[tor-bugs] #5501 [TorBrowserButton]: enable Do-Not-Track DNT by default

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#5501: enable Do-Not-Track DNT by default
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 Reporter:  cypherpunks       |          Owner:  mikeperry
     Type:  enhancement       |         Status:  new      
 Priority:  normal            |      Milestone:           
Component:  TorBrowserButton  |        Version:           
 Keywords:                    |         Parent:           
   Points:                    |   Actualpoints:           
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Comment(by mikeperry):

 Replying to [comment:5 cypherpunks]:
 > > DNT is not just a statement. It's a regulatory nightmare waiting to
 happen, and what it means depends upon user behavior, website features,
 and a whole lot of site-specific user consent.
 > >
 >
 > For example, for google mail it would mean: "Do not scan their mails. Do
 not offer personalized advertisements. Use generic advertisements.".

 I have a hard time believing that this is a substantial privacy
 improvement. Consider when a user reads my mail to them if I have this
 header set and they don't: they still get targeted based on the fact that
 they correspond with me and what we talk about is logged and datamined on
 their side. If we both use different webmail services, there is no way to
 communicate my DNT email preference to their email provider.

 So, we could play all sorts of endless policy gymnastics and also to try
 find a cross-protocol way to communicate DNT on the engineering end, or we
 could just decide that we're cypherpunks damnit, and we're here to do this
 stuff right.

 In other words, this is a problem that should be solved by end to end
 email encryption. There is a cost to making end to end encryption
 accessible and understandable to the general public. Accepting DNT is
 admitting that society doesn't want to pay that cost (because we'd rather
 track you) and we want to turn a blind eye to tracking rather than solve
 it.

 > > If we can't solve privacy preferences with technological solutions
 that prevent data disclosure in the first place, we're not trying hard
 enough.
 >
 > We try the technological and the political way at the same time. DNT is
 a political statement.

 I worry it says we accept the political solution at the expense of the
 technical.

 > Right now [DNT is] too new. It doesn't make a difference right now. It's
 a signal. Not using the signal is like not going to election, "my voice is
 insignificant".

 No, for us refusing DNT says "We refuse to trust the infrastructure."

 > While normal users turning on DNT can be tracked even better due to DNT,
 Tor is significant and can send a signal (all Tor users share it).

 I am sure the advertising world will hear our signal independent of DNT. I
 have no doubts about that.

 > > In the worst case it means facebook/gmail says "Sorry, you can't do
 that, you don't want to be tracked." Then the user is forced to disable
 the header globally (and incur the fingerprinting penalty globally), just
 to use a site-specific service.
 >
 > That is great! Imagine all the protests, people quitting facebook and
 facebook offering better privacy, less tracking.

 Look, either you trust facebook or you don't. I think pretending that
 $facebook (or their extra-judicial non-US ad partners who aren't subject
 to DNT) would obey the DNT header in the face of subpoena, coercion, or
 compromise is just crazy. At the very least, they have audit logs. Those
 logs are available to anyone who can extensively compromise US corporate
 infrastructure. Since this adversary group includes Adrian Lamo along with
 most levels of the Chinese Govt, I don't think we have a serious threat
 model without employing end to end encryption *inside* of the
 communication channels of services like facebook.

 > It adds and political statement, which is more likely to be counted,
 than counting how many people have Tor IP's.

 Oh don't worry, we'll be heard before this is over.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/5501#comment:6>
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