Griffith wrote:
I recently had the pleasure of receiving some OnionLink related phone calls from the Singapore Police Force. They were very polite and had noticeably impeccable English.
I learned some things from these discussions.
In Asia, the noun-phrase "Privacy Enhancing Technologies" is viewed with suspicion. But you frame the exact same thing as a "Transparency
Enhancing
Technology", and they're all about that!
E.g., whistleblowing isn't seen as privacy enhancing for the individual, but as transparency enhancing for the society!
The whistleblowing use-case is transparency enhancing tech built on top of privacy enhancing technology; it does not mean that Tor itself is mainly transparency enhancing tech.
Conversely, a "blockchain" enthusiast could promote the "transparency enhancing technology" of paying employees of the government with some kind of anti-privacy blockchain recording what they do with their funds to allow all their finances to be easily inspected. Or for that matter, you could use the "transparency enhancing technology" of putting cameras in the washrooms, to make sure no-one was using that moment of privacy to receive bribe money. (the first example isn't hypothetical - I actually have had to turn down clients asking me to work on projects like that)
In Bitcoin we have many in the community vigorously portraying Bitcoin as anything but anonymous, including to government regulators. This has lead to serious misconceptions about the system, for instance regulators thinking that metadata like IP addresses and even human identities are recorded on the Bitcoin blockchain. The reality is somewhere in the middle: Bitcoin isn't perfectly anonymous, but it's still very difficult to trace funds without a high risk of false-postives, particularly if people are putting any effort into hiding their tracks.
I'm personally very concerned that this deception will backfire on the Bitcoin community: if people think you've lied to them, you'll lose your trust very quickly, and the whole field will get a negative reputation. It also means that you may be forced to change the reality to fit the narrative: if regulators have been assuming Bitcoin isn't anonymous, the fact that it is may be something we're demanded to "fix" on short notice.
I think what you're proposing has the exact same type of risk for Tor.
-- https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
The whistleblowing use-case is transparency enhancing tech built on top of privacy enhancing technology; it does not mean that Tor itself is mainly transparency enhancing tech.
It occurred to me that I didn't fully answer your question. Your point was about *Tor*, not whistleblowing. So the concern is that (and correct me), "If we pitch Tor by saying it has a lot of transparency components, but it actually doesn't, then there's likely to be tension in the future."
This is all relatively fresh thinking, and I don't have good answers, but here's what I do have. I claim that each use-case can be put into either Privacy-column or the Transparency-column (can be weighted without loss of generalization).
And, averaging across this set of use-cases, some of which are Privacy (P), and some of which are Transparency (T), Tor falls somewhere on this spectrum, lets say we instinctively put it closer to the P.
P T |------W-----------------------|
I assert that some of the use-cases (e.g., whistleblowing) that the West instinctively puts into the P-column, more collectivist-cultures would instead put into the T-column. This would result in a different aggregate perspective of Tor, say something like:
P T |------W--------E--------------|
I can't say exactly how far to the T-direction it would go, but that it's shifted at all was news-to-me!
Doesn't completely answer you, but that's what I got. -V
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